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Sabicas was self taught being up in Pamplona with his record player and his excellent ear. He didn’t translate the above to his tremolo as you can see here, it’s all tirando at 4:14. That’s NOT the typical thing. The typical thing we all learned from Niño ricardo below, it’s quite a different sensation.
I see what you mean. I will try to listen for it when listening to relevant pieces to train my ear to differentiate. It gives me something to work on too. I appreciate it. Also, thanks to all who have weighed in on the subject.
Sabicas was self taught being up in Pamplona with his record player and his excellent ear. He didn’t translate the above to his tremolo as you can see here, it’s all tirando at 4:14. That’s NOT the typical thing. The typical thing we all learned from Niño ricardo below, it’s quite a different sensation.
So, what do you think about this at 1:51? Rest stroke thumb or not?
Most of the time I saw Sabicas in person was in the early 1960s. He held the guitar in the old school style, feet flat on the floor, lower bout on the right thigh, neck pointing upward at a fairly high angle, guitar supported by the weight of the right upper arm along the bass side of the lower bout.
In those days, to play flamenco, you had to hold the guitar that way, and your guitar had to have pegs on it, not machines.
So that's the way I learned to play flamenco. I also played classical. I bring it up because the old school flamenco style presented my right hand to the strings differently from the classical position. The old school flamenco position moved the right hand toward the bridge and very much encouraged thumb rest strokes.
When I returned to Austin from the Army and Central America, I hung out with some of Eddie Freeman's students. That's where I learned that thumb rest stroke in tremolo was obligatory, not just optional. Presumably Freeman picked this up during his time in Spain, as with the rest of his technique.
Long after I no longer saw Sabicas on a regular basis, his technique in videos changed. He adopted the pseudo classical position, with a foot rest. I say "pseudo" because much of the time, maybe most of the time, the upper bout didn't touch his left thigh. It was almost the old school flamenco position, just with his left leg hiked up. Sometimes in rasgueados the upper bout would rest on his left thigh.
When I saw him frequently in 1961-62 it was much closer to his days accompanying Carmen Amaya than in the 1980s, when he had been playing solo for quite a while, often with a mic. There are a few films showing Sabicas, sometimes with other guitarists, blasting away without amplification accompanying Amaya's machine-gun taconeo in noisy rooms. Later on his touch seems to be lighter.
The last time I saw Sabicas in person was in San Antonio, Texas in 1965. He played an Arcangel Fernandez blanca without amplification in a 2000-seat auditorium. His touch was difinitely not light. Sitting on the front row you could hear the notes echo off the plaster back wall. He buzzed loudly all the time, the only time I ever heard him buzz. I couldn't really tell whether his thumb was apoyando in tremolo. It didn't occur to me that it might not be. But it was loud and it buzzed.
So, what do you think about this at 1:51? Rest stroke thumb or not?
Actually, if you back up to see at 1:38, he starts the tremolo iami then lands a nice P rest stroke. That’s the basic concept ive been trying to convey all along here. So he starts as rest stroke and a long the way he often does tirando thumb, and shifts back to rest, and vice versa. So a nice mix of both. But the example I pointed to earlier was to make a distinction between the two ways because it does feel different. Clearly Sabicas is running with BOTH concepts, and I don’t feel this fact is helpful to students of this stuff. I am certain he was not thinking too hard about it. I have no problem with students that can do both, but I do have a problem with students that refuse to rest because they can’t do it and never experienced the correct feeling of it. They are missing out on the whole world that Ricardo AND Sabicas clearly enjoy, and therefore miss out on all the fun of tremolo IMO.
Work on it like iamip......iamip......iamip.....etc.
Learn the whole melody that way.
You certainly didn't make it explicit. Do you mean it's the index finger (i shown in bold) which drives the melody forward? Not the thumb. iamiP iamiP iamiP
Work on it like iamip......iamip......iamip.....etc.
where the fingers lead into next bass note like a grace note. Keep Fast fingers, but leave a looooooong pause after each bass note. Try to rest pulgar as often as you can. Learn the whole melody that way. Even in slow but steady tempo. After you got it slow, gradually close the gap between p-i. Don’t worry about even quintuplets at first. Eventually you will adjust the actual finger speed DOWN a hair to match up that tricky ipi rhythm. Most Flamencos don’t use the technique as perfect 5s anyway, it’s supposed to breath a lot in the space after pulgar accents.
The question is when it comes to playing tremolo in general does i fall exactly on the beat? If iami part is played as grace notes then the thumb emphasizes the onset of the beat which is not what Pepe Romero explains in the video above.
The question is when it comes to playing tremolo in general does
There is no such thing, only specific cases. For Romero, he is teaching to emphasize the off beat, not change where the beat actually is. The Bass is still beat, it is how the damn music was written. He wants the student to emphasize the “e” of “1e&ah, 2e&ah” etc, in order to achieve more evenness and ultimately lyricism.
Classical guitar has a few tremolos but they are very different conceptually than how the flamenco guitarist uses them. If you in fact need a metronomic pulse, well of course the thumb notes will land on those.
If you have a problem hearing shifted rhythms where accents are not on the beat and pull you into a different groove, maybe this will help you: