Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
I notice that when I am doing rasgueados (ami i -up) I'm not bending my thumb. Every flamenco player I have seen bends the thumb. Am i breaking the rulebook? Just curious about this.
To my knowledge, bending the thumb usually occurs naturally when using flicking rasgueados because you have to tuck the fingers into the thumb and launch them from the thumb. You do non-flicking rasgueados, and hence you don't need to flick from the thumb (i.e. you don't need to tuck the fingers into the thumb) and hence you power your rasgueados from your fingers themselves mainly, rather than from creating resistance by firing out of the thumb. That is why your thumb remains straight.
o my knowledge, bending the thumb usually occurs naturally when using flicking rasgueados because you have to tuck the fingers into the thumb and launch them from the thumb. You do non-flicking rasgueados, and hence you don't need to flick from the thumb (i.e. you don't need to tuck the fingers into the thumb) and hence you power your rasgueados from your fingers themselves mainly, rather than from creating resistance by firing out of the thumb. That is why your thumb remains straight.
I can be doing either flicking or nonflicking rasgueados and my thumb is still straight. I still manage to do ok with it. ( I just noticed sometimes it does bend.) I guess it should not be an issue anyway since it's not affecting the rasgueados in any manner. Thanks for the input though Ramzi.
I was told by Pedro Cortes that you should bend your thumb so that your hand is positioned to play your rasgueo across all the strings and not just the bottom four (which is the tendency if you are not bending your thumb).
That's nice to hear.. As long as you are achieving the results then I it doesn't really matter I suppose. I do notice that when I'm doing tresillos (AI then I up or MI, I up) the thumb bends a bit. WIth the AMI-I up 4 finger rasgueado, it stays straight most of the time.
@mjhoerr: Thanks for that... It does make sense what Pedro is suggesting and I'm aware of it but oh well...
I needed this thread to find out that my thumb goes along with what the i finger is doing.. if the i finger is stretched out (going to high E), then the thumb is also stretched and the whole hand goes a bit lower. When it is coming up from high E, the whole hand comes up a bit while the thumb arches and the thumb middle joint touches the golpeador.
Its such a "mechanized" movement and looks so efficient that now that Iam aware of it I might ruin it
There are only 2 rules: produce a good sound/rhythm and don't hurt your fingers in the process. Paco Serrano places his fingers left to his thump and never received complains about it :-).
Printable Version
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread