Flamenco

This first anthology was a collection of recordings of the basic flamenco forms of flamenco. This intention was more difficult than might appear at first sight due to the popularity of Opera Flamenco, and its most important representative: Pepe Marchena. A previous attempt had been made to preserve the old traditional otherwise known as the pure, unadulterated forms. This attempt was made by Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca in their ‘concurso de cante flamenco’ in 1922. However, this competition had little effect on the growing popularity of Opera Flamenco which obliterated any other interpretation that happened to be in its path.

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The quality of voice is of supreme importance in flamenco as it can imbue flamenco with one of its most important elements: “el quejio”. “El quejio” is perhaps best translated as a “cry of desperation” and often said to be one of the basic elements of the ”cante jondo”, that is, those palos which are the most profound and deep. Here is a breakdown of some of the major divisions of types of voice. Read the rest of this entry »

There are perhaps two things which immediately seem to come to people’s minds on the first hearing of flamenco: unusual melodic lines and the timbre of the singer’s voice. The crystalline tone developed and favoured in the conservatory or in many types of popular music is not usually the type of voice favoured in flamenco.

Due to mixing of various cultures, flamenco has, to Anglo-Saxon ears, strange and perhaps oriental sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

I have finished the introductory page to scales. As yet, the page is only theoretical, but doing the research and understanding the information by giving practical application has proved very useful to me already. Armed with the theoretical knowledge from the theory, I have now gone onto write my own flamenco related scales, and these will be published as soon as they are finished.

Why is it useful to study scales?

1. Scales are the building blocks from which all music is created:
   1. for melodies (horizontal structures),
   2. for chords (vertical structures),
   3. for arpeggios (oblique structures).
2. Scales offer excellent rıght and left hand practice, and especially co-ordination.
3. You begin to understand what you are doing when you play

The only person to proclaim himself a flamenco singer (”cantaor”) in the census initiated by king Carlos III in 1783 was the gypsy Tio Luis el de la Juliana. This allows us to surmise that the “cante” did not begin to really develop until the end of the XVIII century; despite constant searching on the part of flamencologists, no document has been found which verifies the existence of “cante flamenco” before the second half of the XVIII century.

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How was Andalusia at the very beginnings of Flamenco?

Andalusia has always been a melting pot of cultures; Aegean, Asian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic colonizations have all played a part in its development and cultural richness. From the discovery of the “new world” in 1492, Andalusia experienced economic growth. These economic changes were not however reflected on social changes. The ports of Cádiz, Sevilla and Sanlúcar began to grown in importance as a direct result of the American colonies - these Andalusian ports represented a door to the Atlantic. Industry in Cádiz was non-existent; Jerez slowly began the elaboration of its famous wines and sherries. Inland villages and hamlets were agricultural, characterized by an almost non-existent economy.

When the “cante” first appeared in the late XVIII century, Spain’s Latin-American influence Read the rest of this entry »

The technique page has been fully revised and is now waiting for photos and videos to be taken and inserted. It is has fuller explanations and a linked index for easy navigation throughout the rather long page.

Next on the list of things to do is a revision of the individual technique pages. The old ones will remain in place until the new ones are written. In the meantime, happy reading,

Miguel

For the cultured classes of Spain, until recently flamenco was nothing more than a “thing of the lower classes”; of taverns, violence, riotousness, drunkenness, and in the past, of beggars, thieves, bandits and gypsies. It was not until 1922 that a group of intellectuals (which included the composer Manuel de Falla and the young poet Federico García Lorca) organised a “concurso the cante jondo”. The first time that the intellectuals of Andalucia acted as a group to study, understand and for want of a better word, protect flamenco. At that time famenco had almost completely been forgotten, substituted by a light operatic form known as “opera flamenco”. Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first post featuring a bulería - and as always, the mp3 is at the bottom of the post. It took me quite some time to decide how I was going to introduce this palo. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 guitar with palmas [0:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 guitar alone [0:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is the final installment of our soleá. There are four rasgueado exercises that form the basic soleá rasgueados. More details about these are given in the newly updated rasgueado page.You can download the pdf here:
At the top of the page I have shown some simple chords that are most often used for this toque. After there are four very simple exercises that form a part of my daily practice. They are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Rasgueado 1 [0:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Rasgueado 2 [0:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Rasgueado 3 [0:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Rasgueado 4 [0:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Soleá basic example [1:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is our second installment of soleá. Another fundamental part of the guitarists’ repetoire. The cierre (cadence or closure) is from Manuel Granados - more about this incredible man in later posts. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 soleá 2 [0:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This lesson introduces the soleá with the most simple of melodies. This melody, played only with the thumb is a fundamental part of the guitar repertoire. Although easy to play there are some important things to consider. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 solea [0:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How can you start learning the rhythmic forms of flamenco?

Start counting. Count the beats out loud, or in your head. Do it in any language you like, the idea is to start to develop a feel for the accents sub-consciously. Read the rest of this entry »

Warming up is making the joints, tendons and muscles of the fingers and hands ready to play. Use exercises that strengthen and make supple your fingers and hands to avoid injury (tendonitis).

