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Hello everyone, I'm new to flamenco guitar and I'm struggling with the thumb when practicing the Rasgeo Abanico technique. I'm hitting the skin and flesh of my thumb instead of the nail when going down and I feel like the way my thumb is placed and the direction it's facing is wrong. Any tips? Thanks in advance 🫶
Hello everyone, I'm new to flamenco guitar and I'm struggling with the thumb when practicing the Rasgeo Abanico technique. I'm hitting the skin and flesh of my thumb instead of the nail when going down and I feel like the way my thumb is placed and the direction it's facing is wrong. Any tips? Thanks in advance 🫶
Learn the proper Abanico P-a-i, where only the back of the nails are used. It is much smoother rhythmically and sound wise, plus you can target groups of strings. The one I assume you are trying to get is the “Marote” where thumb is used in two directions, down-up. If you remove the finger stroke portion, you notice the down-up type of swing beat feeling. That is what you need to work on separately, where the UP stroke is on the beat, and the down is an off beat swing 8th note. Control the tempo where you speed up only as fast as you can control that rhythm.
RE: Help with Rasgeo Abanico (in reply to rombsix)
quote:
The thumb should be closer to parallel or 45-degrees to the strings rather than perpendicular to them.
How about your thumb position? Parallel thumb position doesn't work for me. My thumb gets caught on bass strings when playing thumb downstroke. I always thought it was 45 degree. Basically, it's arpegio/tremolo thumb position. I wonder how other guys on the foro play Marote abanico.
RE: Help with Rasgeo Abanico (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
How about your thumb position? Parallel thumb position doesn't work for me. My thumb gets caught on bass strings when playing thumb downstroke. I always thought it was 45 degree. Basically, it's arpegio/tremolo thumb position. I wonder how other guys on the foro play Marote abanico.
Anything from parallel to 45-degrees works fine for me. As it gets closer to 90-degrees, it gets stuck.
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RE: Help with Rasgeo Abanico (in reply to devilhand)
You guys getting stuck at 90 degrees are doing something wrong. While it is not comfortable to do it at 90 because the wrist has to break at an uncomfortable steep angle, and the fingers are then hitting at a weird angle as well, the thumb sweep is not affected at all. Perhaps just thumb sweeping with wrist pronation/supination is what folks need to work on. Like use a thumbs down sign, fingers curled up, and work on how to move smooth through the strings that way.
RE: Help with Rasgeo Abanico (in reply to Ricardo)
Well, I guess I didn't mean that it gets stuck per se, but there's more resistance than is needed to accomplish the technique that would be more naturally achieved by having a shallower angle.
It feels more comfortable and organic to do it with an angle somewhere between zero to forty-five degrees. I think if it's being done at closer to ninety degrees, the flexion in the wrist makes the pronation/supination harder.
When I flex to ninety degrees and do pronation/supination fast, the entirety of my forearm starts to jiggle side to side, so I think the alignment gets messed up (anatomically) and makes pronation/supination harder with a fully flexed wrist or the physics gets in the way (more friction).
I too find I need carful attention to the corner/shape of my thumb nail in all aspects of Pulgar.
Whenever I’m adding a different note progression I find I drag the thumbnail a bit until I get the muscle memory to drive smoothly and clean through the strings.
HR
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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy, doesn't have to be fast, should have some meat on the bones, can be raw or well done, as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
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