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Posts: 2537
Joined: Jan. 30 2007
From: London (the South of it), England
How things sound.
Something that's always interested me when playing and learning flamenco music is the way my brain is trained from listening to traditional pop/rock western music and sometimes tries to fight with various parts of flamenco.
one example thats always stood out is this passage from Vicente Amigos monster Alegrias, Maestro Sanlucar.
Something about the way these notes descend.
My brain wants it to be (or wants to hear/make sense of it like this second pic. (im not saying i WANT it to be like that. its much more interesting as triplets)
Obviously disregarding the bar length and the space it takes as I know it wouldnt work but thats not what im getting at.
Does anyone else know what I'm getting at?
Is this to do with my british western musical background? or would the human ear always hear/feel it like this? I mean maybe thats why its compsed this way? because the last note of the triplet is where the step down is happening. and your brain wants that to be on the beat?
Anyway Im finally being able to 'hear it' the way its actually happening.
jeez im bad at explaining stuff.
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Something that's always interested me when playing and learning flamenco music is the way my brain is trained from listening to traditional pop/rock western music and sometimes tries to fight with various parts of flamenco.
one example thats always stood out is this passage from Vicente Amigos monster Alegrias, Maestro Sanlucar.
Something about the way these notes descend.
My brain wants it to be (or wants to hear/make sense of it like this second pic. (im not saying i WANT it to be like that. its much more interesting as triplets)
Obviously disregarding the bar length and the space it takes as I know it wouldnt work but thats not what im getting at.
Does anyone else know what I'm getting at?
Is this to do with my british western musical background? or would the human ear always hear/feel it like this? I mean maybe thats why its compsed this way? because the last note of the triplet is where the step down is happening. and your brain wants that to be on the beat?
Anyway Im finally being able to 'hear it' the way its actually happening.
jeez im bad at explaining stuff.
Yes, it is so bizarre to me why people that have rock or jazz skill completely lose the basic inherent concept of subdivision when they start learning flamenco, as if they are babies and this silly 12 count is some “exotic” situation. It is NOT. Rock/western music is no different at all, in this regard. Watch this simple guitar solo by chris Stapleton….I mean if you don’t “get it” from this simple thing that Vicente is doing the same thing, I don’t know what to say.
Especially from 4:40-5 min, but just check the whole solo.
By the way, this concept of subdivision and the fact it “sounds” different than it is supposed to “feel” is the perfect answer to the person that implied 6/8 as a METER did not have to be two groups of 3, that it could be 3 groups of 2 or 4+2, etc. Well note sequences that project like that are not “changing the meter” they are simply syncopated. If you insist that changing the meter is the same, you miss the entire point of rhythm feeling that, on paper, needs to expressed properly. Your example would be actually 9/8 with different beaming of notes, but again, it is wrong to rebeam the notes or the feel changes.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
Yes, it is so bizarre to me why people that have rock or jazz skill completely lose the basic inherent concept of subdivision when they start learning flamenco, as if they are babies and this silly 12 count is some “exotic” situation. It is NOT. Rock/western music is no different at all, in this regard.
Jeez, feel like I just got told off for something I haven't done. 😂
quote:
I mean if you don’t “get it” from this simple thing that Vicente is doing the same thing, I don’t know what to say
I never had a rock or jazz skill. It's ok. no pressure to say anything, you don't need to save me from myself. I was more hoping for some chat about why our brains work this way....but maybe it's just mine.
I *think* I know what you’re saying. Is it because your brain wants to follow the A string as always leading a simple descending pattern, as opposed to the triplets, which alternate between the A and D strings to lead? Like low/high low/high low/high low/high low/high versus low/high/low high/low/high low/high/low high, where the ‘low’ notes are on the A string and the ‘high’ on the D? I don’t know if I’m explaining very well either. Does the difficulty arise when you’re playing it, or do you get the weird sense of grouping when you hear it?
I’ve probably confused matters even more I’ll just go to my room on my own, no need to send me…
Yes, your ear can hear two lines of music alternating, your right hand is going 5-4-5-4-5-4… and your left hand is going move-stop-move-stop… so you’ve got 1-2-1-2-1-2 in all three, in sync with each other. So it has a sort of push-pull against the underlying pulse, and I need to play the downbeats with my foot to keep that pulse real. But it’s supposed to do that and as Richard says this isn’t unique to flamenco by any means.
as Richard says this isn’t unique to flamenco by any means.
