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ok , few week ago the foro was about to be closed, thanks god we all help or willing to help Simon not to close it, all felt sorry about it , and so on
still, this foro in 2007 was way different , in 2007 this foro was about encouragement and help but now 2017 its into negative criticism.
most of us here are learning , some of members are professional players, the non professional players used to support each others and encourage each others, and the professional players help and give advise and may criticize ( advise ) if required.
this is how i learned here, i start playing guitar in 1996, i join this foro 10 years later 2007, Ricardo, Todd, ramzi and helped me to achieve what i achieved today by a positive advise and encouragements.
throwing negative criticism here and there, will not do any good, all members should understand the goal of this foro ; is to help , encourage and advise in a good and acceptable way.
Flamenco is a music, it should be fun, relaxing, challenging not a war zone!
I am far from Spain, never been there, i worked so hard to achieve my level now, i was lucky to join this foro and the opportunity Simon give me and give to all of us.
I was also lucky to study face to face with four great teachers:
1. yuniel rascón falcón - from cuba 2. Jesus Bermudez - from valancia 3. Manuel Carmona - from Granada 4. Jose Pirata - Granada
they have the right to criticize help me cause i asked to , not any one setting behind his PC with a cheap Chinese guitar and missing D string playing the intro of romance in d'amor with one finger and no nail.
at the end, this message to the negative criticism members: change your attitude to a positive way , advise if you are better when other member asked for it, show your advise in theoretical or practical , convince us or me about your criticize and show us ur skills in flamenco!
I wasn't around in 2007 so I can't compare but the idea that foro members aren't supporting each other just doesn't ring true to me. There's some pretty strong opinions about certain aspects of flamenco and even stronger opinions about other genres of music, but I haven't seen anything harsh about the abilities of another foro member. If I'm guilty of this kind of unwanted harsh criticism, then hopefully those concerned will tell me. The few times I've commented directly on another member's playing, I've tried to do so constructively, not to tear down, and hopefully it was perceived as such.
The issue, if there is one, is that not many members post their own playing. And I'm as guilty as any on that one. Aside from a few bits and pieces when I first joined, I haven't posted anything of my own on here. Last spring I had started to record falsetas but then I decided otherwise. I'm still kind of old-school and reluctant to put my face on the webternet. I guess I could just post audio, or put a t-shirt on my head like Ramzi and Dudnote Maybe after the whole end-of-the-year rush I'll try to find where on earth I put that microphone
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Earlier it was different .. there were regular challenges for beginners which helped no end .. challenges for advanced i never saw the point of .. I made a few cahllenges myself ... there were more help videos coming out .. Not just ...heres my great falseta... but more like..here it is .. and now here is how to play it ., what to watch for ... etc .. it takes a bit more time to make a vid like that ...but worth it i think ... I used to make a few and even write it down for people ... and . . as for setting behind my PC with a cheap Chinese guitar and missing D string playing the intro of romance in d'amor with one finger and no nail. .. 1, its all i can afford 2, I did buy a D string eventually ,, and its a big challenge playing without one BTW 3, I break nails at work , but im getting better at the romance thing .. ill put a video of that up sometime
Earlier it was different .. there were regular challenges for beginners which helped no end .. challenges for advanced i never saw the point of .. I made a few cahllenges myself ... there were more help videos coming out .. Not just ...heres my great falseta... but more like..here it is .. and now here is how to play it ., what to watch for ... etc .. it takes a bit more time to make a vid like that ...but worth it i think ... I used to make a few and even write it down for people ... and . . as for setting behind my PC with a cheap Chinese guitar and missing D string playing the intro of romance in d'amor with one finger and no nail. .. 1, its all i can afford 2, I did buy a D string eventually ,, and its a big challenge playing without one BTW 3, I break nails at work , but im getting better at the romance thing .. ill put a video of that up sometime
thank you so much El Kiko for all of the things you did in sake of flamenco, I totally agreed with you about the old days of flamenco here in the foro.
