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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Picado Questions)
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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 RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to Clint)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Clint
Hello all.
I've been a viewer of these forums for quite a while now, and I finally decided to make an account so I can communicate with you all about your perspectives towards Flamenco Guitar.
As an American 18 year old, I have only been playing 1.5 years give or take. However, I have progressed quite quickly. But I am the typical kid who is concerned if he started too late to be a "monster" someday. My whole life is consumed by Flamenco. Everyday it is Paco, Sabicas, and Gerardo for hours- absorbing the rhythms through my ears first. Then I practice other pieces I am working on throughout the day for a total of 6 - 10 hours.
Essentially my life would be empty without this art- not to sound corny. I'll learn the style of this forum soon enough.
I didn't always practice like this- I used to always practice about 30 minutes a day- just fiddling around with scales and making cheap melodies that meant nothing. It's only recent that I have become serious.
I want to become fast like most of you so desire. I want a picado as close to Paco's as possible, but I have some concerns.
Currently my scale runs, such as an E minor scale, are around 145 bpm, 16th notes. They sound clean and sharp, but not monstrous.
I have been told to be patient since my form and tone are good. However I have read some contradicting information-
Many say we are the fastest when we are around 20 years old since our bodies have not degraded yet- does that apply to a kid who started at 16? Or perhaps a kid that started at 6? Would I be faster at 25 or would that be when I slow down?
I guess the real question I have is this- how long in general does it take to reach the MAXIMUM speed you will ever reach?
I started at 16- will I be the fastest I've ever been at 20, 25, or 40?
Using your own personal experience, tell me, from what I have told you- what is the maximum BPM I can ever hope to achieve?
Sorry for overloading my first message, but I am anxious and excited to learn haha
Cheers, Clint
I saw some experts talking brain development on world science festival. A new discovery was regarding the glial cell material of the brain is a very fast independent network that communicates fast as or faster than the neural network. They used to think it was just soft protective padding. The interesting thing is this material grows slowly through childhood from back to front and finalizes in your early adulthood, 20's or so. This explains the reason child prodigies develop certain speed and other strange skills early on that are very difficult for adults to develop, or impossible in some cases. All these kids today wasting their glial development on video game play is a shame IMO.
Anyway, good news is at 19 you still have the chance to develop a natural ability for these things if you work at it now. You will probably bottom out speed wise in your mid 20's, but can still improve other aspects of artistic development as you mature. Most of the great flamencos finally peak artistically (not speed wise) in their 40's or 50's.
So now the physical limit stuff is out of the way, how to develop and what does it matter? I noticed that as far as dance accomp goes, you eventually do need to be able to execute picado and other tech at high speeds, it is simply necessary. A skilled artist can circumvent their tech limitations within reason, but still no excuse to not work. Along with speed meaning FAST, there is the equally diffcult or even harder challenge of playing things slow, or outside of normal comfort tempos. A picado you do at 145 might be tough at 160 in a dance context, but even harder at 120 as the energy level is hard to maintain outside of what one is used to practicing.
So metronome practice is essential so you are totally aware of what your personal limitations are. About increasing speed, staccato practice is essential and ties in to rhythmic control. Speed is not about 16th notes at Xbpm, it is more about the specific phrases. Some phrases are easy to do at tempo X but that doesn't mean ALL 16th note phrase will feel the same way. It's a lot of work and I personally use the Rumba improvisation format to work on things, because i am sort of practicing on the job what I should be doing at home. It is amusing that I find some phrases of say 24th notes I can manage at 125 bpm, and the same speed of notes but a different pattern is a challenge at 105bpm. So whatever you do to practice, be sure to maintain control over tempos. A secret of the pros is that you should arrange program to start with slower warm up material and build up to the songs that require serious speed. Short speed bursts are a good warm up. That is why PDL would play first buleria, and last Alegria in his guitar solo set for example. It's good to work with progress in mind at home, but perform well within your comfort zone if possible.
Ricardo
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Jun. 12 2017 23:34:35
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Njål Bendixen
Posts: 65
Joined: Aug. 25 2016
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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to rombsix)
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Hi Clint
This is all excellent advice, especially about women! About the music, if you want to be pro you can still do that at 18. It depends on what you do the next couple of years. The idea that adults can not learn something new and get really good is not true. It takes 10000 hours to get good at something, and most adults can not afford to spend 10000 hours on a hobby (work, wife, kids, mortgage etc.).
