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What's your favorite video/audio of bulerias in sixes, preferably with a singer? Any good examples of this? Of course searching for this on youtube give me poor results...I guess I gotta know the actual song names, but then I don't know if it's in sixes or not. I normally play in 12's and sometimes 3's, but I'm trying to get a feel of this being done in sixes, ESPECIALLY for baile/cante accompaniment, but I'll take a listen to solo pieces too. Modern or traditional all welcomed.
My ears are messed up, since I can't seem to tell the difference between the above videos with bulerias in 12's. I can sort of hear it in 6s with Moraito playing, but mainly in the falsetas in between the singing, and all else has a 12s feel to me. Any clarification on distinction?
25 euros and balls dropping slowly over a 6 year period. Damn, I guess that's the price to pay to be skilled...
Thanks for the recommendation. These bulerias have a certain swing to it, and the rasgueados don't sound as separated but more integrated, as expected of Moraito. So he always plays it in 6s? See, now I don't even know how 12's sounds like, since it's so damn similar. I hear the accents in 6, 8, 10, 12 very clearly, so that to me is NOT in 6. I thought 6 is more of a ...Wham!-quiet-quiet-Wham!-quiet-quiet-Wham!, where you can tap your foot in 2's/3's/6's and you'll be fine. I am aware of the medio compas to go along with the singer at random times, but for the most part, I hear 12's in all of these.
My dancer says I need to feel the groove/pulse, but dammit, I'm an engineer and this has to be broken down for me analytically rather than a "just feel it". Imagine if everything in life is taught with a "just feel it" attitude...so you can sense my frustration. I think this 'feeling it' idea works if you have existing knowledge from listening to this music over and over, or if you have that musical sense/talent. Sure, I can learn this way too just like everybody else, but rather than JUST beating it into my head the old school way (which I'm doing a hell of a lot, and will continue to do so since flamenco is the shizzz..), I'd like to explore other methods...
Hmm...now back to Stephen's method of drilling El Zambo's wails and boisterous cries with his gang cheering him on in the back while Moraito tears it up...in my head...damn, when can I get my own posse?
Feeling it doesn't apply only to Flamenco, it's a rhythm thing. You 'feel' it because it's physical. It's doing the same thing (like tapping your foot or clapping your hand) the same way at the same speed every time.
Next time you're walking, notice how your steps occur at equal time-distances from each other, you'll see that you're already 'feeling' it but you didn't realize what 'it' was. Try to feel the buleria when you're walking, count your steps as in 12 2 4 6 8 10 and feel the 3 on the upbeat between the steps. Walk slowly if you have to, but you'll get it, it's not that hard.
Maybe you need to smoke more weed? I hear Oakland is a good place for that. :)
Anyway, if you need a posse, I live in SF. Hit me up if you want to play some bule's.
Listen to the palmas. Do they feel like they are in sixes or twelves?
You know...maybe I've been listening to EVERYTHING in sixes...but like in your videos, you can hear the 6, 8, 10, 12....and then sometimes there's a beat on the 3, which tells me it's truly not in 6s.
I don't know how palmas in 12s sound like, other than clapping every beat and then harder on the accents.
quote:
Feeling it doesn't apply only to Flamenco, it's a rhythm thing. You 'feel' it because it's physical. It's doing the same thing (like tapping your foot or clapping your hand) the same way at the same speed every time.
Next time you're walking, notice how your steps occur at equal time-distances from each other, you'll see that you're already 'feeling' it but you didn't realize what 'it' was. Try to feel the buleria when you're walking, count your steps as in 12 2 4 6 8 10 and feel the 3 on the upbeat between the steps. Walk slowly if you have to, but you'll get it, it's not that hard.
Maybe you need to smoke more weed? I hear Oakland is a good place for that. :)
Anyway, if you need a posse, I live in SF. Hit me up if you want to play some bule's.
I mean, I always tap my foot in 2's or sometimes in 3's or in 12's. It's not so much the rhythm that bothers me, but there are two ways that I play basic bulerias compas, one of which folks say it's in 6s, but I don't understand it. I hear the difference, but I don't UNDERSTAND why. Maybe I'll post a youtube video of the two ways I'm playing and break this down to some sense. The groove to me feels the same for both, but my dancer tells me otherwise...that one way feels like there's more room to breathe, while the other is more tightly bound.
And yes, they do have good weed here. =P Oakland is fantastic! =D
I'll take up your offer to play some bulerias. I'll PM you my info.
talk less, listen more- don't get high. Have some chick show you how to release your hips and mark por buleria and how to do palmas in sixes. Then the next day you will forget this, then go back and have her show you again. And again, and again. Do palmas with the Morao CDs and listen and feel it. Then mark sixes with the guitar with the strings covered. Learn how to move in and out of 12's and sixes with palmas and follow recordings.
