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.