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.
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Ricardo)
Victor Wooten might be too advanced for many. I also recommend rhythm dog, great examples tangos (2:03) and bulerias (4:05, and if it’s hard try 4:30).
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Stu)
To me, this video is good showing son and rumba clave in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The subdivision of beats and hemiola. A good exercise for understanding the rhythm in general.
I wish they showed it in 6/8 time as well. For example 3-2 Rumba.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
ORIGINAL: devilhand
To me, this video is good showing son and rumba clave in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The subdivision of beats and hemiola. A good exercise for understanding the rhythm in general.
I wish they showed it in 6/8 time as well. For example 3-2 Rumba.
Latin clave has some similarities to Flamenco compas, but overall quite different. Anyway, when I see those patterns, I feel the meter could be interpreted better. For example son and rumba are both 16th note patterns in 4/4, not two bars of eighth notes. And the 6/8 pattern should be a 12/8 pattern, or a single bar not two. Unless of course, the clave pattern Is permitted to break, skip, repeat or add from the bar line, which I don’t believe it is.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
To me, this video is good showing son and rumba clave in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The subdivision of beats and hemiola. A good exercise for understanding the rhythm in general.
where is the hemiola?
quote:
I wish they showed it in 6/8 time as well. For example 3-2 Rumba.
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
To me, this video is good showing son and rumba clave in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The subdivision of beats and hemiola. A good exercise for understanding the rhythm in general.
where is the hemiola?
quote:
I wish they showed it in 6/8 time as well. For example 3-2 Rumba.
what's this?
These are Afro Cuban claves, nothing to do with spain or Flamenco really.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
where is the hemiola?
The first bar of the 3-2 Son clave at 0:00-0:16. You can see quarter note triplets equivalent to 2 quarter notes. 2 quarter notes= 4 eight notes = 8 16th notes. Each bar in this example is a 16th note pattern. I heard in Latin American music the pattern of the 1st bar of 3-2 Son clave is called tresillo. This video shows pop music industry used this rhythmic pattern extensively over the last decade. This guy calls it the Despacito rhythm. Wtf?
quote:
And the 6/8 pattern should be a 12/8 pattern, or a single bar not two. Unless of course, the clave pattern Is permitted to break, skip, repeat or add from the bar line, which I don’t believe it is.
As a flamenco guitarist you want to see 2 bars in 6/8 time as a single bar in 12/8 time. From what I know clave is a 2 bar phrase. Either 3-2 or 2-3. So it can't be a single bar.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
as a flamenco guitarist I associate hemiola with guajira rhythm - i'm not hearing that. Try listening to some flamenco guajira and compare....
"tresillo" is spanish for triplet, and is often used to refer to triplet rasgeo.
You're confused by the different sound of 8th note and quarter note triplets. Guajira has 8th note triplets which is faster and thus the feel of the rhythm is a bit different. It sounds like waltz rhythm. Two 8th note triplets (= 2 quarter notes) in Guajira are equavalent to one quarter note triplet. A quarter note triplet gives you 2 against 3 feel which is hemiola. So it looks like triplets in Western music feel different than triplets in Sub-Saharan African or Latin American music.
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
ORIGINAL: devilhand As a flamenco guitarist you want to see 2 bars in 6/8 time as a single bar in 12/8 time. From what I know clave is a 2 bar phrase. Either 3-2 or 2-3. So it can't be a single bar.
Could you let us know what the clave is here?
Julito Collazo has fun with contratiempos on chequere, batá and conga. Then Mongo brings in the band, stomping out the clave, in case Julito had concealed it successfully.
I can just picture Mongo with his brilliant grin, nodding as though to say, "Aquí está, payasos."
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
ORIGINAL: devilhand
quote:
where is the hemiola?
The first bar of the 3-2 Son clave at 0:00-0:16. You can see quarter note triplets equivalent to 2 quarter notes. 2 quarter notes= 4 eight notes = 8 16th notes. Each bar in this example is a 16th note pattern. I heard in Latin American music the pattern of the 1st bar of 3-2 Son clave is called tresillo. This video shows pop music industry used this rhythmic pattern extensively over the last decade. This guy calls it the Despacito rhythm. Wtf?
quote:
And the 6/8 pattern should be a 12/8 pattern, or a single bar not two. Unless of course, the clave pattern Is permitted to break, skip, repeat or add from the bar line, which I don’t believe it is.
