Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
RE: Bad experiences with dancers? (in reply to Shawn Brock)
quote:
She would call a chord a beat and so on.
sometimes the biggest hurdle to get over is the terminology and language
terms like "chord", "beat", "break", "llamada", "cierre", "remate", etc. etc. can mean different things to different people.... sometimes they are used by the same person to mean different things....
often dancers have taken classes, but they haven't actually learned how to ask what they want themselves. Sounds like she hasn't worked with a guitarist before...
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
RE: Bad experiences with dancers? (in reply to Shawn Brock)
In my own limited experience with this stuff I’ve learned a number of valuable lessons. One is that, as many others have pointed out in numerous past threads, the accompanist’s role is the most challenging one and it’s one that bears lots of different extra-musical responsibilities. There’s an element of “artist management” in your relationship to the people you work with and when you find yourself in situations where things are not going the way they should, and you recognize that it’s not your fault, you need to figure out ways to nudge things back in the right direction without bruising egos and making enemies.
It’s an inescapable reality that sometimes people with relatively lower levels of competence will find for themselves a relatively higher place of authority, and sometimes in such cases you just have to deal with that and abide by the old flamenco idiom “you got to dance with them what brung you.” I think it’s best to develop an agreeably stoic, tight-lipped persona and try to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in, whether it’s ideal or not. Less than ideal situations can lead to better opportunities if you stick things out. All you can do is perform your job to the best of your abilities and do what you can to help others toward that same end, and if a given situation ultimately proves to be truly impossible, then bow out gracefully and with professional discretion. I think you should try everything you can to fix whatever problems you face, but after a certain point it becomes counterproductive to work with someone who’s truly incompetent if they end up hampering your own development as a player. So if you gotta bail, bail, but try to keep in mind that you might be short-circuiting future opportunities if you jump ship too soon, and you might be closing certain doors for yourself if you start alienating people when you’re just first trying to break into the community beyond your bedroom.
Which brings me to lesson two: the flamenco world in the U.S. is pretty small. Each little regional community might have all sorts of connections that aren't immediately apparent, and it doesn’t take too many degrees of separation to link up crappy amateurs with top pros. So it’s best to play it cool in your dealings with people and to be discrete in the sort of talk you engage in. It’s a small community and while griping, gossiping and venting are all part of the deal, it’s a good idea to be circumspect in what you say and who you say it to. The World Wide Web is NOT the safest place to tell tales out of school. I don’t wanna tell you your business, but in this thread you’ve openly painted this person in a pretty bad light and continue to pile on damning details in each post. You’ve also shared the nature of some private correspondence between you and another member of what sounds like a really tiny scene, and this could possibly create an awkward situation for her. Whether or not this teacher knows what she's doing, and I'll take you at your work that she doesn't, this might not be the best place to vent your frustrations about it. All of the chatter in this thread is accessible to anyone with a computer (or an iphone) and just because someone isn’t signed up here as a member doesn’t mean they might not be reading this. Maybe the teacher will never see or hear of any of this, but you never know and you can’t really be sure what sort of unintended consequences airing this stuff in public might have. There's no question that people are talking all kinds of mess behind one another's backs out in the real world, and obviously people mix it up in direct confrontations here on the Foro all the time, but you see very little airing of dirty laundry and open griping about people's professional connections here, and I'm sure there's plenty good reason for that. Just throwin' it out there....
RE: Bad experiences with dancers? (in reply to mark indigo)
Shawn i blame you for my bad dancing hahah This reminds me of when other students in my class blame the guitar for their playing....although sometimes they have a valid argument but most of the time....No. like when the guitar is just a pile of #### or when the guitar is setup like a steel string...but being played for classical or flamenco. But yeah Shawn i'm sure there's nothing wrong with your playing. Anytime somebody doubts me...the first thing in my mind is " F U" the second thing is "No matter how good or not good i am at playing guitar...i'm always going to practice and try to get better so it really doesn't matter as long as i keep on learning." One example in my experience has been as follows: Me and my guitar teacher are talking about tremolo and he's like "ohh your not ready for tremolo" so you guys already know the first thing in my mind. So over the summer, i didn't really focus on this as a technique but I'm following "La guitarra flamenca" by juan martin and i'm on the 2nd chapter which is Alegrias...and he has you learn flamenco tremolo early on. So the first day of attempting tremolo....of course i sucked...how can you expect to be good at something before trying it. But i actually picked it up really fast and by the 2nd or 3rd day i could already do it on the High E string....the easiest one. The point is if i had said yes master i am not ready for tremolo, i will not practice it....of course i'm not going to learn it!!! Everything takes practice, and you shouldn't have a teacher that tries to hold you back. Now i do kind of understand when people think that learning a different technique first might compliment....like free stroke for tremolo...but at the same time they're not Exactly the same thing. In my opinion doing a series of free strokes on the same string is easier than doing free strokes on a bunch of different strings in quick succession. And if they truly do compliment each other; then it shouldn't matter the order in which you study and learn them. but i guess a lot of people have trouble with tremolo. For me i do suck at free strokes, but somehow i can tremolo on the high E string for now.
Haha and now i guess i am venting a bit as well =O. Ohh and my vent is kinda off topic into my experience, like i said before i'm sure there's nothing wrong with your playing. or at least i would have no idea either way...other than that your beat pattern that you wrote out matches my book ;0
Posts: 233
Joined: Apr. 7 2005
From: Adelaide, Australia
RE: Bad experiences with dancers? (in reply to Shawn Brock)
I hear what you're saying - several dancers here in Australia will teach choreographies with sections that are shifted a beat or two out of time - mostly due to a lack of understanding of the phrasing of escobillas and the joining bits where an escobilla joins a subida into a buleria ending, or confusion with the two types of escobilla commonly used in solea. This is partly the fault of guitarists here from a generation ago (won't mention names) wrongly phrasing the music, such as treating the 1 of an escobilla as the strong downbeat. So then you have the choice of pointing this out and arguing, or playing the section incorrectly, or standing your ground, in which case the section fits with the music like a shoe on the wrong foot. I should also add we have some awesome dancers here in Australia as well - and some of those patiently put up with me 20 years ago when I started accompanying and new nothing.