After you internalize that stuff then guitar will play itself. You'll never be funky unless some chick shows you how. Men are not funky here, and if they are they learned it from a woman dancer.
Bulerias are very often polyrythmic. Consider the sixes as a main pulse and anything else as a polyrithmic variation above the main pulse.
Here you have an exercise for 1 foot and palmas. Do your foot in six. 12 2 4 6 8 10 with accent on 12 and 6 (Thats 2 x half compás) At the same time do palmas 12 3 6 8 10.
When you can do this relaxed, you can make all kinds of variations above the basic foot stepping. Just remember that its the basic 6 that is important.
I the reason I said learn it from a dancer is because they do know about music, they just can't always express it in time signature terms like guitar players. There's a disconnect with this between guitar players and dancers unless the dancer is married to a guitarist who makes them talk in musical terms or they were a pianist or instrumentalist of some kind.
A really good professional dancer who teaches palmas is who I would go to to learn bulerias. Take a few private palmas lessons and then listen and learn how to apply it to recordings. Dancers also have all the funky stuff and yo can absorb how they feel compas, but I know many guitarists are reluctant to put themselves in that position with a dancer, but I think it is a good thing.
From my own experience bulerias was very abstract and one dimensional until I started watching the dancers do palmas and then tried to feel it that way. And thinking about how extra sixes fit in and how it feels to set it up.
I would also listen to the Lebrija style bulerias on the recordings with Pedro Bacan. his marking is really interesting and very strong. They ride the compas differently than the Jerez folks. And the Bacan stuff moves through different ways of feeling the compas according to the cante and how it resolves.
Dancers are not the only answer to the question, but I think guitarists in general are weaker on palmas at the student level and often later at advanced levels. So I say learn palmas and body funkiness right for the start as part of the overall understanding of bulerias. It will also help later if you want to accompany because dancers will not be able to lord it over you that your palmas are weak. They will respect someone with tight palmas and in fact be amazed a guitar player can do them. . . .
When I hear palmas such as these I hear sixes, not twelves.
Anders exercise is a good thing - feel the Bulerias ( 12-3-6-8-10 or 12-3-7-8-10) accents against the palmas. Learning how to do palmas is muy importante. I learned more about bulerias from palmas than from guitar. Just now I am beginning to understand bulerias better. Listen to you dancer and do palmas with her and in the class.
I beg to differ, Stephen. Just to illustrate, i have most of my compas variations from copying other guitarrists. Dancers also do have their variations, but they can be "unmusical" at times. Sometimes even so much that its out of compas, because dancers simply feel compas different than somebody who knows music. And somebody who is just starting out usually doesnt get to accompany the good, ie musical ones (dancers). We have to be realistic here.
Im really trying to be helpful here and not just pushing my opinion. I really would consult a good guitar teacher, because palmas alone wont give you much "context" to grasp compas. If you can connect compas to a beautiful melody or composition, the compas will come by itself. Just remember some songs that you could hum by heart, say "jingle bells" for example. Did you have practice the rhythm first and then the notes? That said, palmas are good and so is accompayning dancers of course, it gives security for your playing. Its just that when it comes anywhere near to the field of music - and rhythm is a part of music - i would consult somebody different.
You're actually one of the few people I would strive not to alienate and I read your post carefully. I don't disagree with you, but my points are based on some local knowledge as well. I like your ideas about how certain melody can glue compas in to your brain because we have a natural facility in our heads to remember melody as a device for marking rythyms.
Mr. D who began this thread lives in Oakland where I am and I was trying to cajole him to take advantage of some of the local dancers who are top professionals, a few of whom came of age in Spain and have had recognized Madrid careers. By that I mean recognized in Spain as high level artists. That said there are some very profound teachers right around the corner. There are also a few very brilliant guitar teachers on the same block. I don't want to name names because I'm not interested in playing it as politics.
I was pushing the palmas thing, and granted I'm no great palmero myself, because it's been a long standing problem that guitarists don't integrate into cuadro situations early enough in their training. And I hear what you are saying about the possibility that palmas can be abstract in the strict sense of getting down a guitar understanding of compas, but what I was getting at is building an over arching understanding of how all the parts fit together and the palmas are the common denominator between all the parts; cante- baile and guitar.
And I think in this area if one wanted to study the palmas, the professional dancers I mentioned are masters of compas and play palmas better than the guitarists, in my humble opinion. So I was getting at the idea that if a guitarist wants dancers to play palmas for them during a guitar solo, the guitarist should at least be able to play those palmas him or herself right, in order to know what the palmas players are doing and how they move through sordas, altas and the different dynamics and accents they can play within those types of palmas. You can also count on these dancers as vetted teachers who know how to meet students at the correct level and give them good information.
