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Arpeggios are evil
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Munin
Posts: 595
Joined: Sep. 30 2008
From: Hong Kong
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 Arpeggios are evil
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Well, I've been learning flamenco guitar for about 9 months now - played guitar 3 years before that, albeit of the electric variety. I'm spending one to two hours every day practising, and 50% of that time is mostly devoted to focusing on improving the various techniques.
Now, I've read in quite a few books - and heard quite a few people - saying that of all techniques, arpegio is supposed to be the easiest, the one mastered in the shortest amount of time. For some reason, for me it's the technique I struggle with the most. My pulgar is pretty okay, tremolo getting there, rasgueados too, but...arpegio.
Now, my teacher is one of the best flamenco guitarists in the area and he has taken great care in ensuring that my arpeggio technique (hand position) etc is correct, and I don't think I have any issues with that. However, I still think that arpegios can be mean bastards! If on any given day, I start my practice routine with arpegios, I feel like having picked up a guitar for the first time in my life - my fingers are brushing all over the strings, I'm not able to play anything cleanly at a decent speed, which makes me feel like a complete idiot.
Now, I can usually smoothen my arpegio technique after 10-15 minutes of warming up, but I still feel I'm kind of lagging behind with it. Especially in my weekly lessons, which we often start with an arpegio warm-up, it can be frustrating to see I'm still struggling with the same exercise we started out with 9 months ago. I can get it back to a "solid" level after a while of playing, but it's still so frustrating.
Does anybody have a similar issue? Is it really supposed to be the easiest technique? Am I disabled? Anyone got any effective exercises (beyond p+ any ami combination until my fingers fall off)?
Thanks!
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Date Oct. 28 2008 11:56:09
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mark indigo
Posts: 3626
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
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RE: Arpeggios are evil (in reply to Munin)
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for exercises, i just use/d an E chord and pima, piam, pmia, pmai, pami, paim, and then pimaim.
sure there are others, but really the ones you use most are pami, pima and pimami
the only thing i can suggest apart from keep practising is to ask if you "prepare" the arpegio's where possible/appropriate?
by this i mean do you start a pima arpegio with pima in position on the strings?
if you don't do this already, try it. to start with, place the fingers on the strings and move them one by one to play each note. after a while you can go a little faster and kind of just roll them off in "one" movement (it's not one movement, it's a series of movements, but you kind of think of it as one movement, you start the next finger before the previous one has finished, so pima is one continuous sequence of movements).
it might also help to practise 4 note chords with pima, playing all 4 notes simultaneously, to get you used to playing them all together, then just spread the notes very slightly to create a very fast pima arpegio
you can do the same with pami, though i believe "classically" (someone will no doubt correct me here, but it's in no end of "learn classical guitar" books) only p and a are prepared in pami arpegios.
also, preparing pima as above seems to make pimami arpegios flow along at a fair lick too
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Date Oct. 28 2008 12:20:08
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Ailsa
Posts: 2277
Joined: Apr. 17 2007
From: South East England
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RE: Arpeggios are evil (in reply to Munin)
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Hi Munin,
Actually I don't think they are the easiest technique. I mean they are simple in concept, but unless you get them right it will be difficult to build up speed and control.
I've been playing for 18 months, and I still spend most time on them every day, and like you I need to warm my fingers up before they sound half decent. (Funny when I first started playing I didn't see the need to warm up but as my technique has improved a bit I can hear and feel the difference.)
Like you I find rasgeuado easier, in fact almost everything else easier!
Dull as it sounds I'm just doing the usual route of slow careful practise of exercises, in the hope that my hands will remember that same technique when I speed up. Although they are getting faster, when I really speed up they are nowhere near clean enough yet. My basic exercise is each of the patterns, with p on 6, 5, 4 ,5. I play each 'round' once at a deliberate speed, really watching my technique, and then twice at double speed.
Mark, as you say, I've been taught to place my fingers in the strings on pima. But on pami it was more of an option, sort of 'if it works for your fingers'!
Anyway Munin, I don't think you are that unusual. We all have our strengths and stuff we have to work on more. And 9 months is very early days!
Keep practising!
A
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Date Oct. 30 2008 1:44:42
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Ricardo
Posts: 15153
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Arpeggios are evil (in reply to Jan Willem)
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The pre-planting thing for pima is very common, I would say MOST flamenco players do it all the time. I do it too. But honestly, I was surprised to learn Gerardo Nunez almost NEVER does it. He plays sequentially p-i-m-a just like everyone does p-a-m-i, and also he has one of the fastest and smoothest sounding arps in the business. I have not even attempted to retrain myself at this point, but I just wanted to throw that out for some folks who are starting out. If you get his Encuentro vid he clearly demonstrates it. As far as speed, like with anything, it is about rhythm and the metronome, little by little.
Oh if I were to try to retrain my pima, I would start by drilling arps: imam, imam, imam, because you dont have time to replant the fingers. Next, tremolo Pimami, pimami, etc. But am too lazy at this point.
Ricardo
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
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Date Nov. 2 2008 11:58:57
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mark indigo
Posts: 3626
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
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RE: Arpeggios are evil (in reply to Ailsa)
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cheating? i don't think there's any such thing, 'cos if it works, use it, and the proof is if it sounds good.
quote:
although I've been taught to pre-plant, sometimes it interferes with the clear ringing sound of the string so I don't do it. It depends on the music.
that makes loads of sense to me....
years ago i watched a vid where someone (accompanying, this was in the 80's, might have beed manolo franco or enrique de melchor, honestly can't remember) appeared to be preparing/planting on pami arpegios, and I copied it, and it worked really well, but it works best where p is a quaver/eighth note, and ima is a semiquaver/sixteenth note triplet group in things like escobilla from alegrias or whatever ie. it only really works at speed, and is kind of awkward slow
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Date Nov. 3 2008 5:51:39
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fevictor
Posts: 377
Joined: Nov. 22 2005
From: Quepos / Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
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RE: Arpeggios are evil (in reply to Munin)
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This thread has helped me a lot. The other day, after reading this, I started practicing piam, paim and some others, and was amazed at how difficult it was at first. I had honestly never played arpeggios this way before; I always just practiced and played the regular pima, pami and pimami.
I couldn't believe how much memory my fingers had and how hard it was in the beginning to get play a different pattern repeatedly and smoothly. After about 30 minutes of practicing i could tell that my right hand started to get sore in a new way, which I take as a good thing - new muscles being used, or being used in a different way.
I also noticed that this has helped my right hand position a lot too. With regular arpeggios my hand would tend to relax and fall and rotate a bit, changing the angle in a bad way, but I noticed that doing these other arpeggios makes my hand stay more in a fixed position...which is a good thing. Much more control and a cleaner sound.
Anyway, I'm just sorry I never tried this before, but definitely a great exercise for anyone looking to improve their technique.
Vic
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Date Sep. 18 2010 14:03:26
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) 
. Terrible, and in a few weeks I'll probably buy a new guitar, how am I gonna test it decently 
.
