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What are some of the practice regimens(sp?) you tell your students to follow?
Practice techique and excercises first for 30 min? 1 hour? then go into the material? Don't do any material but practicese excercises till you have it down?
I want to get the MOST out of my studying and practise sessions and if I'm not doing something a certain way I could actually be learning at a slower rate.
Thanks for you help. I guess this post isn't just for teacher but also from everyone.
What are some of the practice regimens(sp?) you tell your students to follow?
Practice techique and excercises first for 30 min? 1 hour? then go into the material? Don't do any material but practicese excercises till you have it down?
I want to get the MOST out of my studying and practise sessions and if I'm not doing something a certain way I could actually be learning at a slower rate.
Thanks for you help. I guess this post isn't just for teacher but also from everyone.
El Z,
I had to give this a little thought before writing, but here's my take FWIW:
I've stopped assigning specific practice regimens because a lot of the time, most students don't stay with them for some reason or another. What I do insist on is that whatever they are practicing, to always practice it to a compas background. I give each student a CD that I've put together of solo compas tracks of varying tempos. When I see them for a lesson, they have to be able to play their material to the compas background. When we are working on new techniques or palos, we work it to the compas CD so they understand how to coordinate their playing with it. When I feel a student is ready, I have them play with me in the dance classes. Eventually they go on to accompanying classes by themselves. They really do have a lot of fun, and that's what it's about.
I've never followed a strict regimen, although if I were to describe my typical guitar playing day, I'd say I usually spend about 90% of the time working out falsetas and compas patterns, and 10% figuring out technical stuff. I think a lot of the techniques that need practice are already in the music, so if I want to develop alzapua, I look for falsetas that contain a lot of alzapua, and so on. It's just me, but I find technical exercises to be boring and uninspiring. Music that I like to play rarely resembles an exercise. My approach to practice has much to do with how I started out learning to play music by ear. My goals were to imitate the sounds and to be able to play along with the recordings. This made me learn to listen very closely. I don't advocate that everyone follow this way, but it is what's worked for me.
Let me post an alternative view. Of course, compas is the lifeblood of this music, and must be mastered. Also, I have not yet mastered it! But as far as mastering technique, I think that playing things to compas tends to slow your technique and add tension. I think you should break down the basic techniques, arpeggios, picado patterns, rasgeous, thumb, etc. and practice those very slowly. If you go slow you can figure out how to do it, but if you go fast you rely on your body, under stress, to make it happen. Stress makes most people tense up, and speed makes you tense too. Tension is a waste of strength and endurance, tends to make you miss, severely curtails your power. On the other hand, when going slow, it's hard to get the motions just right. They're a bit too complex to be consciously controlled at first.
Z, I recommend to you that you do about 3/4 slow practice, 1/4 compas practice for basic techniques. You gotta get that tension out of your hands as soon as possible. The sooner the better. Once you have reached a reasonable technical level, then switch over and do mostly compas.
Some people seem to be able to learn technique easily and overcome the tension thing eventually. Or, you can make up your mind to attack it immediately. I suggest the latter. Good luck my man!
All good advise from you guys. It's interesting to hear about the different methods. I don't know if there are any two guitarist alike. I guess a lot of it is also trial and error and seeing what works best and gives you the most out of your practise.
ORIGINAL: eslastra I think a lot of the techniques that need practice are already in the music, so if I want to develop alzapua, I look for falsetas that contain a lot of alzapua, and so on. It's just me, but I find technical exercises to be boring and uninspiring. Music that I like to play rarely resembles an exercise.
Yes!!
I think this is excellent advice. The trouble with practising a load of technique (ras, picado, whatever) in isolation is that you are not learning to play music. And flamenco is such complex music. Of course at the very basic level (ie beginners, or when one is encountering a technique for the first time) there has to be an element of working on it in isolation, but the sooner it can be incorporated into a meaningful passage of music, the better. You have to learn to go in and come out of that technique gracefully, and of course play the whole thing in compas.
As Eddie says, its a question of funding a falseta that places a particular technique in context (and of course, at a reasonable level of difficulty.)
I remember asking my last classical guitar teacher about slurs, and he recommended practicing the opening section to the Adagio in the Aranjuez concierto. It's slur city , and boy is it more fun and more useful than just hammering up and down the neck with the left hand. Another great slur workout is that traditional fast Solea descending scale falseta based played over an F chord, for example (you know, the one everyone plays a variation of...)
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, and boy is it more fun and more useful than just hammering up and down the neck with the left hand. Another great slur workout is that traditional fast Solea descending scale falseta based played over an F chord, for example (you know, the one everyone plays a variation of...) 
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