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Playing to compas...help!
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at_leo_87
Posts: 3055
Joined: Aug. 30 2008
From: Boston, MA, U.S.A
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 RE: Playing to compas...help! (in reply to polishcomedy)
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most people count it like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
say you're playing something that is in 4/4 and you mess up on the first beat, you wait until it cycles and you come in again when it starts.
so just like in the four count, you just come in wherever you need to in the twelve count. so say you mess up in the second three's (which would be 4,5,or6?) then you just come in there. you can't really come in wherever you please like you could with a straight, constant metronome.
try ron's flamenco master metronome and play it slow. you'll literally "see" where you are in compas.
and mark where each beat is on the sheet music. the 3/4 notation doesn't cut it for me. i like to see where every 3, 12, 6 etc is.
and of course, there's some people who say to hell with all the counting and trying to understand it, just feel it!
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Date Sep. 29 2009 23:15:39
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NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
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RE: Playing to compas...help! (in reply to polishcomedy)
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Hi Patrick,
I'm not sure I understand your question, but, with exceptions, the compás has to be followed strictly from beginning to end. If you're playing a memorized bulerías and you lose your place in the compás, you'll have to come back in at the exact same point in order for the rest of it to be in compás. Ideally, you want to develop such a keen sense of rhythm that you never lose your place in the compás even though you lose your place on the guitar. From what you say in your post, it sounds like you can already do this in 4/4 rhythms. It takes years to achieve this in flamenco because first you have to spend a long time just listening and following the compás in your head before you can do it while playing.
I haven't heard you play bulerías, and the counting patterns sometimes make it confusing to talk about these things, so this post might not address your issues, but I suggest that you make sure that you're making a distinction between guajiras and bulerías.
X=accent
X-o-o-X-o-o-X-o-X-o-X-o
1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-1-2 guajiras and another style
2-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-1 bulerías, soleá, cantiñas (alegrías)
There's more to this than just changing the position of the numbers. If we use syllables instead of numbers it's still not perfectly clear, but maybe it shows the different aires involved:
DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da-DUM-DUM-DUM (guajiras)
da-da-DUM-da-da-DUM-dada-DUM-dada-DUM-da-DUM (bulerías, soleá, cantiñas)
Guajiras sounds "chunkier" and more simple (DUMmed down, heh-heh), and the other styles have a more sophisticated rhythmic undercurrent. Also, the tempo is very important. Soleá and cantiñas are slower, guajiras is faster, and bulerías is usually a little faster than guajiras. But bulerías and guajiras feel very different from each other.
Anyway, getting back to your question, I think you'll find it interesting to listen to the way that different singers handle the soleá compás. Most will sing each line of verse over a full compás, waiting if necessary for the new cycle to begin. But the really good ones like El Borrico, La Piriñaca, Juan Talega and Agujetas Viejo jump right in on the 7-8 (which I assume is the first 1-2 in your counting pattern). I've actually heard people suggest that Talega didn't have good compás because sometimes he didn't square away a new line of verse with a fresh 12-beat cyle. 
Hey, I enjoyed your version of Mr. Sandman!
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Date Sep. 30 2009 0:41:43
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mark indigo
Posts: 3625
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
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RE: Playing to compas...help! (in reply to polishcomedy)
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i'm not sure i understand yourquestion either, but i think first off the way you are counting is not ideal. Don't think of it as 2 3's and 3 2's, i think that is a way to explain to people where the accents fall in the solea rhythm, but not a good way necessarily to ask a question like this or to play to....
it will depend on where your falseta starts.
think of bulerias as being a 12 beat loop, and/or a 6 beat loop.
if you start on 12 and mess up around beat 4 you could either wait until 12 comes around, OR you could just come in again on beat 6 and play on that as if it was 12, but some people will say you are wrong/out. You can mess these people up by playing an extra 6 in the remate (ie. if the falseta ends on 10, you will now be ending on 4, so fill in with an A chord on beats 6-10, and you're back on 12 - if the falseta ends on beat 6, you will now be on 12, so play as you would for beats 6-10, and then repeat that phrase again and you will be back to 12.)
this is way difficult to explain/understand in writing, but dead simple in practise. check out the recent discussion about 6's in bulerias.
incidentally, if you play to people clapping the way jason says in the vid in this thread you can just start on 6 as if it was 12, but if they are doing 12's you have to either wait or make up with an extra 6.
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Date Sep. 30 2009 2:04:04
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gshaviv
Posts: 272
Joined: Mar. 22 2005
From: Israel
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RE: Playing to compas...help! (in reply to polishcomedy)
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quote:
... let's say I make a mistake in the second set of 3...should I wait until until that set comes back around, or do I just play on the next available beat?
It's much easier if you don't do mistakes  But if you have to do them  I would wait for the next cycle to start again. Otherwise your playing will not match the loop, and that is worse than making a mistake... (got carried away with those smileys, I know...)
quote:
With a more basic compas it seems easier to follow the beats, but in the case of the the intermediate challenge where sometimes the notes are flying very quickly it's difficult to pay attention to what beat, or set of beats I'm on. So, is it bad to just fall back onto the next available beat, or do I need to wait for that set to come back around on the backing track? Thanks!
If you were playing for a dancer, it would be very bad if you missed a single beat. I would say that as long as you can't play those notes that fly very quickly without missing a beat, you can't consider yourself to have mastered that piece yet. That's the hard part in Flamenco.
Since the rhythm is irregular, you have first to really get into the groove to successfully play it. I think you have to reach the point were you can anticipate the accents without having to count.
Try listening to the backing track and just strum A & Bb on the 10 & 3 beats. You should get to a point you can do that for the full length of the loop. I would then add a strum on 12, and after that on the 6 & 8. The order is because the 3 & 10 are the most pronounced accents.
btw, the 120 bpm loop is simpler then the other two to feel the accents.
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Date Sep. 30 2009 3:03:32
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NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
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RE: Playing to compas...help! (in reply to polishcomedy)
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quote:
I took that to essentially mean 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Hi Patrick,
That's the way I'd count it, because the first beat is 1 and the last beat is 12. Sorry if my post was misleading or confusing.
The way the beats fall, it doesn't really matter if you prefer to feel beat 12 as the starting point or even if you prefer to use a different set of numbers for the counting, but it makes sense to look at bulerías as a double-time soleá.
quote:
However, with flamenco if you slip up and lose the beat you have to wait for that exact beat to loop all the way back around.
I think the scenario could be more accurately described. If one is able to wait for a certain beat to come up again, it means that one is still able to keep track of the compás. If you're playing alone and without a metronome, you might lose the beat entirely, and in that case everything would fall apart. But if you're playing along with some other context (other people, metronome or backing track...), you might hear a clue (from the clapping, for example) and can mentally regain your position within the space of a few beats. When that happens, you can fill the gap with a strum or some short idea to bring everything back on course and try the falseta again.
One of the great things about flamenco is improvising with "units" of a few beats (rather than notes of a scale), but to do that you have to spend some time learning ideas and analyzing them to see how they work (reducing them to those units).
Hope that gives you some ideas!
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Date Sep. 30 2009 23:45:01
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