As a flamenco guitarist you want to see 2 bars in 6/8 time as a single bar in 12/8 time. From what I know clave is a 2 bar phrase. Either 3-2 or 2-3. So it can't be a single bar.
Good lord you are confused man.. not sure if I should bother tackling this one cuz I’m not all cheery mood like normal.
Simply put...this video is not the son nor the rumba clave. There are no triplets going on, and the meter is ok, 2/4 is better, but the rhythm is written incorrectly like a student mistake style. “Tresillos” I can assume was an invented term for the basic ragaeton type beat accent (3 accents in a bar) exemplified YES by Despacito and the other examples. Again that is NOT the damn clave you first took us off topic with (son clave, both versions).
What I meant by a single bar, you probably won’t grasp this, but in a hippie drum circle where the lame white folks are trying to do a real Cuban clave like “son” or “rumba”, a person will keep the clave accent pattern forever with wood sticks called “the clave” (🙄), and the hippies try to improvise over that. Since the clave pattern never breaks, it’s clear there should not be a bar line jammed up in the middle of what those sticks play. It’s dumb. The clave is a single bar of music, and it repeats until the end. And the way it ends is when everybody plays the clave Rhythm together ... usually twice.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
You're confused by the different sound of 8th note and quarter note triplets. Guajira has 8th note triplets which is faster and thus the feel of the rhythm is a bit different. It sounds like waltz rhythm. Two 8th note triplets (= 2 quarter notes) in Guajira are equavalent to one quarter note triplet. A quarter note triplet gives you 2 against 3 feel which is hemiola. So it looks like triplets in Western music feel different than triplets in Sub-Saharan African or Latin American music.
Confused? I am totally baffled! I have no idea what you are talking about, but then I suspect neither have you....
You seem to regurgitate random stuff you find on the internet without really understanding it or it's (ir)relevance to flamenco.
Guajíra doesn't have "8th note triplets" it has 2 short and 3 long beats, often transcribed as alternating bars of 6/8 and 3/4. It doesn't sound "like waltz rhythm" (even the modern compositions based on Guajíra that dispense with the alternating hemiola don't sound "like waltz rhythm").
This is the "hemiola" I know from playing Guajíra. Apparently (I looked it up) this can be called "horizontal hemiola", and there are other uses of the word "hemiola" with different meanings - one of them is "vertical hemiola" which is a name for 3 over 2 poly-rhythm (where both are happening at the same time instead of alternating). But neither of them are happening in the clave video you posted....
Turns out "Tresillo" has different meaning in general Spanish and flamenco music to that used in cuban music (i checked) so it's not the case that "triplets in Western music feel different than triplets in Sub-Saharan African or Latin American music" - what is happening is that the same name is used in different musics for different things!
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
quote:
Could you let us know what the clave is here?
It sounds like Mambo. Clave is unclear to me.
quote:
Simply put...this video is not the son nor the rumba clave. There are no triplets going on, and the meter is ok, 2/4 is better, but the rhythm is written incorrectly like a student mistake style. “Tresillos” I can assume was an invented term for the basic ragaeton type beat accent (3 accents in a bar) exemplified YES by Despacito and the other examples. Again that is NOT the damn clave you first took us off topic with (son clave, both versions).
Yes, the correct time signature must be 2/4. 2 quarter notes (= 8 16th notes) in each bar. The video shows Son and Rumba clave. At 0:00-0:16, the first bar of the 3-2 Son clave is tresillo generating 3 beats (a quarter note triplet) from 8 beats (8 16th notes). Tresillo in this case is a quarter note triplet.
quote:
What I meant by a single bar, you probably won’t grasp this, but in a hippie drum circle where the lame white folks are trying to do a real Cuban clave like “son” or “rumba”, a person will keep the clave accent pattern forever with wood sticks called “the clave” (🙄), and the hippies try to improvise over that. Since the clave pattern never breaks, it’s clear there should not be a bar line jammed up in the middle of what those sticks play. It’s dumb. The clave is a single bar of music, and it repeats until the end. And the way it ends is when everybody plays the clave Rhythm together ... usually twice.