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Learning how to study the guitar is as important as learning to play given that we will only ever play what we practice. If we don’t practice well, we will never play well. For this reason it is important to learn how to practice: defining what we want to achieve and knowing how we are going to meet those aims. This series of posts will help us to make our practice more effective.

Click on the category “practice” for more. To find all categories, scroll down and look in the left hand column.

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This tangos introduces thumb and index work and the thumb to play simple compás as well as the abánico technique.

Practise dead slowly, as always because speed will come alone. The focus here is to stay in compás and keep everything even and clean.

The fingering for the abánico can be found with the other rasgueado exercises here. The abánco is shown in numbers “e” and “f” on that page.

page one

 

 Guitar only [0:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Palmas only [1:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Guitar and palmas [0:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is the first lesson. The “palo” is called “tangos” and there is no relationship with the Argentinian song and dance form.

In this lesson we will look at basic rasgueados and some thumb techniques. You can find some exercises and advice for rasgueados here and for thumb work here.

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 Tangos guitar and palmas [1:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Percussion [1:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One new site that I was pleased to hear about, created by one of our contributors Mikey, is Jerezflamenco.com.

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Today I have spent some time adding and deleting links from the links page. Some links disappear and new members and visitors link to us here or otherwise contribute. One person who springs to mind is Estela Zatania whose comment you can find in the previous tientos post.

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Here is another contribution, tientos. I have realised that there are so many other flamenco forms to add to the blog that I should just get started and record them, despite the extremely high interest in technical exercises. In fact more than 80% of the visitors to the site are looking for picado exercises. Maybe I should develop this side of the site a little more. If there is any interest, I can write out, in TAB, the three falsetas played here as well as the the alzapúa for you.

Tientos is a paused, melancholy form of Tangos which first appeared at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries. It is most often heard as an introduction to tangos because it is such a close variant. Usually, this joining together of tangos and its slower form is known as “tientos-tangos”.

Please read the comments below for some more interesting insights into tientos…

 

 Tientos [1:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After a long absence, here is a post in response to two questions. Firstly, “what is soleá por bulería” and the second a request for help with compás.

This recording is an exercise for soleá por medio using rasgueados alone.

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 Guitar and percussion [4:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Palmas and cajón [4:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here is a tangos that features a Solo Compas backing track. I have been practising picado recently and here are the results. Of course, still lots of work to do with respect to technique, but the practice is paying off, slowly but surely! Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Tangos [2:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here it is, after far too long, is some music for you. It is, after all the purpose of the site. Continue reading, using the link below to hear the mp3. This soleá is por medio and the cejilla is on the fourth fret. It is really a technical exercise, but with some very useful vocabulary for soleá por medio. The idea of practising crotchets and triplets came from Gabriel Cabrera in Málaga.

Here is the tablature.

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 Soleá por medio - exercise [3:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

And here is how to do it - start young! Here is my one year old niece learning. What can you say?

 

 Ilgin learning cajon [0:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I received in my in-box today a news bulletin from jondoweb.com. After a quick glance I decided to have a look and to my pleasant surprise, I found a great site with a whole series of links to artists’ sites. The link that started my journey this one, copied directly from the email: Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing from the previous post… here is some alegría. Nearly everything consists of rasgueados and a couple of very short falsetas. You will notice that the compás (featuring cajón, palmas">palmas and jaleo) is excellently done. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Alegría [3:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week I am back to recording and study. This recording follows the great meeting I had on Friday night with Çengizhan. Another flamenco fan, he has been playing for many a long year. Unfortunately, as with many guitar players who have never visited Andalucia,

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 Tangos [2:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Very upset I was when I was told that flamenco compás can be changed as you like and that inserting extra beats and/or chords in non-usual places is called syncopation. This is an error.

Compás cannot be changed, it is the fruit of decades of evolution and forms part of the cultural legacy of the people of Andalucía. Compás is what makes flamenco what it is (as well as the words of the cante). In Andalucía it is respected and almost venerated. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I got an email asking if I would be interested in recording any more rhythm tracks apart from bulería and soleá already done. Here is a part of the mail:

I spent in vain hours on the net to find realistic -natural and beautiful sound- palmas">palmas, something else than those awful synthetic metronome clapping I mean. Your bulerias mp3 palmas is just fine to play with. Do you plan to make some more for the other main palos (solea, tientos, siguiriya, etc.)?

The answer is a yes. And here Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Tangos with guitar and compás [2:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After an afternoon’s fun making videos of the various techniques listed and described in the technique page, we realised that our old digital camera is not quite up to making videos. The sound is really quite poor and the resolution of the video does not really provide enough detail. Rather than waste the footage, we decided to include some of it in a post. So, until we get a better camera, this is what we have to live with. Maybe I should put a Paypal donation button on the site - ha ha!

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 Alzapúa upstroke exercise: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Full alzapúa: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Bulería de Jerez: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Soleá de Morao: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Tangos alzapúa: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Bulería de Morón: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Alegría - cierre: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The technique page in nearly finished. Well, finished in the sense that it is useable: the explanations are clear and that the downloads work. Currently the contents read as you can see in the box to the right.

