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Composing Flamenco
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Ricardo
Posts: 15165
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to CarloJuan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: CarloJuan Hi, it has been a long time since I posted here in the forum. But it's good to be back. I'm back to music for good and decided I'd pursue my life's dream of just playing and performing guitar. Anyway, so much for my drama. Guys, how do you begin to learn how to compose flamenco? It's something I have been a little confused with. Though thinking about it excites me, it manages to make my head hurt because how do you compose awesome sounding falsettas that would manage to fit a 12 beat compas? I could imagine it would take loads of creativity to try composing one. It baffles me how Gerardo Nunez came up with that awesome falsetta in "Hacia mi" or how Vicente magically fits a jazzy line in an Alegria. Apparently, these nuevo flamenco geniuses have managed to escape from being trapped with predictable sounding falsettas and they use all sorts of odd timing, accents and syncopations. Any suggestions? tips or help on beginning composing flamenco? Thanks! This topic comes up a lot. Sometimes I am nice and political about it, other times not. Sorry but it is my "not political" day. At risk of hurting feelings (again sorry) I will say the same as I have in the past. If you HAVE TO ASK, then you simply SHOULD NOT be composing or trying to compose anything. For risk have being not authentic and not having done your homework and revealing you have not enough hours of study under the belt yet. Your goal should be the same as any player, to play with taste and style and flamenco sound and feeling, that's all. Composing comes when you have no other way to express what you need to. So that means you dont' compose, you should be working on and studying the maestros and the tradition. Stick with that for now.
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CD's and transcriptions available here: www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Aug. 21 2013 20:23:10
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1789
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to CarloJuan)
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I once had extremely and unrealistic high demands when it came to composing. I wanted it to be totally unique and threw away everything that even remotely reminded me to music of others, even when it came from totally different styles of music. As a result hardly anything survived and whatever did often turned out to be a frankenstein composition of partly recycled material after all (you might not notice for years that your wonderful melody is stolen from a record you played (and disliked) years before or your material has the same harmonic/rhythmic setup as a very famous song. Composing is basically a matter of just siting down with the intend to create and there can be various ways/reasons to start. Lots of the material i made was made because there was a need of it. When i received my first lesson in musical theory i was told to compose 3 melodies for second next week lesson. I never composed anything before (although my father somehow saved a forgotten composition i made at the age of 12). So i suddenly found myself in my student room at the age of 24 with the task to create for the first time ever. I sat down and surged for inspiration..... the first days i failed to produce the goods because nothing came up or it turned out to be stollen. But suddenly i found a theme of 6 notes that turned out to be a great spark of inspiration. Out of nothing i produced a wonderful polyphonic melody with great view and development that came to me with incredible ease, like the song wrote itself once the first notes were there. Like many of the best songs i and others composed it was indeed composed in the same amount of time that is needed to play it. I once illustrated this phenomenon using my song and an equally catching song of Ive Duteil that also seems to writes itself after the first notes are there. It was at that exact moment (10 years after i composed it) i suddenly realized that the wonderful and pretty adventures harmonic development of both pieces were basically identical. But being so different in style of music the similarity might not even strike the original composer. When i played it to 1 of my musical heros (Flairck who produced 22 self composed records) they wanted to hear it over and over again. Another beautiful song i composed that wrote itself in seconds turned out to have a identical harmony and basically the same melody as 1 of the most famous songs in the world. It took me 10 years to realize that song was already written and most people are not able to guess the original (although they all know it). This kinds of thing happen over and over again. Although composing is simply a matter of sitting down with the intention to create i hardly ever do so, which is a shame because i believe i do have a certain talent to recycle music in decent and tasteful way. Part of the material i made was made because there was a need of it (compositorial tasks for my former musical education, lack of appealing/playable alternatives or simply creating material to fit the dance choreographies i encountered). Still most was made because i felt like it. All you need is a spark of inspiration. I recently run trough a collection of webcam recordings i made over the years, mainly small takes to save a musical idea as well as deliberate improvisation sessions (which happens to be a great way to find yourself some compositorial sparks). But like i said before, composing basically is just a matter of sitting down with the intention to create. Sometimes you struggle, sometimes you hit gold and sometimes you find 1 or more sparks you can work on later (a nice chord, phrase or whatever) but it all comes down to sit down and just do it. I feel much happier now i have embraced the option to accept influences (or even quotes) of others. The general development is you start studying/playing material of others, you change a couple of variations to your abilities..... over time you put in a little more of yourself varying from altering a note here and there, replacing some variations for ones you created yourself and gradually work your way up. One day you might end up playing a whole piece you created yourself.
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Date Aug. 21 2013 21:10:42
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pink
Posts: 570
Joined: Jan. 8 2013
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to aeolus)
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Subjective,,,,,,,,,,,and you know it my dear, eighty something year old agitator!! Best pink
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Date Aug. 21 2013 22:10:42
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to CarloJuan)
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Here are a couple ideas that come to mind: 1. confine yourself to a melody with only chord tones 2. confine yourself to a melody with 1, 2, or 3 notes 3. confine yourself to a melody of only eigth notes 4. etc. (that is, find one element and force yourself to work with it) 5. find some flamenco singing and transcribe the melody and arrange it for guitar 6. now vary that melody in as many ways, and as using as many devices, as possible (make some of the notes longer, some shorter, use different rhythmic patterns, change the chords, change the scale, etc) But I do agree that generally the student should spend way more time imitating and learning than composing.
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Date Aug. 22 2013 0:00:54
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SLJ
Posts: 85
Joined: Jul. 12 2013
From: Houston Texas
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to CarloJuan)
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I don't know if composing and making "stuff" up, would be similar,, but Ive always tried to do the making stuff up bit. On any instrument. When you "make it up" its just following your ear,,, and for me,,, what your fingers are able to accomplish. I made up something yesterday,,, that just kinda happened ,,, it had some horquilla,{I hope} some tremolo, and some rasquedos and its fun to play , and hopefyully, playing this simple will get easier, and it sort of evolve. as far as it being a composition, for me to call it that would be silly,
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Date Aug. 22 2013 14:33:53
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Composing Flamenco (in reply to Dave K)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Dave K "composing flamenco" is an oxymoron. Ah, you would prefer 'compostion in flamenco' or 'flamenco composing' or 'writing flamenco music' or 'composing flamenco music'. Well one of them may avoid aggravating your personal grammatical foibles. But why oxymoron ? I mean em flamenco music does you know........exist..... I mean I've got that right, haven't I. Like I am wearing shoes and you know shoes have been around for a long time so I guess no one individual invented shoes. Kind of 'composed by anonymous' eh ?. But like these shoes, you know the ones I'm wearing, the ones I mentioned earlier, they were designed by someone, weren't they ? Or,,,,,,wait a minute maybe you are right maybe the supreme father shoe is so awesome that no one man can take credit for desingning a pair of shoes. No that's not it maybe you mean that shoe designers aren't really designers at all. Not like chair designers. I mean this chair I'm sitting on is like awesome man better than shoes, why walk when you can sit. Yeah this sure is comfy. Hold on a minute!!!!!!! Are you saying my chair was designed by a buftie, are you calling my chair pretentious. (hold on GB, breathe... put that pint tumbler down.... smile) Well, maybe chairs should be more like shoes after all. It took me a while but I got there. Thanks Dave, that was like you know deep man but I think we all learned something. D. NEWSFLASH Good grief my shoes have just disappeared, and the chairs turning into a rock...
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Date Aug. 23 2013 0:45:16
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