Flamenco Duets - where one guitar plays the letra with great accuracy and phrasing

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Flamenco Duets - where one guitar plays the letra with great accuracy and phrasing

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joevidetto

Posts: 191
Joined: Jun. 15 2013

Flamenco Duets - where one guitar pl...

Hi all,

For when you love flamenco guitar, but don't have access to a singer -

Has anyone heard any guitarists playing the letra melodies really well as part of a duet ? In terms of pop and rock music, for example - Jeff Beck can add phrasing to a melody that is truly a stand-out. With flamenco music, I would imagine to capture the spirit and phrasing of the Letra on the guitar might be pretty hard (for many, at least) because of the micro-tones (or whatever the notes are called between the 12-note scale).

Please do share if you have some audio or video examples.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Dec. 2 2023 16:19:01

Ricardo

Posts: 14837
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Flamenco Duets - where one guita... (in reply to joevidetto)

After the intro falseta, the second guitar comes in at :22 to back up the melody of the Cante por Tiento. It is not easy to do this, as even here you realize the quick decay does not let the note sustain long enough like the voice can, so the cante melody is almost unrecognizable. There simply are not any BS microtones done deliberately in the cante.

So it doesn’t become a new argument, someone challenged me that this Caracol excerpt proves flamenco uses microtonal singing. I had to slow it WAy down to prove the equal temp chromatics at work here, the only “in between” note was due to the vibrato on the TONIC….a note of which by principal would NEVER use microtones anyway in any modal singing system on earth.

A lot of folks don’t realize that ALL singers that use vibrato in modern Equal tempered music, are over or under shooting target pitches. Bending a note is no different than vibrato, which is ‘intonating” the target pitch by pulsing (ideally in rhythm). Slow down any of your non-autotuned favorite singers to hear this same effect as Caracol is doing. This is not the same as deliberate microtonal singing, where target pitches have to be dead on or you are expressing the wrong freaking Makkam or whatever. In Indian they are “sruti”.

_____________________________

CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Dec. 2 2023 17:20:59