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There is also another 6-count rhythms with accents 12-2-4 and that's how I tap my foot for that one. I think this is the rhythm that Estela is talking about. But the way I see it, that's only 1 of a half-dozen patterns, not THE universal pattern.
I think it's like the Triffids Andy...once the pod consumes your body, you cross over and realize there was no point resisiting in the first place
with remate on 10 or end of second group of three. But to feel this I have to think of groups of three not two.
No compás contains a "remate". Compás is a continuous band with regularly repeated accents. If you keeps threes you're only touching the tip of the elephant's tail.
Just tapping on the "even" beats. Nothing more exotic than that!
Ron, your explanations have been consistently accurate...I don't see what the big deal is. It might help to wean off the "12-2-4" etc. labels which could be misleading, and just think of unnamed accents, or even the months of the year which allows the needy to keep their 12 structure.
February, April, June, August, October and December are necessary to the structure of a year (let's say), but the in-between months are merely air spaces. Hey, this is getting spooky...maybe Simon could interest Spielberg...just think: "Foroflamenco: the Movie" .
But if you cannot HEAR it, then it is not in the compas.
The concept of anything being "in" a compás is unusual. Most people consider compás a fixed, unvarying standard which you may do anything with except violate. This is why a foot mimicking the sound of falsetas is especially strange.
Andy, do you reject the possibility that there is a steady and unvarying compás that is common to all bulerías wherever they are sung, danced or played? I'm thinking of what happens to your foot when there's a singer, dancer and palmas...which accents would it choose to imitate? The thought of a confused, overworked and underpaid foot being forced to make executive decisions is too terrible to contemplate, even for this forum.
Example: Many dancers count fandangos in 12, but the compas of fandangos gos on Om-pa-pa in threes regardless of how they count it.
Now this is especially interesting...the basic dance steps of fandango is two threes and three twos, like so many other flamenco rhythms. Why then do you mark threes (everyone does) and how can you possibly manage to accompany the dancer if you're not mimicking the accents of the steps and beating to match? If you have answers to those questions, then you know why bulerías is in twos.
Prove it to yourself. Pat your foot in FOURS! It fits the COMPAS after every 3 fours. But it has nothing to do with the compas itself.
It makes no sense to keep fours because they fail to mark half the important beats, so you'd be on your own a good part of the time...for that, just don't beat at all.
Also, fours are much too widely spaced to represent a useable pulse...tempo is a crucial factor. In theory you could mark only once every twelve beats, but who can feel that kind of spacing? Compás has evolved via natural selection to be something felt, not intellectualized.
I am told that you proposed this idea on another flamenco forum and everyone dismissed it there. Is that correct?
It depends on whether you accept three vociferous individuals as "everyone" in a group of about 150 people. In that same group Richard "Quijote" Black, who has been singing flamenco and playing guitar professionally for nearly 45 years and has made many trips to Spain wrote that it was "the single most useful piece of information he had ever gotten in one place" and "even after months I continue to be amazed at the possibilites it unfolds". Other members...I don't see any point in giving their names since they may not like it...wrote similar 'testimonials'...usually citing the former inability to get on top of bulerías and feel secure with it, or being unable to keep the tempo from accelerating. Others wrote me in private. I don't make any money when someone benefits from this, and no one should feel obligated to use it, especially if they feel completely confident with bulerías.
To reillustrate the example of threes in baile; sometimes a dancer will ask me to only play "shots" on 12,3,6,9 in a particular footwork section.
If everyone's in compás, nothing needs ever to be asked by anyone. It's true contemporary flamenco dancers and guitarists have the habit of working out each heel-tap or movement to come with a certain note or chord. An experienced flamenco guitarist...say Manuel Morao, Habichuela, the late Marote...would not be able to play for these dancers and this is an insidious problem with is eroding the carefully constructed edifice of flamenco, an art-form which puts no limits on personal inspiration provided everyone keeps compás...it's a very delicate balance and it's at the core of why flamenco is more than just 'music'.
Certainly if you are playing for this type of choreographed flamenco you don't need to worry about compás.
If I am only playing the accented beats 12,3,6,9 and the dancer is pounding an elaborate DUM-taka-taka rhythm then where are the twos? They don't exist there.
You're talking about guitar technique, not compás. But you already clarified that you modify the compás to suit each moment. That's the only real difference in your approach...most people contemplate compás as something ironclad and unchanging.
Your foot does whatever you want it to do...well *mine* does anyhow. If you keep twos it's both the tempo *and* the compás, which is why everyone here does it instinctively. When bulerías is cooking everything happens very quickly and it's useful to have a simple way of keeping in compás instead of just winging it. If Tomatito needs to beat in twos, I don't feel embarrassed to do the same .
A "remate" is a closing. Compás doesn't close, guitarists, singers and dancers do.
Estela 'Zata'
This is one of those 'meaning of life' statements.
I can't play ALL night and need to stop at some point, for a pee, a coffee or just to rest my fingers and streatch my legs, I guess the same applies to Singers and Dancers. When I stop however, I normally try to do this on beat 10, I know this as 'remate' but I might have it wrong. (I mentioned earlier that Vicente sprung a 9 on me on one of his CD's) I know that within the giant ticking of the universe, compas goes on, probably invested within the movements of the planets as they revolve around the sun, who knows? but flamenco stops from time to time.
Door 1: the set of accents, a pattern or structural unit
Door 2: the underlying pulse or beat
And we're debating which one of these really is compas?
But isn't the point: How do undeducated Spanish dock workers figure out how to do bulerias without any training or theoretical background?
Andy thinks it's because they've internalized Door 1, Zata thinks it's because they know how it's really all about Door 2 (which everyone can do).
Is this what we're talkinga bout?
No...I prefer Door 1 because I think that's where the washing-machine is.
Seriously folks, Door 1 is for me, "set of accents, pattern or structural unit". In one of my first messages I defined compás as just that. The dock workers have compás because they're feeling the twos unit (pattern, accent), whether or not they make any physical move which indicates as much. Others have expressed a complex system which even changes from one moment to the next. Maybe José Mercé can do that, but personal experience has taught wee me that twos are the difference between swimming and sinking, or just treading water when everyone else is playing water tag.
RE: 2s in bulerias examples (in reply to Jim Opfer)
quote:
When I stop however, I normally try to do this on beat 10,
How do you know where the tens are? If you count from one to twelve over and over throughout the whole thing it could become tedious and even divert needed concentration from figuring out the chords for the singer.
You are correct, Jim. Every professional guitarist that I know calls the harmonic resolution on beats 10-12 of the compas in bulerias, solea, alegrias, the remate.
Andy, I sincerely hope you meant to say 9-10 (or 3-4) or else we're not talking about any bulerías I'm familiar with.
This illustrates the point...falsetas, Niño Ricardo, phrasing...these are musical questions relevant to guitar. Cante and compás existed before toque. You could also talk about taconeo, redobles and turns for dancers, or salidas, melisma, ayeo or trabalenguas for singers. The whole lot, and much more, is beholden to the compás, it's the law of rhythmic (as opposed to free-form) flamenco.
Possibly the problem is a guitar-centric perspective (?).
I think you're greatly overestimating yourself if you think you've discovered something about flamenco that every guitarist from Nino Ricardo to Tomatito missed.
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