Miguel de Maria -> RE: flamenco pedagogy (Jun. 18 2005 14:59:17)
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quote:
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that most great Flamenco players just hear in their head what's good. Of course, this is the essential thing! You have to hear it in your head--getting it out on the guitar is the easy part. In fact, I think this applies to playing guitar, singing, drawing, handwriting, dog training, networking, cooking... 1. Hear it in your head. 2. Then play it. Another View On the other hand, recently I have been studying a lot of classical theory, from a thick book written in the forties. I have gone through dozens of pages of blank sheet music, pencil, and use a keyboard, not a guitar, to play the exercises. I am also learning how to sight sing, which is to be able to sing music from sheet music, without having to hear the melody. What does this have to do with flamenco? Both nothing and everything. I have found that, after a few months fo this training, I can hear, learn, and retain music much better. In fact, my friend Monty exclaimed: "You have a GREAT memory!" After I learned one of his falsetas in two tries. I learned a couple songs last week, and it happened very quickly, and I alreayd performed them in a gig the same week. I hear intervals out of the blue, "oh, that's a fourth, followed by a minor third", which automatically enables me to play them on the guitar or the keyboard. I hear chord progressions, "I to V", or "Andalusian Cadence", etc. Now, this may or may not seem a big deal, but it does represent large increases in my musicianship, which has a direct result on my guitar playing, stemming from training completely apart from the guitar. I believe that, althoug hflamenco has many aspects that are different from western music, it is still primarily based on it, and this kind of foundational training thus influences it. How do you memorize thousands of notes if you do not have a framework in which to place them? A lot of Bach changes chords every note. But you don't memorize every note--you learn chords, then you learn chord progressions, then you learn sequences of chord progressions. You learn and become familiar with the mechanics and logic of music. My friend Alan, a violinist, can hear any melody and play it instantly. I believe this sort of ability stems from the development of his ear, which this sort of training does quite well. And this is helpfulf or any western music, including flamenco. So it has been very helpful for me, this "book learning".
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