In the end I think whether it's 2 bars or a single bar is less important.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to mark indigo)
Yes, it's vertical hemiola. I mentioned above it's about understanding subdivision of beats and hemiola. It was not about the sound of 2 beats and 3 beats happening at the same time. More about the concept behind it. One has to feel 2 beats while counting 3 beats. If you count them all together you can't feel the hemiola. One way is you can alter the rhythm in such a way that it sounds like 2 and 3 beats are played at the same time. As for Guajira, I feel the first 6 beats as two 8th note triplets. Sounds different than tresillo (a quarter note triplet) though.
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
Son clave is tresillo generating 3 beats (a quarter note triplet) from 8 beats (8 16th notes).
Absolutely not. It’s 16th or 8th notes STRAIGHT time or feel, but accents in sometimes in 3 groups (synchopated) and others in 2 or normal 4 groups (not synchopated). Absolutely ZERO quarter note triplets going on anywhere
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
In the end I think whether it's 2 bars or a single bar is less important.
Anybody who writes it as 2 bars, any of the claves IMO, doesn’t understand meter. Punto. They understand approximate math of meter and at a rudimentary level, thus cannot discern why it is nonsensical to split the clave in two parts. Conversely writing the tresillos pattern TWICE in one bar is also wrong, but not as bad as the other thing.
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo Absolutely not. It’s 16th or 8th notes STRAIGHT time or feel, but accents in sometimes in 3 groups (synchopated) and others in 2 or normal 4 groups (not synchopated). Absolutely ZERO quarter note triplets going on anywhere
At 1:00 Eddie Palmieri gets up from the piano and demonstrates the clave to the audience, encouraging them to participate by "palmas"--as flamencos might say. Around 1:30 and from about 2:04 tp 2:10 you can see clearly when Palmieri's hands come together. It works the way Ricardo describes. Note how the congas, bongó and timbales fit into the clave. Taken as a group the drums put out a steady stream of 16ths, each player with his own syncopation. If one player rests for a 16th, another's pattern usually fills it in. Palmieri's claps always fall on a 16th defined by the drummers collectively.
Palmieri and his band know as much about the clave as anyone, and more than most.
Here it is slower in a son. The first few bars show clearly how it fits together.
I played in a mambo band for several months as a kid trumpeter. Classical training let me play high notes without kiliing myself. I thought I knew the clave when I auditioned, but the leader made me work with the conguero for at least a month before he would let me solo.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Conversely writing the tresillos pattern TWICE in one bar is also wrong, but not as bad as the other thing.
Why not? That's how one gets 4/4 time.
quote:
Absolutely not. It’s 16th or 8th notes STRAIGHT time or feel, but accents in sometimes in 3 groups (synchopated) and others in 2 or normal 4 groups (not synchopated). Absolutely ZERO quarter note triplets going on anywhere
No need to involve accents here. The following picture shows the simple rule of subdivision of 2 straight notes. It also works for 2 quarter notes which are equivalent to 8 16th notes. One quarter note = 4 16th notes.
Another explanation is generating 3 notes from 8 notes argumentation I mentioned above taken from Wikipedia. This shows again what is happening to tresillo part (1st bar) of the 3-2 Son clave. It's definitely a quarter note triplet.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo Absolutely not. It’s 16th or 8th notes STRAIGHT time or feel, but accents in sometimes in 3 groups (synchopated) and others in 2 or normal 4 groups (not synchopated). Absolutely ZERO quarter note triplets going on anywhere
At 1:00 Eddie Palmieri gets up from the piano and demonstrates the clave to the audience, encouraging them to participate by "palmas"--as flamencos might say. Around 1:30 and from about 2:04 tp 2:10 you can see clearly when Palmieri's hands come together. It works the way Ricardo describes. Note how the congas, bongó and timbales fit into the clave. Taken as a group the drums put out a steady stream of 16ths, each player with his own syncopation. If one player rests for a 16th, another's pattern usually fills it in. Palmieri's claps always fall on a 16th defined by the drummers collectively.
Palmieri and his band know as much about the clave as anyone, and more than most.
Here it is slower in a son. The first few bars show clearly how it fits together.
