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Todd's latest Buleria
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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 RE: Todd's latest Buleria (in reply to Guest)
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Some people can master the guitar, but not life. They get mad because people want to buy CDs of teeny-boppers but can't appreciate the true skill they have painstakingly developed. Those people get madder and more bitter as the years go by, until they are absolutely intolerable. The sad fact of their lives drowns all the good they do in acrimony. Their stubbornness and unconventional nature helped them to excel at the solitary art of playing the guitar, but they can never get "over the hump" and realize how to excel at life, at career. I have a friend here in Phoenix like that. He is a lot better than Todd, and he lives in a trailer with two cats, and everyone who hears him play is enchanted, regular person or musician, but he's intolerable and angry and will probably go to his grave thus.
When in the presence of people like that, it's tempting to subject them to hero-worship. But they don't appreciate you for it. They just get pissed at you if you don't... the guitar is their only source of power in life, so they use it negatively. Once I was poking fun at Miguel, my friend who is in this boat, and his retort was that I would never learn how to play guitar. Remind you of comments such as: "I can tell you're not a good player, good players don't say those kind of things," or "You obviously don't have any talent and are bitter at those who do." That's how these people are. They are toxic. When you kiss their butt and compliment them and try to get them to make albums, go on tours, etc., they just despise you for it. You enable them in the same way that abused spouses of alcoholics sometimes enable their partners to live their dissolute lifestyles.
I have personal experience of musicians like this, and they live out their personas to a "T." It's a sad thing, but you just have to keep them at an arm's length or they will try to crush you. I have been burned too many times now... and I try to warn people from making the same mistake.
By the way, I don't look at it as a positive, necessarily, that pro-level guitarists hang out on amateur forums. It shows that they are not accepted and respected within the community of pro-level guitarists. Big fish in little pond syndrome.
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Date Jun. 29 2004 22:53:29
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zata
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul. 17 2003
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RE: Todd's latest Buleria (in reply to Escribano)
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quote:
I can feel a "what is compas?" thread coming on
Yes, I just realized Florian is using a different definition of compas, basically, he's looking for everything to work out to units of 12, which it probably does. But that's not what compás is about...if it were, you could select any music of Bach or Sting or Tiny Tim and if the total number of beats were divisible by 12, you could call it bulerías. Similarly, Alejandro Sanz was invited to participate in the fin de fiesta on Saturday. He plays guitar, is a great pop singer, knows flamenco and has a flamenco voice. Everything he sang began at the beginning of a compás and ended at the end. But he did not sing in compás.
In this clip you can tell the guitarist is beating or feeling 12s...it doesn't work. I've written endlessly about how Spanish flamencos feel bulerías is twos, and this snippet of music is the best demonstration I've seen of what happens when you don't. Because the entire thing is so uneven it's hard to say where it's the most off...I'm not listening for any musical phrasing, just raw rhythm. If you pay close attention to the phrasing, it pushes the ear into place in order to compensate.
You know how you can proofread something a dozen times but still end up leaving a simple word out? That's because you know the intent of the sentence and even though you might write "The girl pretty" you see "The girl is pretty". But dancers and singers aren't in the business of compensating for guitarists, and professional soloists in Spain play in compás.
The shakiest spots seem to be around 14-15, 19-20, 99-100....the notes are all there, but the compás went out to lunch.
Estela 'Zata'
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Date Jun. 30 2004 10:27:20
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zata
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul. 17 2003
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RE: Todd's latest Buleria (in reply to Jon Boyes)
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quote:
do you think Tomatito and Vicente Amigo ever play out of compas in the Bulerias they have recorded?
I never heard any Spanish flamenco guitarist, professional or amateur, play out of compás. And *certainly not* Tomatito or Vicente.
It’s necessary to consider the difference between how a foreigner and a Spaniard understands the word “compás”. When I started singing for dancers in the US there was always the occasional person who did not dance in compás...some of you out there are grinning in sympathetic recognition. Outside of Spain “in compás” and “out of compás” refers to whether or not the person added an extra note at the end, or chopped off two at the beginning for example. In other words, getting on top of a 12-beat structure, which is how compás is usually taught abroad. (Few students outside Spain realize that many Spanish flamencos never consider that beats can be assigned numerical values...normally only people who teach have used the system, or the new generation of guitarists who now read music).
In Spain, it’s taken for granted that everyone knows the structure of bulerías, and people who have not internalized it don’t try to do bulerías, so having poor or good compás refers to how well you manipulate it. The clip we are discussing probably has the 12s under control, but there’s no compás *in the Spanish sense*. In the sense that a singer or dancer cannot dip into it, and even palmas are nearly impossible unless constant adjustments are made.
This is happening because the musician has not contemplated the binary structure, the twos that are the heart and soul of bulerías, that hold together the varying levels of accentuation that are always in flux and only partially overlapping, that prevent involuntary acceleration and that allow singer, dancer and guitarist to improvise at will without screwing each other up. I once wrote that without internalizing the binary structure of bulerias, you can only achieve an impersonation of the form. This clip is just such an impersonation...it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, but it doesn’t quack.
At any fiesta in Spain you can feel the room rocking in twos. I spent a lot of virtual ink trying to explain this at flamencodisc and in the end, people who had been doing flamenco for thirty and forty years wrote that until they understood the importance of twos, they had never been able to get on top of bulerías, and just recently semi-professional guitarist and singer Richard ‘Quijote’ Black, a veteran of over 40 years, said that every day new dimensions of compás were unfolding thanks to twos.
AndyB got it right about the clip:
“If you just listen to the guitarwork without considering the
rhythm it sounds flashy. But then when I listen to the rhythm
it just sounds like random notes that don't have compas. Its
just a steady stream of notes in 1/8 time.”
The guitarist playing on the clip has a fine musical sense and respectable technique and should apply those gifts to forms other than bulerías. Agujetas and Chocolate can’t do bulerías either 
Estela ‘Zata’
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Date Jun. 30 2004 13:53:48
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Ron.M
Posts: 7051
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Scotland
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RE: Todd's latest Buleria (in reply to zata)
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quote:
At any fiesta in Spain you can feel the room rocking in twos
Estela,
You mentioned that a while ago now and I started to listen that way.
Also, when watching Ondajerez's broadcasts from the Jerez peñas, I could hear exactly what you meant.
I'm not very experienced in Bulerias, but this thinking in 3, 6, 8, 10, 12 etc somehow "seemed" wrong. I couldn't really believe that Spanish Flamencos were counting all this stuff out especially after a few tintos LOL!
People the world over like music they can simply tap their feet to, not have to remember complicated cycles, and 2's definitely is the main rhythm base that folk can relate to in Bulerias.
My final conversion came when Melchor sent me a video taped off Ondajerez TV which featured one of my favourite guitarists Diego Amaya.
In the Bulerias I could clearly see his shoulders moving and foot tapping in 2's.
cheers
Ron
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Date Jun. 30 2004 14:25:22
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