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basic flamenco guitar rhythm patterns-order of complexity
Since I want to learn basic flamenco guitar rhythmic patterns I want to start with those that have the easiest structure from rhythm point of view. Can you give me some basic rhythmic patterns with the order of complexity starting with the easiest one and ending with complex one ? Is solea the easiest one ?
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
Try some easy sevillianas. Not easy to count, but easy to learn and play and sound a bit flamenco. Paco Pena has a fairly easy one in his book, which you can find online quite easily.
Posts: 2537
Joined: Jan. 30 2007
From: London (the South of it), England
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
Solea. Ricardos solea video. Just watch, listen and copy.
I don't know where you are at but It feels like you are a little all over the shop. Perhaps a real eagerness to learn but not quite sure how or what to learn.
You've been given a lot of ideas and videos.
Honestly Ricardos beginners solea video should be perfect. Have you had a look at that? Is it making sense?
If that is too much to process then like others have said, get a one to one lesson. Either online or face to face.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to Stu)
quote:
Perhaps a real eagerness to learn but not quite sure how or what to learn.
i think this one above. I think the most important for me at the moment is not to learn to play some songs. Obviously I want to play but I want to play with very good understanding of rhythm structure of the song I play. Without understanding rhythm it is possible to learn and play simple song but it isn't for me. I want to understand rhythm first. Rhythm is often ignored in music schools etc and consequences are terrible.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
quote:
i think this one above. I think the most important for me at the moment is not to learn to play some songs. Obviously I want to play but I want to play with very good understanding of rhythm structure of the song I play. Without understanding rhythm it is possible to learn and play simple song but it isn't for me. I want to understand rhythm first. Rhythm is often ignored in music schools etc and consequences are terrible.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
Please mate, book an online lesson with Ricardo.
ricardo is awsome player. i am beginner. it makes sense to take lessons if you know something. after i learn something i will ask for lessons. at the moment i know nothing. It makes sense to talk about rhythm with intermediate players but beginners in my opinion need to see rhythm on staff . this is obviously my opinion
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
quote:
ricardo is awsome player. i am beginner. it makes sense to take lessons if you know something. after i learn something i will ask for lessons. at the moment i know nothing. It makes sense to talk about rhythm with intermediate players but beginners in my opinion need to see rhythm on staff . this is obviously my opinion
Believe me, that is not true. AT ALL.
Let me explain. I have been playing guitar for over 40 years (not Flamenco) and mostly self taught, played guitar and bass in a lot of bands. I thought I knew some sh*t. When I took theory lessons from a jazz/metal friend during covid I realised I knew f*ck all. Then I started taking flamenco lessons from Ramon Ruiz 18 months ago, after about a year of doing what you are doing now, and I realised I knew less than f*ck all. He got me on the right path, and now I am making progress. Music is a lifetime's journey. Flamenco is no slouch gig. Best to open the correct door and start walking the correct learning path, before you waste a load more time time having to unlearn so much you think you 'know'. 'Knowing' is a dangerous game. And I am reminded of this almost every time I read, or post on, this foro.
Posts: 1743
Joined: Jul. 11 2003
From: The Netherlands
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
Maybe you can buy toques flamencos, the book from Paco Peña. It is in staff notation and tablature. You can find the music on youtube and slow it down if you want. Rithmic it is good expained and what you do not know you find here.
The music is doable, but still challenging to do and to hear. Maybe you can start from there.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
The 'easiest' might be the 4/4 and 2/4 palos. Then the 3/4 and 6/8 palos. Then Siguiriyas.
No flamenco palo is "in" any kind of time signature, because it is not written music. It was created by people who didn't read or write music. Not only that, but to this day no-one writes out and publishes the scores to their guitar falsetas or cante letras or whatever. You don't go to play for a dance class and get handed a score to read, dancers or singers don't hand out scores for their accompanists.
With few exceptions, all the transcriptions are written down by other people, not the artists themselves, and as such are "interpretations" of the composers intent as expressed in performance and/or captured in recording (as opposed to classical music where the composer writes the score, and it is "interpreted" by the performer reading the score).
When transcribers write down flamenco music with standard notation they must choose a time signature. That means that they are interpreting that music in that time signature, but it doesn't mean that the music is "in" that time signature, because originally it was created without a time signature in mind. Sure, it can be in 2's, or 3's, or 4's, or mixtures, but 2, 3, or 4 what? crotchets/quarter notes? quavers/eighth notes? You can write tangos, for example, in 2/4, or 4/4, but you could also write it in 2/2, and none of them would be any more "right" than the other. Note that Ricardo points out in this video that it is actually a cycle of 8 beats:
I have seen Solea in 3/4, but also in 2 bars of 3/4 and 3 bars of 2/4. And Bulerias in 3/4 and 3/8.
