Tomatito

Tomatito, looking young and very much in the groove. The dude who posted it has a nice insight:
This 1980, Tomatito was way ahead of his time with modern syncopation. Despite his modern style, he keeps an earthy “gipsy” sound in his playing.
There’s a great shot around 1.30 when you see his left hand posture: it’s perfect. I feel my hand slips too much, it kind of crumbles and I use the base of my first finger/V of my hand as a crutch. So this reminds I need to be aware of this clip as I practise. I love his LP ‘Spain’ from 2000 with the jazz pianist Michel Camilo.

Vicente Gomez

Vicente Gomez. I love this old shit. But I think my guru would comment on his thumb technique - ’ from the wrist, not the thumb joint’ !

Meditation & Rasgueado

I have a Chinese friend, a modern Chinese dude who runs his own business & works like his life depends on it. Long, long hours. Lots of stress. He wasn’t sleeping so he started meditating. And in a way that no one other then the most driven would, he started really meditating. He gets out of bed at 5 and for two hours he meditates. He stars by breathing to a count. He concentrates very precisely on the movement of the breath. His thought is focused on the breath going in through his nose, but more precisely through each nostril. He doesn’t think about it as such, he just makes sure he is aware of it as the air goes through his nostrils then out again. All to a count. After a while he stops being aware of his awareness, even though he still counts and still has perfect technique. He just is. He is at one with his meditation and therefore himself.

Last night I realised that is what I seek with the various Rasgueado techniques I’m working on. I had time. There were no distractions so I spend a couple of hours of quality time. There are two particular techniques I’m working on at the moment.

First, is the 5 finger rolling rasgueado. I’ve been doing the standard 5 finger rasgueado since the beginning. I can do it. The technique is good and the Bulerias has pushed it so that it’s is very even, very fast and each strike is clear and percussive. But I’ve found that to do that in the rolling form is very different. I always lose a tiny fragment of a second between the first finger upstroke and the subsequent down stroke on the pinkie. I’ve been working on pinkie strength, exercising the finger as I’m doing other things, like real life. After an hour or so I nearly got there. For spells of four or five rolls it was good. Then it could slip and I couldn’t get it back, until it just happened. Then I would lose it again. I need to keep doing that until it’s consistent.

Second is the 3 finger roll, the one using upstroke from the thumb (p), down on pinkie (e), down on first (i). I need to get it faster so I can build a crescendo into the roll, which I regard as one of the classic flamenco techniques. You role it from your wrist, so it needs to be relaxed. But I was finding that as I got faster I would sometimes miss the pinkie stroke, or sometimes the first finger stroke. Last night, after a couple of hours it was getting there: good technique, good rhythm, fast. And then, poof, it would go.

But the morale of the story is simple. I know it’s not good enough to play for 15 minutes a day. That helps at the start. But to get good, to play flamenco, I need to sit down and push myself: my fingers, my concentration, my internal rhythm counter. I need these two/three hour sessions if I’m going to get there. Sure, if I can only do 15 minutes because that bastard Life is in the way, I’ll do it. But I have to find the time. I have to cancel stuff, stop doing things. Otherwise I’ll never be like the fella above.

Vicente Amigo

I’ve heard a load of solea. It’s the first thing I tried to play. I play it. or at least some of it, every time I pick up a guitar. It’s beginning to feel natural. I don’t have to count it out to 12 anymore. I know what happens and feel it. Which I don’t when I play Bulerias, even though it’s just the same count to 12. Anyway, even though I’ve heard & played it it so much I never tire of hearing someone new play it. Every time I learn something; more importantly, every time something new moves me. Here’s Vicente Amigo. What a great rasgueado. If you like, check out his LP Poeta.

Almost cut my hair

But I didn’t. I cut my nails instead. I have this obsession about them, a method that I’ve perfected over the years. However, sometimes I’m a little too zealous. I always do it after I’ve soaked my hands, either after a bath or having done the dishes. That allows me to cut them super short. But sometimes I cut them a little too short and as a result I the flesh is unprotected. After an hour or two of playing the tips of my fingers start to hurt. And you can’t keep playing. So on Saturday i couldn’t really play. I didn’t crack the chord.
It’s the little things that can make a difference. You have to obsess about everything. Otherwise you’ll never be able to do this...

One step forward, two steps back

One step forward, two steps back

Some days it feels like I’m making the unnatural chord natural. Other days it feels like I might as well be trying to fret it with y feet. And to compound it all Life has been getting in the way.

Life is a bugger like that. I guess life hangs around until these moments, the moments when you need a little time, a little pace. Then, with an evil laugh, Life comes from the shadows and wraps its evil arms around you so that no matter how hard to try to wriggle free you can’t. As a result, the unnatural chord remains unnatural. You wake up, bolt upright, in the middle of the night, knowing that you’re wasting time in bed when you should be getting your fingers around that sodding chord. But, no, you have to sleep because smart arse Life wants you to do all sorts tomorrow and if you don’t sleep you won’t be able to do it, you’ll get found out, lose your job, the missus will leave you, the debt collector will come knocking and be on the streets in no time. ‘Life’: what a twat.

