Alzapúa

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Tientos

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…

 
icon for podpress  Tientos [1:56m]: 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 »

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

Short videos

Video frontAfter 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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icon for podpress  Alzapúa upstroke exercise: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Full alzapúa: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Bulería de Jerez: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Soleá de Morao: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Tangos alzapúa: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Bulería de Morón: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Alegría - cierre: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The technique contents

- - Tirando & apoyando
- Picado & scales
- - String walking
- - Speed bursts
- - Staccato practice
- - Chromatic scales
- Arpeggios
- - Block planting
- - Sequential planting
- Rasgueado
- The flamenco thumb
- - Alzapúza
- Trémolo

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 »

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported