Pulgar melodies and tremolo

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greeny

Posts: 50
Joined: Feb. 26 2008

Pulgar melodies and tremolo

Ole y ola!

When playing my tremolo exercices I usually play stuff where the role of the pulgar (thumb) is to play melodies with equidistant notes - meaning that the time value of these pulgar melody notes are of equal durations - i.e. usually half notes or quarter notes. The spaces in between these pulgar strokes is accordingly filled up with tremolo notes usually performed upon the higher strings.

However a couple of weeks ago I saw a concert of Enrique de Melchor and group and noticed he was often bringing variations into his performance of what I call the classical pulgar-tremolo combitation; the melody notes played by the pulgar would often vary in lengths - quarter note, and dotted quarter notes, sometimes longer notes, halves or at times even whole notes. He would for instance play a melodic pulgar line using a rumba rhythm and fill the gaps in between with tremolos up on the higher strings.

How does he do that?

For a while now I've been examining this and have been dabbling at ways to discover how to meet up to these challenging techniques, but till now I haven't found a definitive way of establishing the building blocks and clearcut method on how to develop this idea. In the hands of De Melchor it seemed easy as the breeze and exquisite to hear.

Has anyone else here ever experimented with this aspect of tremolo practice? I'm very curious.

Cheers!

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 28 2008 23:59:40

guitarbuddha

Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to greeny)

Hi Greeny and greetings from Scotland.

I don't know what's definitive but here are some things that I do. For normal five stroke tremolo ( piami ) when I want to slow down the rate of thumb notes I replace p with m ( miami ). It is not the most efficient way but I like the symmetry, also it is good for developing the regular tremolo and also mi alternation ( 'm' and i' get a break when 'a' plays but have to alternate pretty fast and regular for the tremolo to be convincing ). I think that I was doing some of this on an upload ( improvising a tremolo and substituting m for p at places )a few weeks back but really I'm not that sure what I played.

For Rhumba (in one bar clave ) again I have no idea what Melchor does but here is what I would do.
In semiquavers pmiami pmiami pami. Tripets would be pimamiami pimaimami pmiami. Triplits have the benefit that every third note is either 'p' or a'' which is good for mental clarity and neat execution. To get a similar benefit you can adjust the first one in this paragraph to pimami pimaim pima in this case every second note is either p or m but although the pimami pattern works great with arpeggio i find the sound to be less even than the other on a single string (although it is good to practice a four stroke tremolo pima to help the balance of the hand and sound in general).

For those first choices I am using the natural strength and speed of the combination which goes from a(mi) to p. This is the classic classical tremolo of which the flamenco is an extension one extra note ( you can think of it as i....amip).

Sorry I can't do an upload as my computer has died (bloody Advent and bloody Curry's) and this dinosaur (my mothers computer ) doesn't even have a soundcard. If this thread is still live in a few weeks and you have any questions maybe then I'll be able to get one together.

If that is too much information then I would just go for the m replaces p option.
D.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 29 2008 4:15:58

Jan Willem

Posts: 274
Joined: Feb. 21 2007
From: Belgium Halle

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to greeny)

Simple:

P iami ami ami ami ....etc. You can choose your next pulgar stroke, and if you let it continue with again a iami or you immediately go into ami.
Very easy imo.
Tremolo itself isn't that hard, making it sound perfectly fluent and beatifull is.

Good luck with it.

JW

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 29 2008 6:27:52

greeny

Posts: 50
Joined: Feb. 26 2008

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to greeny)

Hello GuitarBuddha! It's been a while and I'm glad to hear from you. And hello to you Jan-Willem - Thank you both for your responses; I shall look into these detailed matters tomorrow as early as possible and report back to you on my findings.

Again, thanks a lot!

Hasta pronto!

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 29 2008 10:31:27

mark indigo

Posts: 3625
Joined: Dec. 5 2007

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to Jan Willem)

quote:

P iami ami ami ami

doesn't Sanlucar's "Oracion" (on Tauromagia cd) do a lot with that?

free tab here: http://transcribir.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/ms-1988-oracion-rondena-2b.pdf

or you can buy one (with time values stemmed and beamed over the tab) from Alain Faucher: http://www.moltengold.com/cgi-bin/eBzget6A.pl?shop=shops/77/21/AffedisFl&trolley=894135&page=http://www.affedis.com/catalogue2.html

quote:

I saw a concert of Enrique de Melchor and group and noticed he was often bringing variations into his performance of what I call the classical pulgar-tremolo combitation

just out of interest, what was the piece/track/palo you saw the Enrique de Melchor tremolo in?

