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Since I'm learning via, book, and forum, and have no time outside work for getting a teacher, maybe this is something that took me a while to grasp. Anyway - Hope this helps somebody learning in similar fashion.
A long time ago, on the forum Ricardo said go off, and work on basics. That there was a youtube vid about the movements that made up bulerias, that this was the real deal, and from it you could learn the basics.
Well I took this to heart, and have been working like mad doing just that.
After all this time, and learning Graf-Martinez, Manuel Granados stuff, Tom's handbooks, etc. I've mostly been learning chunks of compas, 12 beats at a time, simple falseta's, and some entire bigger pieces in tab.
Saturday night, I was looking at the tab, and it occured to me that these right hand patterns could be learned as 2-3 beat fragments. Rather than just as 12 beat chunks ... Maybe a bunch of you are out there, thinking ok of course, so what's new. Well to me it was like a revelation.
I took this approach on a tab I was learning, it was really giving me a hard time because a chord change from Bb to Amaj happened on upstroke, golpe, upstroke with the first upstroke on A, then the second on Bb. So I divided it into two little fragment and learned them individually, the first was "down/up, up, up" and the second was "golpe/up, up". I started looking over some other compas examples, and pattern 1 for example is very common and is used on beats 12,1,2 or 3,4,5 or 6,7,8 etc. frequently. So now I have two little patterns that are learned. If I learn a half dozen little patterns like this how many things can I assemble from them ... A lot. PLUS if they are three beat patterns I could play "pattern 1, pattern 1, pattern 2, woody woodpecker" and I know exactly where I am! Right back on beat 12 again.
Anyway, that really woke me up, and all of a sudden a lot of stuff became a bunch easier to play in just 1 day and a new way of looking at the same old stuff.
Great stuff Jeff . It is always so much more fun and more satisfying when we know that we are on the right track. One thing that I like to do is to have one beat ( if you are thinking of five beats for buleria ) 'white' just one downstroke on the beat and then jam with each alternate beat (inserting the patterns that you described ). Voila.... instant space and plenty of time to feel the compas.
You can also keep your interest by substituting different chords, maybe por arriba (F E) or C major (C G7 ) etc. And then you will be creating your own material, putting you in charge of the music and not the other way round.
Cool, man. Not sure if I got exactly what you meant, in any case I know what you mean about things going click.
A big click for me came when I started learning about half-compás in bulerías, llamadas starting on 1 or 7 (though the 7 has really become 1), not thinking in 12's but in 6's that can either be in 2x3's or 3x2's and ultimately not counting but feeling more. Of course more often than not the 12-compás applies and must be kept, still for some reason this way of thinking helped me with that as well.
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Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things
That's interesting. This can be a good study approach! I think it happens naturally after you play a lot of stuff. The same happened to me during solea playing. Keep it up!
Hi Jeff, sorry if I am falling into the old habit of bamboozling you again .
Instead of thinking A and Bflat just think a home chord and an alternate. So every rhythm that you play with these two chords you can play with any other pair so C can substitute for A and G7 for Bflat.
As for the bit about playing 'white' my apologies if it is not clear. I know promised to upload something explaining this months but my big push to use the my computer more actively for muscic died on its a## when upgraded to vista. Reasons my webcam wont work, my USB mic disables my computers output and records at a whisper, my yahama MIDI guitar needs a USB midi adaptor and I am too lazy to use sibelius input one note at a time and I can't play keyboard.
So sorry for all the excuses but.... I honestly think that by jove you've got it !! All that that suggestion was that if your are thinking Afor 3beats Bflat for 3 and then Bflat for four with beat ten being A for two (bog standard buleria compas playing )you could play only on the downbeat say for the A chords and and restrict yourself to improvising only on the Bflat bits, or vice versa. This should help you relax and feel the compas without having to fill it with notes. This is particularly good when you want to get used to playing at speeds above 200 without feeling under pressure.
An example would be (counts in brackets are not played )
A 1(2,3), Bb1+2+3+, A 1(2,3,4) , Bb 1+2+.
Keep up the good struggle. (with guitar that is .... not understanding me).
Thanks, I got it now. I'm finally getting this stuff to where it is making sense in my brain. Playing it consistently is taking time, but the process of learning is fun.
Now if somebody could kindly explain to me what exactly Llamada's are, and how they work that would be useful.
Llamada is just a "call" or signal that something is going to change in the music. Most often the dancer does it, a rhythmic step and clear body move, to warn the musicians about something going to change or the singer is going to come in or everyone will stop, etc, just depends what will happen next.
Llamadas usually start at 1 and you'll know one is coming when the dancer makes a signal (step back, raising arms for example) and doesn't accent beat 12.
As a beginner you'll feel a 12-beat compás starting on 12 differently than one starting at 1. Switching back and forth between the two feelings was tough for me as a beginner.
I was at a workshop with dancers doing llamadas after a half compas forcing me to pay attention to the rhythm in 6's. I started trying things out like accenting 3, 6, 9, 12 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 waiting for llamadas to come.
Again theoretically this could be the completely wrong way to approach this. But this helped me think less in terms of counting in 12's and more feeling the rhythm. Being able to freely interchange between half compáses in 2's and 3's helped me feel the rhythm and hold a strict 12 beat compás better.
Could be I'm just writing BS - possibly some logic just works for certain individuals.
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Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things
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. It is always so much more fun and more satisfying when we know that we are on the right track. 
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