Erik van Goch -> RE: set chords for styles (Jul. 25 2013 17:32:50)
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ORIGINAL: Ricardo Re learning as Erik says is a problem only if you try to play it by ear and get it wrong with no maestros, but in this day and age a simple afternoon on youtube seeing how it is done live could fix a lot of those early freshman mis conceptions caused by casual listening. Ricardo There are many different ways we can see/hear things and i believe we first of all hear/see what we have learned to hear/see and/or expect to hear/see. My father always compares it with that famous drawing in which some see "a beautiful young lady" and other "an old witch with a wart". Both pictures are there and still it is impossible to see both interpretations simultaneously. If you see 1 picture you can overlook the other one the rest of your life, until someone reveals you the other way to look at it. In flamenco there are many beautiful girl/old witch situations and in most cases people tend to see the wrong picture. Misconceptions not only occur when working with audio but also when consulting video or (even better) learning it directly from the maestro in person (for instance during a masterclass) simply because he can not look into your head and/or afford to spend 2 weeks on one single falseta because not everybody is playing it correctly yet. On top, while you play your old witch he might hear a beautiful lady (with perhaps an occasional hiccup). Things can even go wrong when you take weekly lessons. For example: A dance teacher i knew used to give this pulse during the very first lesson: X-X-X- next an other pattern was exercised without any explanation or demanded accent: XX,X-X- Soon the students interpret it as "short short, long, long" with an accent on the first long beat. So they felt "to the Beat beat" with 3 notes on the beat and 1 in between. But in reality it had to be the other way around with 1 note on the beat and 3 contras...."and, 1and,- and,-" a classical young girl/old tart case. I was not allowed to clap (that would only confuse them according to the teacher). I objected but the teacher insisted. After a couple of weeks clapping was added. Soon they liked it. You see said the teacher, it works better this way. Better my ass, all students still thought they were dancing on the beat and that i was adding counter beats so they still were not alarmed. The real fun began when it finally was preceded by an other compas. Suddenly their 1 (which didn't feel like a 1 to begin with) turned out to be 12,5 with devastating results. After a couple of weeks some of them did catch up with the intended interpretation, others didn't. As a result the rest of the year half the group entered at 12,5 and the other half at 1, playing the same theme with shifted beats simultaneously .... that's what i call confusing. Obviously i was frequently trapped by the young girl/old tart problem myself, not only in my beginners years but basically up to this day. In my 4th year with Paco it took me 30 minutes to master a Rondeña falseta by Tomatito (using video so what could go wrong?). It was a very simple, repetitive melody fallowing a fandongos pulse >--,>--,>--,>--. When i showed it to Paco he approved the notes, the relation to the individual beats and even the underlaying ">--" pulse, but not the place i choose to drop the > part. As it turned out the bloody thing started on a different place in the compas then i thought and as a result i played it with parallel shifted accents/feet taps (which also explained the "compas mistake" tomatito seemed to make at the end of the falseta). Needles to say correcting the accents highly inflicted with my inner feeling and re-learning it took me not 30 minutes but 4 days of hard work. Don't think this will only happen to dummies, it can happen to everybody who is not born and raised in flamenco traditions. Fandangos is still one of my angstgegners when it comes to melody/compas relation. Even the profs go wrong every now and then when they play and explain an isolated fandangos falseta, not in the beat/melody relation but when dropping the first note. On his lesson dvd Riqueni mistakenly starts a fandangos falseta on the wrong beat as well. In a normal situation he would never make a mistake like that but playing it separately and without previous compas he simply overlooks he has to start that specific type of falseta 3 beats earlier than usual (actually a pretty comon mistake in situations like that). He smells trouble at the tail of the falseta and automatically adapts an alternative ending, keeping the compas but destroying the falseta in the process. Wonder how many people noticed it (and cursed him for not taking the trouble to look at it again, in stead of including both mistakes in the dvd). Without an introducing compas 2 people can play the same thing simultaneously wile feeling totally different relations to the compas (noticed or un noticed).... 1 can be wrong, or both, ore non, depending on the situation. PS This is the Rondeña theme i misinterpret. I give the notes and the individual beats (/) but no info about on which beat it begins....... Tuning: Rondeña (dadf#be) x means continuation last note.. it mixes triplets (3 notes a beat) with 1/8 notes (2 notes a beat). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------4-/6~4--6-/7-x-x-------2-/4~2--4-/6-x-x--------0/2~0-2-/4-x-/x~2-/0-----/0-x---- -----4---------------------------2---------------------------0------------------------------4---------- --4---------------------------/2--------------------------/0-------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4----4---4---- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2----2---2---- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2----2---2---- -----2-/4~2--4-/6-x-x--------0/2~0-2-/4~2~0--------0--------0-----------0----0---0---- ---2---------------------------0-----------------------/3~4---/3~4---/3-x-----4-----4---4---- /2--------------------------/0-------------------------------------------------/-x-3-/-x-3--/3---- I leave it to the individual viewer to feel challenged to guess on with beat the first plugged note is supposed to drop..... beat 1, 2 or 3 of the ">--" pulse. I suspect Ricardo is experienced enough to know the answer but i bed i'm not the only one who failed to give the correct answer.
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