Today though is Saturday. And my girlfriend is going out tonight. So I’m going to have a lad night in, singular. Me and the guitar and I’m going to crack that bastard chord once and for all.

Sabicas

Sabicas.I guess I love the stuff that get’s called traditional, flamenco old skool. Maybe I romanticise this but I want to believe it’s a link with an older, purer form. And therefore an older, purer world. It represents something that’s been lost. But that’s a bigger story, a deeper story and one that deserves it’s own time

Trying to get my brain to stop working

So now the work begins. I sat for an hour this morning, not playing the falsetto, but just playing that chord, the unnatural chord. Moving my 2nd finger from the 3rd fret to the 4th. Again and again and again. Teaching the neurons in my brain what I want them to start doing without my asking. Muscle memory. Repetition until it becomes second nature. Apparently the fundamental rule of neural activity: those that fire together wire together.

In summary: I'm trying to get my brain to stop thinking. That's the mission of all guitarists.

Twister

Twister for Christ's sake. I never played it. Or maybe I did (and now I'm thinking about it, I have a vague very unpleasant recollection of an incident aged about 8 at a birthday party, but I'm going to suppress that quickly). It was one slip away from all sorts of unholy trouble. And even when it was played by the rules, who wants to bump & grind with your drunk Auntie at Christmas. You put your leg just here and I'll put my arm round there... And so on. It's just not right. Put th telly for sake and let Bond show us how it's done. So Twister: I never wanted to be there. And I don't want to go back.

Which is why last night's lesson took a very peculiar turn late on.

It has seemed to be going pretty well. Arpeggios: very good. Bulerias, mostly good, few fumbles on the newer falsettos but that's forgivable. Strong compas. That's the main thing. (Of course, when I say strong compas I don't mean the greatest dancers of the form where tapping their feet: I just mean, for a learner, it was solid, consistent, and got to 12. )

As ever, we go back over a fre bits. Play a slur there. Make sure the pull off is clean. You don't have to tap the space but if it helps you, keep it for now

Then we move onto the new falsetto. In terms of right hand technique, it very familiar; in fact, it's the same as in falsetto 3: thumb played through the 5th, rest on the 4th for a beat then play a strum across all strings before strumming back up with the back of the thumb nail. To begin with it takes some getting used to, especially maintaining control in the upstroke but any guitar player will get it pretty quickly. Even I did.

But the left hand...what the bejeesus was that?! He plays again. No. I can't make it out. Now, there is a theory in psychology called cognitive dissonance. It's got nothing to do with musical dissonance and everything to do with the way or human brain reacts to incredible circumstances: if it doesn’t fit with our understanding of how the world works, even when we .have seen it with our own two eyes, we try to discount it.

I was going through my guitar cognitive dissonance. I had seen a man put his finger from his left hand on a fretboard in a way that did not compute. It broke all rules of physics, bio-mechanics and, like Twister, decency. I’m going to try to draw it.

E--0

B--3

G--3

D--0

A--4

E—0

You are probably looking at that and thinking: so what?

But bear in mind that it’s part of a complicated falsetto. And it’s being played very fast. And most importantly of all: you need to have made a pact with the devil so you can play it with your forth finger on D (or B3 if you can only follow tab); 3^rd finger on Bb (G3) and 2^nd finger on Db (A4). Yes, you heard me right: 2^nd finger on Db. That means putting your 2^nd finger ahead of your 3^rd & 4^th. Which really means putting it where your non-existent 5^th finger would go. WTF!!! It’s so unnatural that in the dark ages, people would have screamed witch and bonfires would have been lit/ropes tie in that circular shape..

I’ve tried to play it tonight. It can’t be done. I’ll spend the next two weeks trying to prove to teacher that it can be done. I’ll fail. And I’ll make no in-roads into the rest of my playing.

A toast: to futility.

Bad Timing

I have a lesson in 15 minutes. So I’ll be brief.

Last time was OK. or so i thought. I played reasonably well. But we talked too much and ran out of time. So there was no new falsetto. Or am I kidding myself. Was it that he thought I was too shoddy and I needed more time to find it, to connect with the falsetto on the A’s. I went back to the basics. Sorted out the timing. The first downstroke is on the ‘and’, specifically on the 11 ‘and’ - and as any speaker knows because it’s got two syllables it not a good one for counting it out. I’ve tried going to 10 then 1-2 then 1 again to 10. But jeez that is surprisingly difficult when you’re trying to play some mean guitar.

So think of me, counting out loud as I ride my bike to my lesson, hitting the handle bars to the ‘and’. And hope I get it right in the lesson. Because in the lesson the truth is out.