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Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
on aire
One of Ron's constant themes and one that recurs constantly in any discussion of flamenco is "aire." But what is aire? The quality of "flamenco" that occurs when the musician conjures the proper mood by his playing. It seems closely related to musical phrasing, but they cannot be the same thing. If you listen to flamenco, it generally is recorded with a lot of reverb. This reverb is part of the "aire", for it colors any emotional response. The fact that flamencos are so enamored of this particular effect is odd, but has certainly created a "flamenco sound" to so many of our records.
So the reverb, part of the recording environment, is one component of aire.
Now, phrasing must be very much a part of this too. Phrasing, the way the music is interpreted by a musician, must contribute aire--well, this is the very thesis of music itself.
Equipment must also, be a part, because flamenco cannot be played on a distorted electric guitar. The sound of the guitar must also be a component of aire--an old Conde better, in some degree, than a new Yamaha.
Now, as far as phrasing goes, phrasing is how the notes are moved, pulled, and pushed. We like to say that there are notes on the page, but most of music is really what is not on the page. I like the analogy of a transcription of a lively conversation in a foreign language. We look on the paper and can determine much of what's going on, but when we try to read it out loud, it certainly doesn't sound like it did originally. This leaves out entirely body language, where most of true human communication is supposed to occur.
Phrasing, like language accent, is supposed to be nigh impossible for the musical foreigner to acquire. Unless you are raised in Andalucia, you will never play a bulerias with the proper sound, the proper feel--nor will you speak the Andalucian dialect with the same level of proficiency as a native.
One of the ways I have worked on my Spanish accent is to listen to gringos speak it. There are certain things they do wrong, which I can hear is wrong, and which helps me eliminate these errors in my "intrepretation" of Spanish. By the same token, I like to listen to an amateur play a piece, and then a pro. Because the errors an amateur will commit are thus highlighted...and the solution presented. Everyone on this website can listen to good playing and think "Now that's aire!" But how many of us can execute and conjure good aire?
It seems to me that if we can recognize good aire, good musical accent, there must be a template within our subconscious of this aire. If we can tell what good music is, that means somewhere there is a set of rules in our minds of what good music is.
To me the encouraging conclusion is that we do have, to some extent, the template of "good aire" within us. The next step is to somehow match it to our playing. If our technical abilities are good, then we must simply match up what we know to be good with what we do. Once we accomplish that, what we have done will be good!
To me the encouraging conclusion is that we do have, to some extent, the template of "good aire" within us. The next step is to somehow match it to our playing. If our technical abilities are good, then we must simply match up what we know to be good with what we do. Once we accomplish that, what we have done will be good!
Mike, I agree with much you have said, but I think the use of "simply" in the above paragraph is perhaps a misleadingly simple conclusion. In actual practice it's the gap between knowing what sounds good and being able to execute it, regardless of acquired technique that is mysterious. I'm still puzzling that out myself. For if I can't play a few bars of chording compas and a simple falseta without sounding distinctly "foreign" then what's the point of moving on to learn more complicated things when I'm clearly missing much of the content already? Maybe I'm mad, but this is what keeps me hovering around the basics all the time. In fact, I'm pretty sure I am mad, (but couldn't care less now, 'cos I'm already mad.)
Yes, I think I can. Sometimes when I'm playing I hear it. But when I play back the recording it's not there! So logically it does have to do with technique, but it's not an easy thing to isolate and practise. I think it's something separate from the guitar....an attitude maybe?
I think in a way it is seperate from the guitar, because it can exist in singing, dancing, and maybe even palmas. But I think you have to have the technqiue to execute it. I have a gig to leave to in a second, but, I think we have to forget how the Andalucians learn and try to figure out how we can learn it. If you listen to a stream of eighth notes, you can hear that. If the second eighth note in each pair lags a bit, that's swing. But if you dont' have the capacity to really execute or recognize eighth notes, then you can't play swing. I think flamenco is the same, but more complex. We have to be able to hear, and play the simplest rhtyhmic and dynamic units, and after that develop the ability to hear the "divine differences."
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria If you listen to flamenco, it generally is recorded with a lot of reverb. This reverb is part of the "aire", for it colors any emotional response. The fact that flamencos are so enamored of this particular effect is odd, but has certainly created a "flamenco sound" to so many of our records.
Fashions in production, nothing more. Go listen to Guajiras De Lucia and other recordings of the time and try and spot the reverb - sounds like Paco is playing in your living room about three feet in front of you.
Its just engineers responding to a commercial market - the public are used to a 'big' sound and anything without reverb, compression etc will sound wimpy. Flamenco guitars with their light sounds and short sustain will have your average engineer reaching for that reverb control in no time.
I agree with all your other points Mike, except your concluding paragraph. I'm not convinced that this can be learned in the simple way you suggest - I don't think there's a simple 'technique' solution. I think we can come close by thinking along those lines "..well Tomatito is playing that bit really quiet, so I will too.." or whatever, but ultimately I think this is something that only works unconciously. As an example, we have some great impressionists on UK TV who do a good job of sounding like famous people by copying their mannerisms and speech paterns, but ulimately they will always sound like impressions, and not like the real thing.
I think for something to become part of your subconcious, you have to be totally immersed in it so that it becomes the natural way you play, in the same way that you do not think about speaking, you just do it.
You know something, this is not an exclusively flamenco issue - we used to have these exact same discussions about blues/rock guitar over in another forum years ago. The typical scenario was this - "I am using exactly the same equipment as Clapton/SRV/Van Halen (insert guitarist of your choice), and I am playing exactly the same notes in this particular solo. ..how come it doesn't sound as good/authentic, etc?"
The point that Ron makes - 'attitude' - was something that always came out of the debate, and several guitar teachers have picked up on this in magazines. You don't just play the notes, you have to really mean what you say with them.
I remember a great texan blues lesson by 'Snail Pace' from UK blues/rock combo 'The Hamsters', who apart from transcribing all this stuff that Stevie Ray Vaughan plays with lots of hints on timing and on execution etc, went to great lengths to talk about conjuring the right attitude. He went on about imagining yourself standing in this seedy bar in Texas, surrounded by broken bottles and p***ed up rednecks screaming out. You just broke up with your girlfirend that morning and life is ****. The only thing that keeps you going is your guitar.
...NOW play the solo!
I think the day we get less self concious about flamenco is the day we become better flamenco guitarists.
Interesting points, Jon. And I agree. But attitude is only part of the equation. My pet analogy with music is with language. And if you don't learn the basic grammar, usage, and study the accent vigorously, you will always sound like a gringo. In fact we all probably know people who have lived for 30 years in a foreign coutnry and still have a strong accent. Does this mean that a foreigner is incapable of learning how to speak with a correct accent? I think not. But it does argue strongly against immersion as being the operative factor here.
I think music works along very similiar lines. Yes, we have to be immersed. For flamenco, the ideal would be living in Jerez, I suppose, and partying every night and taking lessons with el Carbonero or something. But even then, you would have to be able to listen and understand--consciously or subconsciously what is going on. I think that the operative quality we all need here is the ability to listen, and to understand. This ist he point of my earlier posts. Now I think we can all learn the proper sound and aire from listening to CDs. Immerse yourself in them. Listen to them in the car, bring a discman and listen to them on the bus. Play flamenco.
But it's not enough. We have to nurture the ability to learn this material, not just listen to it. I know lots and lots of people who have lived here for 3, 4 decades and still cannot speak English although many of their acquainances speak English. We have to learn from what we are listening to by analysis. Simple immersion works for kids, not adults. Our brains are hardened and inscribed, we have to rework them by working hard.
It is interesting that you talked about impersonators, because yesterday I was thinking about how actors do accents. Of course maybe these accents sound silly in some cases. But you Catherine Zeta Jones is from the British Isles, she's from the same place my dog is from...Wales. Yet when she is in a movie, she sounds like she's from America. Now, I am a native speaker, an expert of American English, and she would have me fooled. So it can be done.
Attitude is an essential component of music and musical execution, no doubt. But I reject that it ist he main component of playing with an Andalucian accent. My friend Arturo believes this...he says that Spaniards have a unique way of feeling the music, that the emotions they have come out in their playing. That's hogwash, I think. That's like saying because Spaniards are loud and like to argue, that if I become agitated and contentious that my accent will all of a sudden be authentically Andalucian.
The attitude must be there, but pretending I'm a sharecropper isnt going to make me a bluesman, and pretending I like sherry won't make me a flamenco. Yes, this mental roleplaying is useful and perhaps essential, but there is a lot of other work to be done--I would argue on the minute level of analysis.