Not only that, I have rarely seen a flamenco guitar transcription that I completely agreed with, compared to close study of the audio and/or video recording, and while many are close a lot of the time, many are just plain wrong in places.
The Paco Peña Toques Flamencos book was transcribed by Diana Sainsbury, and there are some discrepancies between the book and the audio (not many, and mostly very minor, but there's a melody note in the farruca tremolo that is wrong). In this case the audio is the "urtext" that we should study and follow, not the book. There was also a DVD made, although it is not Paco Peña playing on it, and the player follows the book. EDIT: I have to say the book is spot on most of the time, and in some places the DVD guy is not playing exactly what is on the original Paco Peña recording when the book has transcribed it exactly.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to rafapak)
quote:
Since I want to learn basic flamenco guitar rhythmic patterns I want to start with those that have the easiest structure from rhythm point of view. Can you give me some basic rhythmic patterns with the order of complexity starting with the easiest one and ending with complex one ? Is solea the easiest one ?
All the palos are equally "easiest" when demonstrated in a basic simple way, and all of them are full of "complexity" when expressed in an advanced way. Start here:
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
No flamenco palo is "in" any kind of time signature, because it is not written music. It was created by people who didn't read or write music. Not only that, but to this day no-one writes out and publishes the scores to their guitar falsetas or cante letras or whatever. You don't go to play for a dance class and get handed a score to read, dancers or singers don't hand out scores for their accompanists.
Sorry chief, I can see what you're getting at, but I'm not buying it.
You may as well say dinosaur bones can't be measured.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
Sorry chief, I can see what you're getting at, but I'm not buying it.
You mean you don't believe what I'm saying?
which of these do you dispute:
1 flamenco is not written music 2 flamenco was created by people who didn't read or write music 3 flamenco is still, by and large, practised by people who don't read or write music (there are a (very) few exceptions). 4 no-one writes out and publishes the scores to their guitar falsetas or cante letras (there are a (very) few exceptions) 5 dancers or singers don't hand out scores for their accompanists.
?
In case I didn't already make it clear, I make a distinction between "time" and "time signatures". Time signatures are a convention of standard notation. The number on the top is common to lots of music, 2 time, 3 time, 4 time etc., but the number on the bottom refers to what type of written note. If the music is not written, and writing it down is not part of the practise and performance of that music, then the bottom number is irrelevant and the "time signature" is redundant.
People have been making music for thousands of years without standard notation or time signatures, and still do in many musical cultures: North and South Indian classical music, Persian, Arabic, Turkish/Ottoman classical music (there are other "classical" musics, but it's quite a list, if you don't know it already, and you're interested, check out "The Other Classical Musics: Fifteen Great Traditions" by Michael Church), and folk music all over the world. And flamenco!
I'm not against Western European Classical music, or standard notation, or other ways to write music down, like tablatura, but I think it's worth bearing in mind that, like counting, any form of writing down for flamenco is at best a tool, or crutch, that should be discarded as soon as possible.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
You may as well say dinosaur bones can't be measured.
Not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean that you think I am saying that flamenco music can't be written down, I never actually said that, just pointing out that:
1 it is not actually written by it's composers, creators, and performers 2 it is always an interpretation of composers', creators', and performers' work 3 it shouldn't be relied on without reference to the original audio/video it was transcribed from 4 it is often wrong
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to chester)
quote:
did those people count?
you mean were they valued, or did they use numbers?
No doubt they counted their sheep and goats and pesetas. My illiterate great-grandad could add up crib scores in his head quicker than anyone else in the pub could add them up on paper.
They probably didn't count while playing, singing or dancing though.
You think any of these guys are counting while singing, dancing or playing?
Posts: 14835
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
You may as well say dinosaur bones can't be measured.
They can’t because they don’t exist. Minerals replace the bone material a molecule at a time until you have fossils but bones are long gone.
quote:
quote:
did those people count?
Only up to three apparently ;)
I think it is ok to speculate on this. Very young Farruquito (looked 6 years old to me, in one documentary) was there counting Soleá while dancing in his grandfather’s presence, implying “that is how it was always done”, dispelling the long standing rumor that “gitanos don’t count compás”, that foreigners like myself blindly believed for decades without fact checking. But what was he counting for Soleá exactly????
