Miguel de Maria -> RE: Sabicas (Mar. 15 2005 15:08:51)
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Guys, first of all, I think this is a great thread. Not because it is about picado, to me a wonderful adn mysterious technique, but because you guys are really sharing your insights and experiences. That's what I love about these forums--sometimes you get those gems that comes from musicians just hanging out. Speed...I don't really care about speed. What I care about is excitement, power, fun. I hadn't listen to old Paco lately, and yesterday I put it on. What a mixture of inspiration and downer. As Richard says, the better you get, the further away he is. I have been listening to Paco Pena,Juan Serrano, Sabicas, etc., but Paco truly is at a different level. Or at least,t hat is my perception. To play so fast, it blurs into a single sound! Kind of a tremolo-like effect with picado. I don't aspire to do that, I'll leave that to Paco! I have gigged three nights in a row and there is nothing like proving it live, is there? Well... my picado is definitely improving. I really enjoy the technique. I play a Sevillanas that has fast triplet picado (similiar to the one PP plays on Azahara), and it sounded pretty good. Panaderos was alittle flubbed, but I'm getting better at it! But there's a lot to work at. Speed is one of these few things that you can quantitatively measure. How good am I? Well, how do you know--but with the metronome you can measure yourself. But as Mark says, it can be a variable process. One morning, good, one morning, it seems as if you've forgotten the whole thing. Craig Dell told me that Sabicas told him "picado must be polished for 30 min. a day." Hey, I believe it--many guitarists believe tremolo must be polished and maintained every week, and picado is harder. It's a high maintenance thing, because it requires you to be at your peak. I have been reading a book on learning the piano which is absolutely fascinating. One of the things the author said is that generally people can do around 4 "impulses" a second. So a pianist can play an arpeggio, say 5 notes per impulse, 20 notes a second, fairly easily. We can do the same thing with tremolo, at 60 bpm (1 b/sec), play 16)--although that would require very fine-tuned tremolo. That is if you feel that a pami motion with tremolo is one "impulse". For picado, most of us im--which is 2 notes/impulse. So that only comes out to 8 notes/sec if we stick to the "rule of thumb." Which comes out to sixteenth note at 120, which is a funny spot, kind of the limit for some people. I'm not sure what this means, just perhaps that due to our biological nature, picado is destined to be a "high maintenance" technique. Of course, none of this explaisn why lots of pick players have no problem playing very quickly. One more thing--the pianist mentions that many errors which seem to be unexplained are caused by FPD--Fast Play Deterioration. It's a phenomenon which causes your technique to decay because you are only playing fast. Apparently, from time to time, you have to slow things down a little--maybe to "polish" to maintain your technique.
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