I would just say one thing, if you are into modern flamenco, great. By all means do modern stuff. Collaborate with other musicians on all kinds of fusion projects if you like. But do not forget the traditional stuff. Make a point of being able to play like they did in 1930. It will give you respect, and it will give you the ground to play modern stuff that is still informed within the genre. Being able to stay inside the genre also gives you the freedom to go outside of the genre when you want to.
Learning the dance is fantastic also. You get the rhythm into your body, and not just the head.
Lastly try to get a job accompanying dance classes. Playing for dancers is when you REALLY get the rhythm right.
Good luck in Granada,
Njål
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Date Jun. 13 2017 20:32:06
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to Escribano)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Escribano
It was always drama in Spain. 
There could be drama in Texas in the old days--not to say there is not any now.
When I was 19 I worked in a cotton gin in south Texas during the summer harvest. The first day on the job, word went around that someone had sworn to kill a young worker at the country store a few hundred yards to the south, for stealing his girlfriend.
Sure enough at lunch time the next day a car pulled up in front of the store with some young men in it. One of them got out, holding a shotgun, and called to the man in the store. He came out carrying a pistol, but the man with the shotgun shot first, killing him.
The man who worked the scale at the gin and kept the books was from Tennessee. He remarked upon the foolhardy bravado of us Texans, standing out in the open as the shooting went down, oblivious to the danger of stray bullets. What he didn't take into account was the plowed field between us and the store. If a gun muzzle had wandered in our direction, there would promptly have been a number of young Texans lying in the deep furrows.
That same summer the only man in the county with a Spanish name who owned more than a thousand acres killed his wife for cheating on him. This violated the code. Some time in the 1960s I heard a judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals say that no man had ever been convicted in Texas for killing another found in bed with his wife. But you didn't shoot your wife.
The wife was a member of a very wealthy and influential family in Mexico. Her brothers came to Texas to kill the husband. I happened to be dating the daughter of the murder victim. She called me to warn me to stay away. Her uncles were in an unpredictable mood.
This time there was a foolhardy young Texan involved: me. The county sheriff, one of my father's oldest and best friends stopped by to talk to me. He didn't try to persuade me to stay away, other than by asking, "How would she feel if you went over there and got hurt, after she had asked you not to?"
A couple of years later I was taking care of my father's businesses in San Antonio while he recovered from a heart attack. At one of the service stations I got a call from a young girl saying the brakes weren't working on her car. I asked Frank, the mechanic to take me to her house in the station's pickup. It takes two people to bleed the brakes on a car.
The girl was a very pretty young blonde, with a saucy reputation. She was left in summer school while the rest of the family went to the beach. At the house she met us at the screen door, wearing only a short transparent nightgown, no bra. She sat in the driver's seat of the car, pumping the brakes as I lay under it bleeding them. There was an access hole in the floor for the master cylinder that afforded a tantalizing view.
After the brakes were sorted out, she stood in the doorway again, and asked me if I wanted to come in. Frank, who was intensely loyal to my father, pulled me roughly to one side.
"Don't you go in that house, Mr. Richard. That's San Quentin quail!"
"She has a driver's license, Frank. She has to be fifteen," the age of consent in Texas at the time. I was 21.
"Don't you go in there Mr. Richard. Never let the little head tell the big head what to do."
I had never intended to go in. I thought Frank offered good advice.
There was a well known dirty cop in San Antonio, whose son dated the little blonde. She broke up with him. Soon afterward she was at the drive-in movie with her new boyfriend. The cop's son came up beside the car with a shotgun and killed the new boyfriend. I don't know whether he thought his father could get him off, or whether it was just the little head telling the big head what to do.
RNJ
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Date Jun. 14 2017 1:04:48
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Cervantes
Posts: 503
Joined: Jun. 14 2014
From: Encinitas, CA USA
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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to Clint)
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I will be 60 next month and only started playing flamenco 3 years ago.
You are very young to be starting so you have plenty of time to become a master, although I am sure many great spanish flamenco players started as soon as they could hold a guitar. You do not say if you have a teacher. That would be the most important thing especially since you say you are serious and practice many hours a day, but practice without direction could be a waste of time and lead to learning bad habits that will take time to reverse. Many players are obsessed with speed. Of course it is desirable and even necessary, but first you must play with accuracy and quality of sound which means playing slow and gradually working up. Picado is only one of many techniques used in flamenco, you must also be good at tremolo, arpeggio, alzapua, pulgar, rasgueado. When you say Paco, remember there are many important ones besides Pdl, Paco Pena, Paco Cepero, I probably missed some more but listen to them all.