Yeah I'm not really sure why I made out that I thought it was. Obviously it's nothing ground breaking or that 'out there'.
I think as flamenco is really the only type of guitar I've actually seriously 'studied' I've probably just never noticed stuff like this in music I played when younger.
I think my attempt of rationalisation of the phenomenom was a bit sloppy.
my brain is trained from listening to traditional pop/rock western music and sometimes tries to fight with various parts of flamenco.
Training from listening, meaning, you should be hearing the same in the most dumbed down popular music today. In which case you are not alone, and it odd to me that people like you don’t hear that flamenco is not doing anything radically different in this regard. I will reiterate, that note groupings imply, by sequence, an inherent rhythm which, if DIFFERENT than the rhythmic grouping or beaming of notes based on meter, is called syncopation. And that is all you are complaining about….why syncopation confuses the brain. That is the point of it in ALL genres.
And that is all you are complaining about….why syncopation confuses the brain. That is the point of it in ALL genres.
I think, in this case, it might be more a physical thing related to learning that particular passage rather than a lack of understanding the concept of syncopation in the broader sense. Taken out of context the run physically presents itself in the manner Brendan describes so Stu’s brain wants to follow the path of least resistance and ‘feel’ it in groups of two. It balks a bit at the groupings of three because it runs contrary to what his hands are telling him.
When played in context, I bet that doesn’t happen and the flow of the music takes precedence. I mean, Stu probably plays syncopated passages all the time without even thinking about it. But when he slows this one down and tries to learn it out of context it becomes difficult (like, taken alone, it’s a breeze to play it in groups of two, then change the concept to groups of three and the fingers trip over each other because it doesn’t ‘feel’ natural). Or, at least, that’s what I *think* is going on. I suspect it’s likely more due to isolating and over-focussing during learning than anything else.
I really shouldn’t be chiming in here, lol, it’s just that it’s kind of fun discussing the mechanisms of Stu’s brain. Like…Here is Stu’s brain on syncopation. Now here it is when he’s…
Yeah please forget my comparison between flamenco and modern music. It's was lazy and not really thought out and doesn't really make sense on reflection.
As knowledgeable and generous as you are Ricardo you're coming off a bit pissed off on this matter. 😂 There's really no need. Perhaps you're just exasperated with endless questions you find a bit silly. I probably asked the question really badly.
I'm not 'complaining' about anything. I'm just trying to make sense of what's happening in my brain with this kind of thing and thought a thread about something a bit more metaphysical might be more interesting that more international guitar sales enquiries. 😂
I think Rob and Brendan are spot on with how they have elaborated on my behalf. 😂 I feel understood.thanks
Interesting - yes the emphasis changes between similar patterns. You have three triplet groupings, and the middle one is inverted so you're experiencing cognitive dissonance as you expect a simple pattern with the same emphasis. I bet if all three were in one direction you'd have no desire for it to be in quavers.
That said, how the * Percy sings along with this is still beyond me -
As knowledgeable and generous as you are Ricardo you're coming off a bit pissed off on this matter. 😂
Again, apologies, it is just that it is so common an occurrence that the student constructs an invisible wall with this issue, where in other contexts they can navigate the situation easily, then suddenly the word “flamenco guitar” adds this unneeded layer of complexity. And emphasis on “Compás” and that it is somehow universally “difficult” might be part of the problem.
To expose my own situation of the same, when in college I was studying flamenco and noticing the cante por buleria that is all contra Tiempo against the palmas so the singing syllables jab out strongly. Thinking this was some deliberate and challenging thing, suddenly I heard this on the radio “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia and the chorus was very similar where she sings a long string of contra beat syllables. And I pointed it out to my drummer friend and he says “WTF is wrong with you??? ALL SINGING IS LIKE THAT!!!!”,
Yeah it's cool man. Like I said. I think me suggesting it was something specifically about flamenco music vs 'regular' music was way off target. This is really the only music I've properly 'studied' so I tried to make sense of it sloppily.
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I’ll just go to my room on my own, no need to send me…
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