Anders Eliasson -> RE: classical and flamenco (Mar. 9 2013 7:46:23)
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quote:
I had been playing my blanca (Shelton-Farretta) for classical, and I found that when I moved my hand closer to the bridge, that the sound really just popped out! And I wondered if that was because flamencos are supposed to be played with the hand near the bridge, and if in classicals, the sound if I played closer to the soundhole. I play a lot of classical nowadays, but I don't have a proper classical guitar, just use a negra. Miguel, here you hit a very important point. We the builders build to make the players happy. Look at the right hand tecnique of a flamenco and a classical. The flamenco is flat, with short, hard movements of the hand. That produces this "pop out flamenco sound". This is what the players want. At the same time, a flamenco guitar must have the capacity of making fast, thick, fat sounding rasguados. Almost an overdriven sound or slightly distorted sound. The typical classical tecnique is rounder and trying to make a fuller rounder sound. Also classical players tend to look much more for dynamics in the forte/piano registers and they look for a greater variaty of colors in the sound. Its not enough to have machinegun picados, snappy rasgueados and a mezzoforte arpeggio. When playing classical on a flamenco, very often it sound very pretty, but with lacks of dynamics and volume. The flamenco guitar is built to respond to a much more agressive right hand. When playing flamenco on a big classical with a lot of tension in the bracing, the rasgueados sounds horribly clean. and you cannot find this "pop out" sound sweet spot. There are some Spanish Classical designs which are quite capable of doing flamenco. The original Torres 7 fan design and its clone, the Hauser, are bot pretty fast and not to tense classicals and you can make them sound almost flamenco if they have a flamenco setup. Also, if you accept play flamenco a little bit closer to the soundhole, and accept that your rasguados sound a little bit cleaner, you can chose a builder who knows how to make a hybrid guitar. A hybrid can be many things. It can be closer to a flamenco or closer to a classical or inbetween. I´m not going to go into the way that is been done. It´ll be like writing a long essay, but it has to do with bridge weight, angle of braces and tension in the bracing. I hope this helps a little bit.
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