_____________________________
Ah well, there was a fantastic passion there, in my case anyway. I discovered flamenco
very early on. It grips you in a way that you can't get away - Paco Pena
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Date Jun. 14 2017 20:43:45
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to Njål Bendixen)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Njål Bendixen
Wow, how come there are still people left in Texas.
When my grandparents retired from the ranch in 1940 and moved to the south side of San Antonio, they bought a comfortably spacious house. Years later I asked my grandfather why he had never put in air conditioning, which he could well afford.
He replied, "If we air condition the houses, the damned yankees will start moving to Texas."
He was right.
Note that I do not share all of my grandfather's political and social opinions. I have quite a few good friends from all over the USA and the world.
When my wife and I bought a house in Austin's Tarrytown neighborhood, not only everybody else on our block were born and raised in Austin, but also everybody on all the adjoining blocks. Since we were at least native Texans, we blended in after a couple of years.
My son still lives in that house. We paid $80,000 for it in 1980, after renting it for the previous five years. It is now worth about $1.2-million. There are still a few of the old families around, but most Tarrytown residents are prosperous professionals or business owners who moved to Austin as mature adults.
When I moved to Austin in 1955 to attend university, the population was 186,000. Now it is more than ten times that.
After my mother's funeral in 2008, there was a barbecue at my brother's place in the hill country northwest of San Antonio, a celebration of a 97-year life well lived. Of the 80 or so people there, no more than a small handful were not relatives.
In a lull in the conversation, I asked, "How many of you are descended from the First Austin Colony (the first legal group of colonists from the USA to settle in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas, under contract with the Mexican government in 1821)?" About half of the people raised their hands.
I'm not aware of any violent deaths in my extended family over the centuries, except in wars.
RNJ
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Date Jun. 15 2017 4:31:36
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: New to forum- 18 years old (Pica... (in reply to Clint)
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quote:
The Dance school in Granada will focus on teaching me more palos. I am not a player who is mainly concerned with speed- that's for dodo heads. But I truly believe speed can separate an average guitarist from an extraordinary one. People don't want to hear the same thing every time they go to a bar or concert. They want to hear a guitarist who is distinguishable- has his own unique sound.
Do yourself a huge favor and stop in Madrid or Jerez depending on where he is an take as many lesson form David Serva as you can. Seriously he getting older and yu need to get some of his teaching. In Madrid to the Gitano kids he's held as a master.
He lives part time in Jerez, often in the summer. You should meet him. Gitano hot shot kids in Madrid study with him from time to time- the ones that can play fast, he showed a notable guitarist a slow falseta and the guy said. "Tio, that really hard!" If you want someone to teach you about how to get your sound out of the guitar and develop a distinctive sound, David.
Straight up serious, take the opportunity. Tell him you're 18, he went to Spain when he was 18 in 1960 and played for Fernanda and Juan Talega who took him seriously. David was best friends with Marote' for many years and he was Agujetas' main guitar player for ten years. He's got more knowledge than most Spanish born guitarists on history. He's a flamenco encyclopedia on legs.
If it were me I'd go to the summer camp that Gerardo Nunez' puts on and then the rest of the time I'd be a moon orbiting David asking him everything he knows. And in Jerez you could take lessons from other good players and learn all the compas stuff.
Good luck, you been warned!
BTW my grandmother was from Fort Worth, although later in life she said Dallas because folks in CA did not know where Fort Worth is, even though it's next to Dallas. There was never any TV show called 'Foat Wurth' but there was one called Dallas....anyway, I know Texas BS when I see it, and I ain't giving you none when I recommend David. He'll set you right, he'll explain Spain to you and you'll make your way without as many money wasting clusterf**ks and you will have money draining clusterf**ks.
One last thing, get nice shoes. Spanish women check you out from the feet up. They look at your shoes. Don't wear nasty shoes, don't wear tennis shoes all the time. You can wear jeans and a tee-shirt, but make sure you have beautiful shoes and a beautiful belt. In Jerez you could wear your Tony Lamas and be a hit. Just be yourself, the Spanish appreciate that instead of trying to fit it and acting all Spanishy.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jun. 17 2017 1:59:55
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I found the perfect trick the first time I came to Spain: dating my grammar teacher. She knew from the start that I wasn't any good at Spanish but man did I learn fast! 