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 29 2008 14:25:15

greeny

Posts: 50
Joined: Feb. 26 2008

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to mark indigo)

Hi Mark,

I'm not 100 percent certain but I believe he called it a Granaina. He played so many varied styles/palos it's now become hard for me to remember what happened exactly when.

What I remember most clearly was the fact that the evening was divided into two parts; the first in which he played mostly by himself or a bit later as an accompanist for a singer called Marta Heredia - De Melchor described the first part of the concert as the opportunity for him to dive into the more profound depths of traditional Flamenco playing in palos such as siguiriyas, sevillanas, soleares, fandangos ...etc. He also gradually introduced, as the program unfolded the other members of his ensemble, a second guitar player called Melchor Jimenez and cajon player Carlos Heredia.
The second part of the concert was filled with various palos such as tango's, farruca, rumba, bulerias.... the more groovin' danceable styles as he called them.

Even though I was seated right up in front of him and could hear and see very well, he did so much in every piece I was simply awed by the man and his art, so, to tell you two weeks afterwards what happened when and where and why and how is an simply an impossibility for me.

All in all I can say that he did it all, beautifully and with a lot of grace!

I'm on my way now to go and investigate those fingerings: thank you.

PS: Thank you for the links with the De Sanlucar charts. It's overwhelming but very much appreciated.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 29 2008 23:56:45

mark indigo

Posts: 3625
Joined: Dec. 5 2007

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to greeny)

Hi Greeny,

It wasn't this was it? you probably can't remember the details etc., but if it was granaina it might have been something like this....

there were EdM vids up previous, but some new ones appeared last month, including this Granaina. I posted links to a few in Audio & Video Uploads section.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 30 2008 6:24:32

takitaka

Posts: 55
Joined: Apr. 13 2008

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to mark indigo)

Anyone notice Guardian Angels at 2.20 ?

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 30 2008 7:11:54

greeny

Posts: 50
Joined: Feb. 26 2008

RE: Pulgar melodies and tremolo (in reply to mark indigo)

Mark,

Wow what a clip! De Melchor is amazing.

Yes, it could have been this piece where towards the end he does some dizzying tremolos in between all sorts of other melodic things. Overall, during the whole length of the concert, within many of his compositions he utilized all the techniques which are appropriate and available to him at that moment - I never had the feeling that he was adhering to a strict formula in the interpretation of the thematic materials; more that he responded very deeply to the feelings which were evoqued in time and kept on developing his own hunches and ideas on the spur. He played tremolos everywhere all night!

True musical freedom!

*********************************************

Back to the tremolos being discussed previously.......

********************************************

I need more time for investigation of the examples offered by the afficionados but at a first glance, so far, I've distilled the following and think they are all great exercices: all!

Regular five note tremolo - extended so as to double the time length (or any other multiple) of the tremolo part itself:

piami miami (Great idea courtesy of Guitarbuddha)

Now, for a Rumba tremolo:

pmiami pmiami pami

Rumba tremolo with triplets:

pimamiami pimaimami pmiami

Man, this is the stuff I was looking for! The logic within the groupings is where it's at! Totally happening!

You've got my work set out for the coming months, dude! Thanks.

*************************************

Jan Willem's approach, or should I call it concept(?), is much more of a generalized piece of information for the fingers and mind to deal with. I believe it to contain, in essence, the definition of freedom. Utilizing the technique you described and qualified as "easy" forces one to follow one's own intuitition or creative impulse; it's in my view the ultimate level one wants to reach when one has got mastery of a lot of chops - being able to decide on the spur of the moment when one wants to leave out or drop in with an occasional "p" !

Great "right-brain" stuff for non-thought and play!

***************************************************

Now, up till today I had played around with a few alternatives to the standard five stroke tremolo (piami) such as:

pmami

pimam

pamia

pmiam

pmaia

Most of these for me at first felt real awkward, and in my book they remain awkward even after some working out on them, but I clearly feel the benefits even after a limited period of practice (with metronome).

Its all about mind over finger control, right?

************************************

As an aside two things:

I bought two tickets for this coming weekend to see and hear Miguel Poveda and group: Moraito is one of the two guitar players.

And, I've just purchased the Oscar Herrero Flamenco metronome - pricey but really wonderful! It just helps me to nail down some of those grooves which are totally made for guitar. I just got fed up with my computer sequencer program, Compases CD's and my still older dry metronome; this thing is really amazing.

Thazzit 4 now!

Later!

G.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 30 2008 11:08:57