srshea -> RE: Can Anyone Help Me? (May 12 2010 11:41:43)
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I think this is probably the eight billionth time Ricardo has posted that advice, and what he says is absolutely true. A very good and very simple way to follow up on that would be to go to the “Classic falsetas por arriba” page on Norman Kilman’s site: Basic Solea Falsetas Everything you need to put together a basic, beginner’s level solea “piece” is all there. All those falsetas are classic, standard stuff, and you’ll hear them, or variations on them, EVERYWHERE, particularly in older, classic accompaniment playing. Pick a handful of them that you like and that you feel confident you can master and then work on each one individually. Just focus on each falseta as a discrete, isolated unit, and don’t worry about putting them all together just yet. Once you’ve learned five or six of the falsetas and can play them confidently, without referring to the tabs, and at the same tempo, then you can start putting them together. Norman’s provided some commentary that offers help regarding how they can be used and how they might work together. The best way to figure out how to put them together is to do a lot of close listening to good, classic stuff until you recognize similar falsetas and can hear for yourself how the “old masters” used them. Some of them work better than others when played back to back; some of them sound good as introductions; etc. I sure aint no Old Master, myself, but here’s a recipe for a way to put some of this stuff together in a short, simple performance: 1 Falseta 5 makes for a good introduction. Playing it twice as your intro would work nicely. (This will be the case with many falsetas. Playing the same falseta twice in a row sets up a very simple form of the “question/answer” dynamic that runs throughout flamenco.) 2 Falseta 6 isn’t actually a falseta. It’s the standard compas strumming that will provide the “filler” between the falsetas. This is the basic rhythmic foundation for solea that keeps everything grounded and provides a base to play the falsetas against. For the purposes of this “recipe” this is what you’ll be playing between your falsetas. Play it once or twice. 3 Play Falseta 2 and Falseta 3 back to back. 4 Falseta 6 again, once or twice. 5 Falseta 1. I like to play this one twice in a row. 6 Falseta 6, yet again, once or twice. 7 Falseta 9. You could play it twice in a row or you could play Falseta 9 followed by Falseta 11. 8 Good ol’ Falseta 6, one last time. 9 Finish ‘er up with some kind of “outro”. This is actually the one ingredient that’s not included on Norman’s solea page. The simplest thing to do would be to play a kind of droning open E chord thing on beats one through ten. Play one index finger downstroke on each beat, accenting beats 3,6,8, and 10, letting the final stroke ring. You could jazz this up a bit by doing a hammer-on from fret two to three on the D string after each downstroke. (Note: each falseta should end with a “remate” on the last three beats of each twelve beat measure or phrase. In some of the tabs and the recordings on Norman’s page the remate is not included. Those are the ones that just have an open E note at the end. It’s assumed that you’ll put a remate there in the last three beats. See “Remates 1-3” for the most basic ones.) That’s it. You’re not gonna knock anyone out of their seat with that, but it’s a good place to start. From there you can keep adding to your repertoire of falsetas, adding variations on your compas strumming, adding different remates, and over time you’ll develop a better and better sense of how all those various pieces of the puzzle fit together. Good luck!
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