I am doing what you did in this foro, but here in my county Bahrain, making flamenco more available and accessible to every one.
create the pena flamenca de bahrien in facebook and then a big whatsapp group with over 100 guitar players, teaching for free flamenco theory, history and techniques. arranging gathering and performances. preparing concerts and masterclasses. with a big title in mind " Flamenco for every one".
the goals is to spread flamenco music , spread poro flamenco awareness and still respect the other Spanish guitar music ( as its called here fake flamenco), make the flamenco easy to every one to understand, the history, the theory, the compas, the techniques, the palmas, the cajon, the cante and will also work on the baile.
spreading the awareness of tone wood type, guitars levels, history , luthiers and let the player get better guitars ,help in selecting, buying and shipping.
I am myself, start repairing guitars long time ago, so i work on repaing cracks, adjusting strings action, frets leveling, neck relief etc.. and help low budget guitar players to adjust their classical into a more suitable guitar for flamenco music.
its my passion " flameno " all of it, music, guitar, cante , baile , gitanos, andalusia, history, future, its my life 24/7. if i dont play guitar, i watch videos, if i dont watch videos i listen to flamenco music, if I dont listen i dream about flamenco.
dont get me wrong brother about the setting behind PC with cheap chinese guitar with no D sttring, what i was saying no lower level should criticize higher level, its usless, its either ego and jealousy.
playing with a cheap Chinese guitar is not shame, lots of players with C40 yamaha can play better than me, I used to own a beginner guitar, and play with one finger , and place G string when D string cut off, but I didnt criticize any one! cause i am not able to, I dont have the base knowledge to criticize!
hope you get my point now my friend,
here a video the latest event the pena arranged and called " Noche Flamenca " mostly guitar and little cante with no baile:
So what should we do? Theoretical and technical questions seem to get answered pretty well. So just more videos of us playing? I don't really feel qualified to do any explanatory videos, except maybe for absolute beginners at flamenco, but maybe just something like a falseta regular speed then slowed down or examples of my own iffy accompaniment . That I could do.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
So what should we do? Theoretical and technical questions seem to get answered pretty well. So just more videos of us playing? I don't really feel qualified to do any explanatory videos, except maybe for absolute beginners at flamenco, but maybe just something like a falseta regular speed then slowed down or examples of my own iffy accompaniment . That I could do.
do your best amigo Piwin, and I will support and encourage you
Well Piwin do what you do ....impart info ,,if you have something you think is cool and can be transplanted into another piece......thats it ....
or ...put something up that escapes you ....something you just cant quite get ,, but its just nearly there... you will see any ammount of advice for why you cant do it ,,from , ,holding the guitar to nails to playing it on different part of the guitar , to small things that make a big difference ...them vids of stuff and the whole thing snowballs away
i recently cut all my nails back on the right hand to start again,...for the thumb ...big mistake ......
but the tremolo ...(my old enemy) and picado has a new tone and is much stronger , im liking it ,,hope to do something with it soon
this place is as much for people who cant play,,,as well as those who can .... remember ..learning is forever.... oh and your allowed to find any vids i put up and criticise the crap out of them.....im used to that ,...enjoy
for my..i've gotten some tough criticism over the years but being honest..it was necessary and pushed me on to do better. some of the best encouragement to push on came from private messages from people who i respect and are professional players.
i'm still getting back to doing flamenco, and want to learn to accompany singers and dancers. I need practice and regular interaction.
As a fairly recent poster and sharer of videos I have never received any comments that weren’t useful in some way. I first shared a video in the intro section. Then I tried to share in the general section which seemed to express a confidence that I didn’t feel. Then I tried the falseta section. This seemed to be a possible place to share videos of people who would like to rather than videos of those who can. Obviously Juan lives there, and he so obviously can, be he seems kind enough to share the space. But i’m not sure it is the right place. It still seems overly confident. Maybe there could be a section entitled ‘for those who would like to rather those who can’, for those expressly asking for criticism and comments?
I wasn't around in 2007 so I can't compare but the idea that foro members aren't supporting each other just doesn't ring true to me.
Nor to me, Piwin. I was going to hold off on commenting in this thread, but the Original Poster's criticism of perceived criticism by members of the Foro is perplexing to me. I have not noted such criticism in my years as a member of the Foro. Yes, there has been constructive criticism, but that should be welcomed and encouraged. Constructive criticcism leads to advancement.
