Ricardo -> RE: Which scales? (Oct. 25 2019 12:59:03)
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So I want to analyse and study falsetas through scales. I do believe, this way I can learn the anatomy of falseta and can create my own falsetas later. Am I right? Wrong. You will be destined to compose nonsense like so many other wishy washy confused newbies to the genre. “Look at my flamingo music i composed with an E chord and phrygian scale!”. You won’t be composing any Solea or anything else of any meaning with that attitude. Even Paco de lucia has had to discard a lot of music that is simply bad taste to the genre after recording it and hearing how far off the mark it went. He admitted always going back to the source material to get back on track ie studying the work of the maestros that came before him. There is lots of room for personal creativity on flamenco guitar, but you won’t learn what is the right way until you have devoured a significant amount of traditional material first, there is simply no way around this that will result in anything worthwhile. Unless of course you WANT to settle for doing your own spanishy fakemenco stuff, which a lot of guitar players end up doing. So forget about analysis of the falseta or whatever, just learn how to play them and the compas patterns FIRST, to an acceptable level. Then later on if you want to pull in your music theory knowledge in a tasteful way you can tip toe into that carefully. Ok that is for FLAMENCO music only. Your theory situation is also in trouble. Ionian is a MODE. The Major scale is the same notes however it is used in a MAJOR KEY. Major and minor KEYS are part of what is called TONAL music, that uses chords or harmonic progressions that function via V-I dominant to tonic resolutions. Accidentals to the key signature are often done via SECONDARY DOMINANTS so the music can travel away then back toward the key center. The actual scales used in tonal music make use of any chromatic note available. MODES do not use functioning harmonic progressions. They necessarily by definition are STATIC harmonic spaces, with no accidentals introduced. If you played happy birthday melody for example using the typical chords, C-G, G7-C, C7-F, Fm-C-G7-C....you would say that it’s in the key of C major. If you then play happy birthday over top of an F major chord only and never change it, then you can say the melody is the LYDIAN MODE. That is why the CONTEXT matters what verbal description you use for a scale or melody. For the record modern music might use modal vamps to harmonize a melody, or vice versa, a special scale to colorize a simple chord vamp. Beat it by Michael Jackson for example is a song in E aeolian mode rather than like a song in E minor key. What it would need to be in E minor KEY would be a V-i, or a B major or B7 chord that resolves back to tonic, which the song never actually does. It floats in an unresolved way, however there is ambiguity due to the similarity in the scales. Some music might mix up proper tonal progressions with modal vamping. Entre dos Aguas by Paco de lucia starts with a flamenco progression in B phrygian key center. The scale starts in A Dorian but resolves to B phrygian using and accidental or change of scale. The next section is in E MINOR and uses a progression that finally resolves back to E minor from the B7 chord, again the scale changes. The final section is a MODAL vamp that uses only the E aeolian mode vamping on two chords, no change of scale. Despite that theoretical description above, it’s safe to say Paco never thought about it that way, he is simply interpreting a mix of Granaina falsetas via the Rumba compas, mixed with some of what he thinks might be “Jazz style” improvisation. An early experiment (for him, as miles Davis and others already tried this) of such a concept.
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