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I would like to learn this style of playing. It sounds like alzapua to me but I'm not sure. My rasgueo is improving but my alzapua is really bad right now. I would like to find similar falsetas to practice alzapua on.
It doesn't sound like alzapua to me, although it would be possible to do single string alzapua like that. Amir Haddad is an Ud player as well as a Flamenco player and can do that sort of stuff when just noodling around.
Your example sorta sounds like it's being played balalaika pick style and it's hard to say if there's even a second guitar there as well, or is double tracked.
Anyway, this is not conventional alzapua as you would normally play it.
It's not really useful for you to learn.
Learn normal alzapua and you will be able to use it in heaps of palos and falsetas.
Yes, it is a guitar. I thought he was playing alzapua similar to Sabicas at the end of Sabicas' Arabian Fantasy. In this second clip you can hear he starts playing open D, open A, open D octave, open A again and then what I thought was alzapua on the bottom strings.
IMO playing in open tunings like that, you can do all sorts of fiddly, noodly crap on the fretboard and it sounds interesting and great......for about 30 seconds at most! Then it becomes boring.
My advice is still to study "normal" 3 stroke alzapua. This will be better investment of your time if you are interested in playing Flamenco.
I always make my own exercises. A combination of pulgar and 1 sting upstroke techniques are far from uncommon in modern day flamenco. It can't hurt to practice them as well, on top of the regular types of alzapua.
you can start with a pulgar/"alzapua" exercise covering the 3 base strings. On top of playing them in the normal direction you ad a couple up strokes with your thump.
E: downstroke open E sting A: downstroke open A string D: downstroke open D string d: upstroke open D string
Pre exercices: accents on each 1st note of the group
Pre exercice: E-AD Pre exercice: ADdD Pre exercise: E-AD, ADdD Pre exercice: E-A-,D---
You can play and feel it as 4 beats (1 and 2 and 3 and 4and) or you can feel it like a slow tangos with accents on 1 and 3 (1 and 3 and 1 and 3 and).
If you tune your guitar to zambra (dropped D) and place 1 finger on the A string at 5th fret you more or less imitate the recording you posted.
I create exercises like this for all the problems i want to solve, mostly for serious study and sometimes just for the fun of it (like this one). Don't forget you have to study some serious alzapua as well.
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