RNJ
Thanks for the video. The audience is clapping the 3-2 Son clave very nicely. You must have watched the documentary Buena Vista Social Club nominated for an Academy Award for the best documentary. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't watched it yet.
quote:
I played in a mambo band for several months as a kid trumpeter. Classical training let me play high notes without kiliing myself. I thought I knew the clave when I auditioned, but the leader made me work with the conguero for at least a month before he would let me solo.
You know then the clave rhythm better than anyone here. I'm pretty sure the tresillo part is a quarter note triplet fitting nicely into a 2 quarter note bar. Mr. Marlow doesn't want to accept it.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
edit: screw it, life's too short
_____________________________
"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."
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
Why not? That's how one gets 4/4 time
Because, three tresillos patterns are allowed (in almost all music styles) and you don’t restructure the meter to reflect a single instance. It simply means 4/4 was incorrect all along and it should be 2/4 always. Please note your wiki tresillo, notated correctly, is in 2/4 as well. The additive notation (dotted 8, dotted 8, normal 8th) IS NOT correct notation because the absolutely important and necessary feeling of beat 2 is obscured and thus the proper feeling is NOT being expressed on paper. Only the first notation is correct, and the better expression would be to tie the 16th note to Beat 2, expressed as an 8th note.
Finally quarter note triplets or 3:2, that’s three quarters in the space of 4 8th notes, does NOT align with the tresillo pattern. Only the down beat aligns, the other two notes will clash. Most importantly, again , beat two is lost with quarter note triplets, but is instead expressed by the leading 16th. Keep in mind with tresillos the three notes are not equal time value lengths, the last being short, but with quarter note triplets, EACH note is equal time value. That subtle difference is exploited by Paco and Mclaughlin during Spain duets, so they can morph from 2/4 into 3/4 for mclaughlins solo section. If you interpret tresillos like that, you would be changing meter, so I’m quite certain you don’t mean what you have been saying.
4:33, then the interlude in 2/4, then right away 3/4 again and stay there till end of his solo
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Because, three tresillos patterns are allowed (in almost all music styles)
I'm not sure what you mean there.
quote:
Only the first notation is correct, and the better expression would be to tie the 16th note to Beat 2, expressed as an 8th note.
I think it should remain as it is. The 8th note rest after the 16th note gives tresillo more character.
quote:
Finally quarter note triplets or 3:2, that’s three quarters in the space of 4 8th notes, does NOT align with the tresillo pattern. Only the down beat aligns, the other two notes will clash. Most importantly, again , beat two is lost with quarter note triplets, but is instead expressed by the leading 16th. Keep in mind with tresillos the three notes are not equal time value lengths, the last being short, but with quarter note triplets, EACH note is equal time value. That subtle difference is exploited by Paco and Mclaughlin during Spain duets, so they can morph from 2/4 into 3/4 for mclaughlins solo section. If you interpret tresillos like that, you would be changing meter, so I’m quite certain you don’t mean what you have been saying.
Ok Ok I accept it. I've been a bit stubborn and persisted with my opinion instead of calculating the difference and proving myself wrong. I have to admit the tresillo feels a bit different than a quarter note triplet. Tresillo sounds a bit edgy in comparison to a quarter note triplet, which sounds more round. The difference is
As you wrote the downbeats align. Both start from zero. Remaining 2 off beats will clash. For the 1st off beat there's almost no difference (33 vs 37.5). The 2nd off-beat of tresillo falls a bit late which makes tresillo sound a bit edgy (66 vs 75). Depending on the tempo of the piece one can measure how many milliseconds the difference is. I think these tiny details are barely recognizable to the listener even at the slower tempo. Even the player who can feel the difference, I doubt he/she can transform this difference into his/her playing. If it gets fast both will sound the same anyway.
As for the video, tresillo is played exactly in which part? At 4:33-4:38 McLaughlin plays normal 8th note triplets.
RE: Beginner - help with palmas + fe... (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
I think these tiny details are barely recognizable to the listener
You mean barely recognisable to YOU. And they are not "tiny details". Mein Gott. Your ears are not even good enough to tell evenly from unevenly divided beats, yet you have to be dragged kicking and screaming to learn(*) due to your stubbornness and arrogance. With this attitude (and ears) you will have a very hard time learning flamenco.
(*) Witness you spending two paragraphs laughably minimizing what you just grudgingly "accepted" was correct.
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