In spanish he counts to 10. Then a “two count for nothing” before repeating. So why is that? “Gitanos can’t count to 12, so they stop at 10”….I actually heard that none sensical explanation a few times. This is BS. Yes we know the MATH is 12, but he is counting/feeling as a dancer is LINES OF SUNG VERSE, which are 8 syllables more or less, measure out to 10 count phrases, with remates (guitar arpegio on cadential chords that follow the singing) that fill the remaining spaces (respiro if you like, a breath). The ACCENTS within that phrasing are secondary or emergent, and are wrongly assumed to be some sort of meter, hence tons and tons of notational variants, with no consensus.
In its simplest form, the poetry is followed by the guitar with the above described phrasing such that accents emerge within that 10 count phrase plus the remate (11 12 if you will). But the actual performances of flamenco break out of that constraint with advanced versions of singing crossing the “bar lines” if you can imagine any. The dancers like to count as a way to communicate the phrasing with musicians and cantaores if necessary… much of the dance is based on these phrases but the actual sung verses are short sections of a dance. Further complexity occurs when half phrases are expressed (6 count units), most often revealed as FINAL resolving phrases (7-10, 11, 12) making a tricky game of interpretation regarding HOW to count it (or notate it). “Compañera de mi alma”, is an added phrase to the poem that constitutes one way to think of the extra 6, even though as a sung line it has 8 syllables.
So when they talk about things like “it is all about the cante” it is more than just words and melody, the phrasing is literally the structure of the palos (song forms, taken from the word for sticks as in branches on the tree of the cante family, whose root remains a mystery).
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
Not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean that you think I am saying that flamenco music can't be written down, I never actually said that, just pointing out that:
1 it is not actually written by it's composers, creators, and performers 2 it is always an interpretation of composers', creators', and performers' work 3 it shouldn't be relied on without reference to the original audio/video it was transcribed from 4 it is often wrong
All true.
So how would you explain Solea to a beginner in terms of timing, rhythm, meter?
Posts: 14835
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to silddx)
quote:
ORIGINAL: silddx
quote:
Not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean that you think I am saying that flamenco music can't be written down, I never actually said that, just pointing out that:
1 it is not actually written by it's composers, creators, and performers 2 it is always an interpretation of composers', creators', and performers' work 3 it shouldn't be relied on without reference to the original audio/video it was transcribed from 4 it is often wrong
All true.
So how would you explain Solea to a beginner in terms of timing, rhythm, meter?
I think he made it clear that is what I am doing in the video linked. At least it functions as a foundation, slow, that can be used for dance escobilla (as he also admitted somewhere recently). This rhythm guitar foundation, believe it or not, is somewhat based on cante (at least we can say the concluding melodic portion of a verse), and serves as an important substitute for the too often emphasized “Andalusian Cadence”. As the student gains control of that pattern and speeds up, other rhythmic expressions come into it, including replacing the 16th note subdivisions for 5 tuplets, etc.
To tie what I posted earlier about counting to what I teach in my video, watch the kid (Juan Manuel “Mani” Fernandez Montoya aka Farruquito) counting from 1:53 here, and imagine playing that pattern for him at that tempo. It is only a little faster, and likely how the meter was taught for generations.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
I think he made it clear that is what I am doing in the video linked. At least it functions as a foundation, slow, that can be used for dance escobilla (as he also admitted somewhere recently). This rhythm guitar foundation, believe it or not, is somewhat based on cante (at least we can say the concluding melodic portion of a verse), and serves as an important substitute for the too often emphasized “Andalusian Cadence”. As the student gains control of that pattern and speeds up, other rhythmic expressions come into it, including replacing the 8 subdivisions for 5 tuplets, etc.
To tie what I posted earlier about counting to what I teach in my video, watch the kid counting from 1:53 here, and imagine playing that pattern for him at that tempo. It is only a little faster, and likely how the meter is taught for generations.
Thank you, Ricardo. I also watched your Solea video.
RE: basic flamenco guitar rhythm pat... (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
In case I didn't already make it clear, I make a distinction between "time" and "time signatures". Time signatures are a convention of standard notation. The number on the top is common to lots of music, 2 time, 3 time, 4 time etc., but the number on the bottom refers to what type of written note. If the music is not written, and writing it down is not part of the practise and performance of that music, then the bottom number is irrelevant and the "time signature" is redundant.
Again, you make good points, however if there are twelve beats in a compas, but those beats have no time value, what have you got left?
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