Ricardo -> RE: New Member & Compas Questions (Jan. 5 2006 4:24:30)
|
Gecko, I know it is frustrating when you don't get the answer you expect or want. Your question is clear enough. The answers like "don't count, just listen" are very true, but not helpful. You want the stuff to fit your notion of it, I know where you are coming from. Solea, Alegria, Solea por Buleria, Buleria, etc, are COUNTED in 12. Try to understand that bar lines and meter are something else. They should change depending on the tempo and feel, even though the math is the same. Rhythm is a feeling, and so rhythmic notation is designed to represent that. As Koella said, there are no "rules" for notating flamenco, which is unfortunate because there should be. The folks who have been transcribing flamenco over the years, I have to wonder how their sight reading and rhythm skills really are because a lot of transcriptions are lacking in the "rhythmic feel" department. Some rudimentary drum lessons would really help anyone transcribing flamenco into standard notation. Anyway, let me try to help you. Solea, quarter note around 95 bpm. 4 bars of 3 as you said. (Toss your notion of 3 bars of 4, that is way off amigo.) So you have this "theme" on guitar: F major, Cmajor, Fmaj7, E major, OK? They can be strummed chords, arpeggio, melody, whatever. Each chord has it's own bar, you change on the first beat (down beat) of each bar. That would be changing chords on counts 1,4,7, 10, OK? But you can ACCENT within the first bar beat 3, in the second bar beat 3, in the 3rd bar beat 2, and in the last bar, beat 1 and 3. That corresponds to the COUNTS 3, 6,8,10, 12. Nothing wrong really with accenting different beats or even off beats (countratiempo) in each bar, but the phrasing is the same (4 bars of 3) . It depends on the thing you are playing, but you don't need to always be accenting 3,6,8,10, 12. Sometimes you just feel that, you know? You should tap your foot to the quater note. Ok now, increase the quarter note tempo to 140 bpm. That is Solea por Bulerias. Now it is too fast to feel the chord changes on 1,4,7 10 like before, because the accents are more important. What happens is you start to change chords on the ACCENTS instead. F chord comes at count 3. The C chord at count 6, F major 7 on 8, and E major on 10. So count 12? It is still E major, and in fact takes on the feeling of a DOWN BEAT. So now you feel a more complex beat pattern, and the previous concept of bar lines and measure don't work. It is better to imagine new bar lines and meter (12, 3,6,8,10= a bar of 6/8 and a bar of 3/4, at EIGHTH note=140). BUT, at this tempo you can still get away with playing some Solea type phrases very FAST. The counting system helps to clearify this rhythmic abiguity by doing away with meter, and understand where you are mathematically in the compas. So this rhythm can go either way, phrasing on 1,4,7, 10, OR 12,3,6,8,10. If you are doing an escobilla and you know how the counts feel, you can shift back and forth between feels. So now increase the quarter note value to 230 bpm. Now you have bulerias. Really silly to think of 1,4,7,10 as "down beats" at this tempo. Yet that is how it is notated typically. The truth is you have to feel only count 12 and 6 as down beats at this speed, and the idea of the quarter note value is also not right. The counts should be eighth notes, where the beat or quater note value is 115 bpm, that is how you would tap your foot. You can feel the 12 counts as two bars of 6/8, or two bars of 3/4, or even a bar of 6/8 followed by a bar of 3/4, where count 12 and count 6 are the "down beats" of those bars. And depending on the feel of the rhythmic strumming or falseta, the meter should be allowed to change. Watching a flamenco guitarist play, watching his foot and body language, reveals how he is feeling the meter, it changes a lot in bulerias. And it is not wrong for the palmero or dancer to feel it different than the guitarist. That is the beauty of compound meter. Most transcriptions don't take this feeling into account and put bar lines in the wrong place, as if everything is "SOLEA", just faster. Solea, solea por bulerias, and bulerias can have the same count, even though the tempos are different. But the FEELING is different, and the notation should reflect this. Working with dancers helps you understand how the feeling changes as the quarter note value or "count" changes tempo, but the MATH is always the same. In fact that is a big challenge when you have to "morph" from one form into another by increasing the tempo. But when playing for CANTE, the down beat is always going to feel like 12, or 6, regardless of tempo. Counting and concepts like "four bars of 3/4" are only needed when working for baile. It is a way to communicate between musician and dancer, not a way to learn the feeling of the compas. Ricardo
|
|
|
|