So it brings up questions like why would playing contras in one part of a buleiras solo be correct and feeling it like waltz time be perfect in another section? And how can a solo be imitative of a cante line and how can a player tell the palmas players to play palmas for that type of falseta. The professional dancers here are used to playing for guitarists at a high level of sensitivity when things are going well and even the advanced students of those dancers are pretty darned good.
So my idea is not to detract from anything you said, but to put it out there that the resource of dancers here is available to learn from and is quite valuable. I think people learn in different ways and exposure or experience with various methods can spark understanding in ways you might not first think is relevant. Personnally I know that a lot of dancers can do wacky things that throw off guitarists, but I say jump in right at the beginning a find out why they might do a corte in a seemingly strange place rather than learn a static rote feel for compas and then have to change it later. And the dancers are more fluid thinkers when it comes to compas, again in my opinion, because the guitar is sort of pinned into its idiomatic situation of chord changes in specific places. That can serve both as an anchor and an obstacle; so my idea is based in practical knowledge of how to do some tasty palmas plus looking forward to conceptualize that in a cuadro ensemble compas is not always based on the structure of the guitar changes. I think in order to be an effective accompanist you have to be able at least in part think like a dancer.
if that makes any sense whatsoever.....and Yeah! for the home team.....
because it's been a long standing problem that guitarists don't integrate into cuadro situations early enough in their training.
I think (IMO) that's because they read books and play tabs and have teachers who tell them that it's "muy complicado" and explain the 12 beat cycle with accents etc and tell them to come back next week to continue with this mathematical study and rules...
Meanwhile, the ordinary, Joe-soap, Joe-in-the-street from Jerez, who knows nothing about the guitar, or music, or tabs or theory, just taps his foot and claps his hands to it as he gets drunk on a Friday night..
An old Delta Blues player was playing at a Student's Union in a Univeristy. Afterwards, a member of the College Journal interviewed him, asking...
"So what advice would you give to the young, up and coming, white, amateur Blues guitarist?"
"Don' mess wid no books, man"...came the reply....
Meanwhile, the ordinary, Joe-soap, Joe-in-the-street from Jerez, who knows nothing about the guitar, or music, or tabs or theory, just taps his foot and claps his hands to it as he gets drunk on a Friday night..
Yes, and that's why I say hang with dancers, not only are they pretty, but they can drink like fish.
And I have seen those guitar teachers who 'pace' students through dumb exercises when the guitar player would have done better to have learned palmas. There's more than one road to Roma.
Anders, I guess it helps to know that Bulerias is quite the chameleon, whose rhythm is polyrhythmic and not stagnant in one form.
When I think sixes, I think of songs like these (which I don't hear quite often) and the sixes are clearly marked to me:
I can agree with that Capullo song...but when I hear Moraito/Merce or whomever, I don't quite hear the same thing, only on certain falsetas or a few parts of the cante. I can tap my foot in 12 2 4 6 8 10, or sometimes in 12 3 6 9, but I do notice the song changes often...so how can we say it's in sixes? is it MAINLY in sixes? How does one tell if it changes frequently? Maybe everything I've been listening to is mainly in sixes, and I just DON'T know how 12s sound like..
Stephen, I do not undervalue palmas at all. I took some palmas classes with some aficionados from Spain and most often, do palmas in dance class. The dance instructor I work with is really sharp with being in compas that if I'm even off a ~5 bpm in tempo, she will know and tell me to fix it right away, stopping the class too so that I would get it right. I know I'm not an expert on it, but I assure you that I practice them in tandem with my guitar studies and I'm quite comfortable with holding a basic steady compas especially with other syncopation stuff that goes on in the background.
And even though I'm around the SF Bay Area, I actually rarely (if at all) work/meet up with other guitarists in the local scene so I'm really underexposed to what I should be doing. I've been playing guitar for a total of 3 years, where 1.5 of those years has been dedicated to learning basic guitar chords, and random flamenco patterns, and the recent 1.5 years is primarily practicing and learning with singers/dancers. I took a couple of lessons with Jason McGuire, Daniel Fries, Yeshe, a few random Spaniards that my singers/dancers introduced me to, etc. My repertoire consists of mainly compas variations of what my singers/dancers like with very small falsetas. For this reason, I do believe my weakest link to understanding everything is hearing enough songs that demonstrate the compas variations which is the reason to my post. Solea por bulerias, Alegrias, Tangos, Solea, Tientos...they all have an underlying pulse...a groove which you can bob your head to (even if it's off a bit with the 12 beat, the groove is still there), but Bulerias switches so much that I want to hear a pattern and figure it out from there.
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