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.
I've hit a problem. I pretty much play all the time with a metronome. However, with bulerias this has led me to being stuck at 200-210 mark. The thing is I'm too cautious of my time and always count internally. Upto 200 it's fine, but as it gets faster, my capacity to constantly keep track of every beat starts falling apart. Actually I don't keep track of playable beats, I track only gaps or silences. So if 6 beats are played straight 8 notes and then there's a gap of 1 1/2 beat, I only track this silence.
But since 200, I try harder to count these gaps due to the increased tempo and it leads to rushing or dragging often. The over consciousness of my timing ironically messes it up. What is the solution to this?
Posts: 15722
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Overfocusing on the metronome (in reply to metalhead)
quote:
ORIGINAL: metalhead
I've hit a problem. I pretty much play all the time with a metronome. However, with bulerias this has led me to being stuck at 200-210 mark. The thing is I'm too cautious of my time and always count internally. Upto 200 it's fine, but as it gets faster, my capacity to constantly keep track of every beat starts falling apart. Actually I don't keep track of playable beats, I track only gaps or silences. So if 6 beats are played straight 8 notes and then there's a gap of 1 1/2 beat, I only track this silence.
But since 200, I try harder to count these gaps due to the increased tempo and it leads to rushing or dragging often. The over consciousness of my timing ironically messes it up. What is the solution to this?
Well for one it seems that is your ball park for now, you might want to focus some intense practice a hair slower than that to dial it in. 190 or so. But even around here you need to start working with the metronome cut in half. Around 95 on up to 100 and once you are doing that well you will see why you got stuck before. It should be a slower "feeling" with you doing more controlled subdivisions. At 95+ the clicks can either be the 12,2,4,6,8, 10 (I recommend this), or, as you get more advanced, you let them express the 1,3,5,7,9,11...why that is actually better is because you are actually controlling the beat and you can micro time a swing such that those up beats (which function like the palmas accents we typically use) feel like on the "back beat" and really groove. From there speeding up is pretty easy.
RE: Overfocusing on the metronome (in reply to metalhead)
Maybe to get more of a feel for the faster beats try muting your guitar and just doing muted compás at 210-220 (scary, but overshooting is oftentimes worth it)
This is in order to minimize the amount of information and possible problems, cause you're not trying to play necessarily, you're trying to feel.
Try and fill out the gaps in the compás almost completely when doing this so you get a feeling for what would normally be the spaces in between the beats.
Bulerías feel at e.g. 180 is completely different from 210, which is worlds apart from 240.
Also putting the metronome twice as slow (100), or three times as slow (circa 66-67), and trying to feel the bigger beats can help, but trying to play bulerias at 200 while the metronome is going off every third beat at 67 is pretty hard.
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