The aim of this page is to show the basic flamenco guitar techniques and provide exercises that I am currently focussing on. Deliberately, the exercises are not particularly musical in order to isolate the technique in question. I will be adding more exercises that are much more flamenco in later posts. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I came across a large web site managed by Chuck Keyser, based in Santa Barbara, USA, and I was most impressed.

Here you can find very useful information for those starting out with flamenco, the table of contents includes:

Flamenco guitar
Falseta collections
Compás analysis: solea, bulería, alegría and siguiriya, amongst other things.

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Some visitors have asked for material related to tremolo and practicing trémolo. This technique gives many guitar players problems, but it need not present problems if the right approach is taken to study. Before we begin, some basic terminology.

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Here is an example of a soleá por arriba. Once again, the recording is very short, the intention is to only to show the basic arpeggios - and to get my execution of them more even and clear.
Soleá por arriba refers to a soleá played using the chords of mi and fa mayor (in addition to la, sol and do). There is a cejilla on the fourth fret.

Download the soleá tablature [pdf] to download.

 

 Basic soleá arpeggios [0:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here are the downloads [pdf]:
Arpeggios one p-i-m-a or p-a-m-i combinations
Arpeggios two p-i-m-a-m-i or p-a-m-i-m-a combinations

These right hand studies are intended to help develop finger independence. Many guitarists, myself included, have problems with naughty fingers that fly away from the strings when a string is played. The aim of these exercises is to promote the most efficient movement possible: as one string is struck, the next finger is preparing to strike. You can read more on this in the “gym page” - Especially see planting.

Arpeggios are very common in flamenco and without some dominion of this technique you will be extremely limited in what you can play. Even guitarists who dedicate themselves to accompaniment and never play solos use this technique. So, lets get going and work up a sweat.

Use any chords that you like for these daily workouts, though at the beginning it is best to use something very simple.

Words of advice from Sabicas:

“It is not done with speed and force, only with touch and tone. ‘Fast’ is a term that should not be applied to music. Only the note value and the tempo dictate the number of notes in a measure. The feeling of speed is most effectively achieved when tempo and note value are observed in a disciplined manner. It is rarely if ever accomplished when we try to go fast.”

Found on: Guitar people

Have a read

Here is a short recording of the basic compás and falsetas. I have recorded the guitar playing solo, the guitar with percussion and both together. Getting the arpeggios clean and strong requires some work, and there is still some for me to do.

Soleá is often referred to as the mother of flamenco. This is because so many flamenco rhythms are based upon this basic structure. If you can get the hang of this rhythm, you will find that the rhythms of the slower soleá and faster bulerías are more easily dominated. Use the cajón recording for practice.

The percussion instrument is called a cajón and originates in Latin America. This means box in Spanish. More than a box, a cajón has a series of strings in its interior which vibrate against the resonating tone board. It is very a popular instrument in modern flamenco and good cajón players are very much in demand.

Soleá por medio - solo guitar.

Download - Soleá por medio - guitar alone 1.5mb

Soleá por medio - with percussion.

Download - Soleá por medio - guitar with cajón 1.5mb

Soleá por medio - cajón alone.

Download - Soleá por medio - cajón alone 1mb

Here is a short track of palmas">palmas for bulería al golpe. You will need an audio player which allows you to loop sounds, so that the track repeats over and over whilst you practise your compás.

Download - bulería al golpe - palmas (50kb)

Click to play in your browser:

There is a new mp3 page. Use the links in the navigation bar at the top, or access the page from the “pages” list in the side bar.

The first installment is a Rondeña.

Download - Rondeña (5.2mb)

Here you can find a short “alegría en mí”. Have a listen. You will hear a slow introduction, a picado run and then into some rasgueados. I have included some exercises that I think will help develop the skills needed to play this example. Please note that this recording is intended to give me practice and aid myself in diagnosing faults and areas to work on. Recording yourself is a very good way of hearing the real truth about your playing…

Arpeggios: playing strong and clean arpeggios is something that I find extremely difficult - though many other players have find them easy. This is an area where I have to do some extra work. Listen to the “Baby music” exercise ( as my wife described it). It is played here extremely slowly even so - I can hear some hesitations here and there. As usual with this kind of exercise, it needs to be done everyday and it needs to be done with a metronome - particularly if you are concerned with rhythm. Start at say 60 beats per minute and move up a few notches at a time. Get the movement firm and strong. Get confident with the actions through over-learning. Remember that even if you double your starting speed and feel very confident, the next day you will have to start all over again, but over a period of a few weeks, you will become more proficient and more confident. That at lest is my intention…

Picado: the exercise featured here is a series of scales in the key that we are playing. Get to know your fretboard and stretch your left hand. Notice how there is some thumb work and ligados in the final descending scale.

Rasgueado: here is the whole thing. There is a slow introduction using arpeggios and picado combined, a nice little picado with thumbed basses and finally into the alegría proper…
Here are the downloads:

download - Alegría en Mí Mayor
download - Arpeggio exercise
download - Picado exercise

Alegría en Mí Mayor

Arpeggio exercise