The Original Poster writes that he has studied under four great teachers and states, "they have the right to criticize help me cause i asked to , not any one setting behind his PC with a cheap Chinese guitar and missing D string playing the intro of romance in d'amor with one finger and no nail." I don't know to whom he was referring, but to call a member of the Foro "someone sitting behind his PC with a cheap Chinese guitar missing a D string playing the intro of Romance d'Amor with one finger and no nail." seems to me as unwarranted a criticism as the perceived criticism to which he so stridently objects.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
this foro in 2007 was way different , in 2007 this foro was about encouragement and help but now 2017 its into negative criticism.
I don't think it has gotten worse. There are less posts/posters these days, so that has certainly changed. Sometimes there were some really harsh/unconstructive comments back then.... I remember one guy posted a vid of him playing for a dance class, or the dance class end of term performance and someone (a good player himself) replied "that's crap" to it . In fact if anything I would say that criticism generally tends to be a bit gentler nowadays.
Sharing on the internet by it's very nature means you now open yourself to criticism from all sorts and levels. No name wannabe's to top pros...and EVERYBODY has an opinion of course. My all time favorite youtube comment on one of my videos was in Spanish and the guy said, after comparing all my vids over the years, "This guy gets fatter and fatter in each new video. Doesn't he know that going to the gym won't hurt your hands??"
True. But on the contrary of a - non pathologic - opinion, a criticism might not be always founded. I've got no example on criticisms I might have received - although some of them might have been quite - too much ? - obscurous to me, but for sure I've already heard of criticisms that were based on pure hate/lie, and that had Nothing to do with an opinion, which has I think to be based on at least a part of Truth.
PS : Sorry for all those "might" : I might lack some fluency in English
What I see in general is less mutual support than in the beginning and a little more confrontation. I for one miss the straight comments of Anders as he used to speak clear, harshly but often he shared many good advices with a good dose of generosity.. This place is still plenty of very good fellows though.
and they are all based on what? Knowledge, experience, ignorance, assumption etc. etc.
It can be tricky if someone learns in a certain way, things they "know", maybe for years, and then they get challenged, and maybe ridiculed, by someone, or sometimes a bunch of people, with different ideas etc.
example: I studied some years ago for a while with a very fine pro player and teacher, who had certain ideas about certain technique that he explained, justified, showed me and I started working with. Then it came up on the forum, where the opposite idea was put forward. I tried to be careful and diplomatic about discussing it, partly because I didn't want to drag the name of someone I respected into an argument here and have people rubbish him. But I also wanted to have it explained from the other point of view so I was tentative, but asked a few questions about it. So who was "right"?
I have taken all the ideas from everyone on board and played around with them and found my own way through it (and it's still work in progress). Sometimes I think that process of investigation and experimentation that is more important and valuable than having the "right" answer or information (but "best available" information is always good!).
personally i'm quite self conscious about my skills to show them to the public, because I think that I need to practice a lot more for my skills to become somewhat "presentable". yes I'm a hard core self critic... but on the other hand exposing himself to the public means to get criticism of some kind, which can help to improve one's own skills...it's a dilemma and I don't know how to get out of it.
back in the days, this foro was much more harsh (playing crtisism) than what I read (sometimes) nowadays. I remember countless dramatic events here and some ppl roasting eachother pretty hardcore :D
My all time favorite youtube comment on one of my videos was in Spanish and the guy said, after comparing all my vids over the years, "This guy gets fatter and fatter in each new video. Doesn't he know that going to the gym won't hurt your hands??"
@Fitz63 That's a good point. There's been a few times where I noticed something on somebody's video and started writing about it, to point out what could be improved, then refrained from posting it because I wasn't sure whether the poster wanted that kind of pointed feedback or not.
@BarkellWH I would add that nothing I've seen here comes even remotely close to some of the harsh criticism I've encountered in certain real-life flamenco environments. It's usually not mean-spirited but they sure don't waste time making you feel comfortable!
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
@Fitz63 That's a good point. There's been a few times where I noticed something on somebody's video and started writing about it, to point out what could be improved, then refrained from posting it because I wasn't sure whether the poster wanted that kind of pointed feedback or not.
@BarkellWH I would add that nothing I've seen here comes even remotely close to some of the harsh criticism I've encountered in certain real-life flamenco environments. It's usually not mean-spirited but they sure don't waste time making you feel comfortable!
