|
estebanana -> RE: Looking for intermediate level Solea (Jul. 8 2017 6:23:14)
|
Pepe Habichuela's Solea from 'A Mandeli' nice. If it were me, I would take a few sections from Ramon Montoya, a few from P.Pena, and a few from Sabicas and Pepe and others and put them together. One straight Solea from one person...meh.
Sabicas' Bronce Gitano has lot's of good stuff and probably better tremolo sections than anything. But why tremolo? Not needed. Bronce Gitano has a few nice picado runs that are not super crazy, but still require attention to play well.
Anything from Mario Escudero is solid and oten works seamlessly with Sabicas material. Pedro Bacans solo material is burdened by it's textural density, but if you can cop some of his alzapua off live or studio recordings you got some bad a$$ material. Alzapua, in my opinion is not about copying a particular falseta by one person, but about having the technique ready to use were you learn to fit it in.
For example you learn a falseta one way, when you play it you play it the way you learned it, then make a second pass and change the ending to alzapua. When you learn a set piece without the concept of repeating and tweaking passages you miss a lot.
My first teacher was a long time student of Escudero, the next one a friend and student of Pedro Bacan, then I spent a great deal of time with David Serva, a considerable amount of time with Juan del Gastor, some lesson with Chuscales when he came to town and quite a lot of time sponging up Jason McGuire's work with him just casually showing me ideas. None of them really advocated learning a set piece. They all said more or less accumulate a lot of good material and then learn about the ways to present it in context.
Also in solea, there are dance escobillas that have arpeggio and alzapua, that work in solos as transitional sections to faster tempos or a buleria ending. All that stuff is golden and useful. And learning a good close is important, most set pieces have a typical kind of orgasmic alzapua close which is kind of a cliche'. You can close a solea with gravitas with a thoughtful and carefully played simple ending. An example would be Serva's solea solo in his solo CD. Also a must listen because of the masterful integration of material from so many other artists that you hear, but it's been totally 'Davidized'.
There's also the brain teasingly uncomplex Diego del Gastor falsetas, a few of them are emblematic of Moron style, and also reach back into the depths of time. And are difficult to play. Easy to play technically, fun to learn, but difficult to make them really work. That challenge is worth the time.
When I think intermediate solea, I don't think set piece, I think learning taste and how to manage putting material together and beginning to tweak it around yourself.
Probably worth mentioning too that ALL the Nino Ricardo and Melchor de Marchena work playing solea for singers should be listened to for the way they weave falsetas in and out with marking time. Even if your're playing solos that stuff is gold the standard for that era of guitar playing. And if you're headed into Jerez stuff later the the famous 'London Anthololgy' is a required listening for the solea.
The nice thing about the Pepe Habichuela A Mandeli solea is that it is a gateway into modern playing, but not super daunting. The positions it introduces and the chord textures are more 'modern' or as modern as you get until you bring 'the jazz chords' and you can get the texture with a little work. it will take hot chops to play that thing, but the parts you can mine out of it are really valuable.
I tend to think there is a cut off point to blending very contemporary falsetas and ways of feeling compas with older styles of falsetas. To me it seems better not to try to mash them together. Putting the old stuff and new stuff together is tricky and does not always work, unless you have a lot of mastery and experience. I think that is a confusing route, and a place you arrive at naturally later on.
|
|
|
|
