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I've also posted this question over at Jason Mcguire's site so excuse me for repeating myself!
I've been fooling around with guitar for many years...classical and electric...but over the last few months have made the resolution to practice 'seriously' and to concentrate on flamenco as well as keeping up some classical studies.
A problem I've encountering is that after practising rasguedo I find it difficult to play arpeggios smoothly...my left hand becomes too fidgety and kind of 'energised' making it difficult to go straight into an arpeggio passage.
Is this normal for a beginner and something you work through or do you think that I should concentrate more on relaxing my hand during the rasguedo.
my left hand becomes too fidgety and kind of 'energised' making it difficult to go straight into an arpeggio passage.
Hi Pawo,
Your LEFT hand?
You mean the fretting hand or are you playing left handed.
If you mean the hand you are actually using to play rasgueado, then...yeah..Flamenco often involves playing quite hard, energetic stuff, followed by passages that require a lot of control and detail.
It's just something you'll get used to.
Don't overdo the ras practise though, so that your hand gets weak and shaky.
basically, anything switching to and from picado is a bitch.
keep your hand relaxed, stay with the groove and in time. it just takes practice. check out solea por bulerias single compas on jason's site. that's perfect for your rasgueado-arpeggio practice.
Sorry...I meant my right hand that is actually playing the rasguedo gets shaky. Not overdoing the practice sounds like good advice
Thanks for that Dave
hi there just checking, when you practice your rasgs, do you use a longer pause between fingers? like wait 0.5 sec between the A and M etc etc.. I found that when I started out, it was the correct way of practicing but because there was a longer pause, I tend to tense the whole finger quite hard until i started to use the next finger.. maybe this is what's happening to you? super tension in the fingers when you practice?
I will definitely try out that solea por buleria on Jason's site. When I 'practice' ras. I go very slowly concentrating on evenness of each stroke so there is at least a second pause between each stroke... and because of this gap between strokes I find it easier to keep the hand relaxed. However, The tension in my hand comes when attempting to 'play' the ras. within a piece where you have to quickly move from one technique to another.
I think one of the hardest things about practicing is dealing with my own impatience! As the old cliche goes 'Rome wasn't built in a day'...
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