Good point that real world flamenco is way more harsh in terms of critic and hazing situations. I posted a list of real world criticism I have endured in this thread:
@BarkellWH I would add that nothing I've seen here comes even remotely close to some of the harsh criticism I've encountered in certain real-life flamenco environments. It's usually not mean-spirited but they sure don't waste time making you feel comfortable!
I've certainly had a guitar yanked from my hands before.
Good point that real world flamenco is way more harsh in terms of critic and hazing situations. I posted a list of real world criticism I have endured in this thread:
I got some hazing from guitar makers when I started, not like the teasing I dish out. Some of it was pretty brutal, most it had to do with people putting me down and being dismissive that I could even make a guitar. Like telling a guitar student, you'll never even make a chord shape.
On the other hand there are a lot of nice people- now I'm not opposed to some hazing, if it amounts to countering people being coddled to the point they feel entitled to build guitars or perform flamenco badly.
I was kind of butt hurt about ten years ago because I could not be included in a show with people beyond my ability level. A friend of mine who is a dancer just leaned over and carefully said to me: "You know it's called show business for a reason." My case of 'butthurtness' was cleared up a few days and never returned.
I’m afraid it’s the nature that of the beast . If you post on line ...foro or YouTube , wherever You can expect everything ... if not , the don’t post ., or grow thick skin..
, So I’m going to post a video , but I only want nice comments, even if they’re untrue And nothing about me getting fat , or bald in my case .. and your not allowed to comment on my bad tremolo , I already know , No comments about my crap guitar either Or strings , hand position , compas or musical ability Apart from that .. have at me. . . . You see what I mean ., you have to decipher if the comentee (?) has a valid useful point Or not And intentions can get lost in translation. I put stuff up before ... it gets what it gets Including ....”that’s great” Which is as useful as “ that’s crap “ It is what it is .... .
My all time favorite youtube comment on one of my videos was in Spanish and the guy said, after comparing all my vids over the years, "This guy gets fatter and fatter in each new video. Doesn't he know that going to the gym won't hurt your hands??"
back in the days, this foro was much more harsh (playing crtisism) than what I read (sometimes) nowadays. I remember countless dramatic events here and some ppl roasting eachother pretty hardcore :D
No doubt I will get criticism that I looked in the wrong place, on the wrong site, picked the wrong part of the word, wrong context, wrong something.....
Hazing (US English), initiation ceremonies (British English), bastardisation (Australian English) or ragging (South Asia) refers to the practice of rituals, challenges, and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group including a new fraternity, sorority, team, or club.
Hazing is seen in many different types of social groups, including gangs, sports teams, schools, military units, and fraternities and sororities. The initiation rites can range from relatively benign pranks, to protracted patterns of behavior that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct. Hazing is often prohibited by law or prohibited by institutions such as colleges and universities because it may include either physical or psychological abuse. It may also include nudity or sexual assault.
Posts: 14804
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: criticism in this foro (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
hazing
I'm unfamiliar with this term, so I looked it up:
No doubt I will get criticism that I looked in the wrong place, on the wrong site, picked the wrong part of the word, wrong context, wrong something.....
Hazing (US English), initiation ceremonies (British English), bastardisation (Australian English) or ragging (South Asia) refers to the practice of rituals, challenges, and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group including a new fraternity, sorority, team, or club.
Hazing is seen in many different types of social groups, including gangs, sports teams, schools, military units, and fraternities and sororities. The initiation rites can range from relatively benign pranks, to protracted patterns of behavior that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct. Hazing is often prohibited by law or prohibited by institutions such as colleges and universities because it may include either physical or psychological abuse. It may also include nudity or sexual assault.
First "fakemenco" and now this?
The hazing I refer to that goes on in flamenco might not be as severe as college frat, but it can be. I have heard stories about sex harassment and violence (broken glass in a dance shoe!!!), but mostly what I refer to is verbal type hazing involving unnecessarily harsh criticism that pretty much all the top artists had to endure to really feel involved in the art form at a deep level. It could be avoided of course, but the idea is not so much the typical "I went through this **** so now you must too newbie".....it's more to build the artistic character and serious attitude about what the art means... especially to the Gitanos. I admit for example that I have avoided certain problems because I simply LOOK spanish....compared to what I have seen a lot of foreigners go through.
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. In fact if anything I would say that criticism generally tends to be a bit gentler nowadays. 
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