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.
About a year ago I wrote two pieces explaining the structure of cantin~as, solea, bulerias, and solea por bulerias for dancers. These may also be of interest to guitarists:
Nice work. There is one little thing regarding music theory that is a pet peeve of mine. When using roman numerals to describe chords based on a key, the point is to differentiate a progression (I-> IV or I->vi or I->ii etc) from it's resolution (V->I). So when things move away from the key center, normally "V of ..." is used. For example in Key of C major, the progression C-C7-F-D7-G-G7-C, is numerated I-V7/IV-IV-V7/V-V-V7-I. In other words, you don't use I7 or II7, because those chords are altered from their normal state of being in the chord scale, for the sake of tonicizing some other chord or key center. Another way to see it is those chords are borrowed from a different key, and so their roman numeral function needs to be borrowed as well.
Carrying this idea into flamenco means a couple of things. First of all, Flamenco has a very different discipline than classical music or normal "western tonal music". So Roman numerizing might not be the best idea from the get go....but....if one wants to try it, you will notice the Cambio is a perfect spot to use the "V of ..." numeration. This will occur in other ways depending on specifics (for example most of the cantes de La mina make use of several secondary dominant functions). Pretending a flamenco form such as por Arriba is really C major or A minor can work too, but I think most will agree that is not correct. (Cambio would simply be V-I, so why call it a cambio?). Even still, the E chord does not exist in C major, and would have to be described as V/vi, certainly NOT as "III".
The II7-I flamenco resolution, in my mind, could translate as a new variant of the classical period Aug6 practice, though left to hang on the V as the final resolution is odd. In jazz discipline this is all perfectly normalized by the "tritone sub" practice of substituting the V-I resolution with bII-I. Some other odd practices that look weird on paper are things like the "reverse cambio", M. Morao and other jerezanos copied from R. Montoya's era, only performed "por medio" is a good one (the cambio cante melody is harmonized F-C7, as a sort of soft or counter resolution perhaps to keep the phrygian tonal identity?). At the end of the day, flamenco has it's own discipline and vocabulary that needs to be learned above anything else.
Nice! ! Thanks Ricardo. I can follow most of what you're saying, but the "/" notation has me flummoxed - specifically, anything that appears on the right hand side of each /.
Printable Version
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread