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I built my 3-finger rasgueado after developing my 4-finger one. I followed the guidance in Gerhard Graf-Martinez's method (Vol. 1) (hyperlink to Overstock.com) and build the tension behind the thumb rather than in the palm. His DVD illustrates it better than I can explain it.
I execute it slowly during practice so I can check that check whether the volume and spacing between each finger is even.
When I'm not at my guitar, I practice 3 and 4-finger rasgueados against my thigh.
Not sure if that information helps. It did take me a couple of weeks to make my rasgueo sound good.
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that's the one! even that one sounds uneven. is that just how it is?
sara thats the juan maya marote stroke, im struggling with it as well, it really involve the whole arm and wrist to get whip into it.gerardo nunez's video section on rasqueado explains it quite well.
i get around it by doing ie its a triple stroke but dos'nt have the same bite.
Hey Sara It sounds uneven in that the upstroke with the thumb is louder than the two downstrokes. This accents the triplet. You should try to get all the strokes the same distance apart. It feels un natural to start with. Start slowly like in the video. It will not happen overnight. Get a comfortable even pace before trying to go fast. Remember to always finish your Pmp rasgeo on an extra upstroke with the thumb so one triplet would be P(up) m, p, P(up) two together would be P(up) m, p, P, m, p, P(up) and three P(up) m, p, P, m, p, P, m, p, P(up) This rasgeo is often used to accompany dancers because its the strongest. Some of the others p,a,m,i,i and i,i,a etc. give you a more even sound for solo work. Dont worry too much about that yet. If you can get a nice strong and even Pmp, it will serve you very well and you can perfect some of the other trickier ones later.
eveness and clearity come from metronome practice. Which ever technique you try, to make it sound more uniform, take any and each of the stroke as the beat, or right on the click.
P(up) am P(down) repeat so p up is on the click.
Then practice: am Pdown P up. so am falls on the click.
then P down falls on the click Pdown P up am down.
Repeat all those until you control the sound at the speed you want, so you can't really hear a difference which stroke is which, just a continuous rhythm is produced.
Keep in mind sometimes you DON"T want them to all sound the same for a reason. Sometime the beat is accented, sometimes the contra beat is accented. Depends on what you want to do with it. But whatever you like, be in control of it.
For these "abanico" strums, you discover that there is a MINIMUM speed at which you can do the technique properly, because the momentum of the wrist moving drives the technique. It depend on which one you are working on, but some of these patterns don't feel the same at 60 bpm vs 160 bpm.