Posts: 1827
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: Living in Granada, Andalucía
RE: On aire and Blood Weddings cast (in reply to Guest)
Hi Andy,
Blood Wedding is my favourite play ever and one I have seen many times in many different ways/languages. The best was a children's group from Pinos Puente ( next to Lorca's home village Fuente Vaqueros) where the moon was the most seductive silvery shimmery almost mermaid like character. The worst was at the New Vic in London which used Aboriginal music and tibetan wind chimes. It was in English, translated by the poet Ted Hughes, not that the problem was the translation as such, but it lost so much of what the flamencos would call 'aire'.
Last weekend I went to see Lorca's play "Doña Rosita" at the theatre in Granada. They used flamenco to intro and outro each act, Emilio Maya on guitar and Antonio Campos singing, which worked so well, like a Greek chorus. The amazing thing for me was that I had never seen the humour in the play until I saw it done by Granadinos, as it contains a particular Granadino humour, the 'mallafolla' of status and put downs. I commented to the man sitting next to me about the humour and how Lorca was really taking the piss out of his fellow Granadinos pretensions. My neighbour made the comment that it was the last play he wrote before he was killed and I said " maybe that's why they killed him". Ooops, his face trned to stone, you dont joke about a town that 'killed its poet' ( to quote Ian Gibson) and I quickly said " Sorry that was a bad joke" and luckily he laughed, probably at my embarrassment.
Posts: 1827
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: Living in Granada, Andalucía
RE: On aire and Blood Weddings cast (in reply to Guest)
Great review Andy. I like his explanation for calling the play Blood Weddings and his understanding of the forces at work in the play, society and expectation versus destiny and basic instincts.
I wrote my thesis on this play and the other two rural dramas, Bernarda Alba and Yerma. It was called "Las Fuerzas de la Naturaleza en las Dramas Rurales de Lorca" and compared Lorca's attitude to these forces to those of Nietzsch and Schopenhaur. It sounds heavy going but it was all about mystery, duende, superstition, sexuality and belief systems. I was also lucky in that Harold l got involved recording a homage to Lorca for his centenary and because of this I got to meet Lorcas family, his biographer and many people close to the poet's work and eventually came to live in Granada. Thanks to Lorca I am here.
Using Stevie Ray as a blues exemplar is an interesting kink. In the USA blues is as much Afro-American music as flamenco is Gitano music in Spain. From the beginning of blues history there were a very few whites who played blues professionally, but it was Black people's music until the '60s. The present phenomenon of white people playing blues to a white audience is a recent thing.
When Stevie Ray was a kid he used to hang around Antone's in Austin where his big brother was in the house band, the Thunderbirds. Antone brought/revived the leading Black blues artists to Austin and presented them to a largely white, largely University-oriented audience. The Thunderbirds were white, but they got a university education in the blues by playing with all the Black greats who came through.
Stevie Ray's idol was Albert King. If you're familiar with King, you can hear him in Stevie's playing all the time. King came to Austin and Stevie's big brother asked if Stevie could play with him in public. King was notoriously grouchy and possessive of the spotlight, but finally relented. Stevie took a chorus and King cut him, thinking that was that. Stevie came back and topped King's chorus. Surprised, King took another to put Stevie in his place. Instead of folding, Stevie came back at him. King started to grin, and kept Stevie on stage with him the rest of the night trading licks.
So how did a white boy learn a Black man's music? The Vaughn brothers immersed themselves in the blues from the time they picked up guitars as young teenagers in Fort Worth. They imitated the masters by copping stuff off records. They lived it day and night from the time they were in Junior High School. Eventually they learned the language and earned the acceptance, maybe even the admiration of the likes of Albert King, Muddy Waters and other greats. But they put in literally thousands of hours of absorbing the music until it became second nature to them. Their guitar playing was in the authentic blues idiom. But Stevie Ray's vocals never sounded Black, and I don't think they would have if he'd lived to be a hundred. (Sad that he's no longer with us...).
So the reverb, part of the recording environment, is one component of aire.
One thing's for sure, it's got nothing to do with electronics, it was quite late on when recording came to Flamenco and Aire was abundant before then.
In my view, it's to do with expressing Compas, I don't just mean tapping out a steady beat, but more to do with bringing Compas to life. The act of creation within the guitarist's playing, his taste and unique sense of Flamenco.
ORIGINAL: Jim Opfer In my view, it's to do with expressing Compas, I don't just mean tapping out a steady beat, but more to do with bringing Compas to life. The act of creation within the guitarist's playing, his taste and unique sense of Flamenco.
I asked a translator friend/flamencio guitars it how to explain aire in English. he grinned and said "Its like chewing the cud"
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