E and I visited Madrid over Thanksgiving 2016 and we went to see a very touristy Flamenco Tablao. The dancers and their footwork, the singers and their emotion, the clapping and THE GUITARS! Despite not understanding the tradition, the interplay, the music structure or the history, I was hooked. I needed to learn more about this art form.
Some of you may know that I picked up the guitar while in college. I took lessons in college and then continued them after graduation. During my 7 year detour to New York and subsequent return to San Francisco, I continued my guitar journey but mostly as a self-taught noodler. I learned technique mostly by playing songs in which I had interest but this fostered some bad habits, as I’ll discuss below.
When E and I chose Sevilla as our first choice to live in Spain, flamenco was an important reason. While there is no formal capital of flamenco, Sevilla and Granada are two important centers of flamenco in Spain. There are at least 17 styles of flamenco. Sevilla being home to just one style. Flamenco is a fusion of traditions – some Arabic, some Indian, some Andalusian, some Romani and some North African. No different than southern Spain itself!
After arriving in Sevilla, I began to look for studios and teachers from whom to learn flamenco guitar. I quickly ruled out group classes. I didn’t want to get stuck between people that didn’t know the difference between an F chord and a capo. I also didn’t want to be constantly chasing players far superior than I. But that meant having to find a private lesson.
After emailing a few teachers, I settled on a female teacher, who happened to be from Virginia but had been studying and living in Sevilla for quite a few years. Mi nueva professora de guitarra solved a couple of problems. Primero, mi espanol es muy malo. My teacher had to be proficient in English. Check. And secondly, I didn’t want to traipse all over the city with my guitar during rainy season. She lives a quick 5 minute walk from the apartment (barring I didn’t get lost every fricking time).
A quick digression. Sevilla is an old town and wasn’t made for navigating with GPS. There is an intersection that I need to navigate which has 8 streets that meet at one intersection. 8! Choose the wrong one and there is no way to recover except for returning to this confusing intersection. Luckily I’ve never gotten lost twice on the same trip, but in the rain it can be quite frustrating. Some of my lessons have also been before sunset and some after sunset, so the intersection and buildings never look quite the same. And it’s the craziest thing…I only get lost on the way to her place but never coming home. It’s very strange.
I opted for lessons twice a week. Monday and Thursday evenings.
During my first lesson, I used my teacher’s stage guitar. It’s beautiful with a wonderful tone. It’s worth noting at this point that a flamenco guitar is different from an acoustic guitar or a Spanish classical guitar. A traditional acoustic guitar is mostly likely to have all 6 strings made from the same material (all nylon or all metal). A flamenco guitar has 3 strings of steel and 3 of nylon – as does a Spanish classical guitar. An acoustic guitar might also have a cutaway that allows the player to access the higher frets. A Spanish classical guitar and a flamenco guitar only leave 12 frets accessible to the player. A flamenco guitar is generally thinner (front to back) than a Spanish classical guitar and has less internal bracing.
When it came time to buy my own guitar, my teacher sent me to a nearby guitar store. I of course opted for a Spanish classical guitar and not a flamenco guitar. Why? It was much cheaper and more durable for travel. I also got a guitar tuner, a capo and a hardcase. As I progress and the difference becomes important, I can always upgrade to a true flamenco guitar.
During my first lesson, my teacher covered some basic vocabulary of flamenco guitar and emphasized that the best way to learn flamenco was to watch as much live flamenco guitar as possible (even if on youtube). Sevilla is full of places at which to watch flamenco. Touristy bars, formal tablaos and informal open mic nights. Very near our place is a bar at which amateur musicians meet. There are often several guitar players, singers and sometimes even a dancer or two. Grab a beer, sit nearby and soak it all in.
Back to the first lesson….and then we got started making music. In the first lesson, we were going to learn technique by exploring the palo, Solea. Palo means more than song. Each palo has implications for chord structure, song structure, rhythm and region of origin. The rhythm cycle needs to be mastered. It’s this deeper meaning of song that holds flamenco together and allows singers, dancers and guitar players to perform together even if they’ve never met.
Solea is based on a fairly simple 12 beat cycle and is based on the Phrygian scale (if you know your classical modes). We would break down the song into various pieces – the main compas (strumming or rhythm portion) and the various falsetas (the guitar solo – so far I’ve learned 3 variations). Plus numerous fills and alternatives to the paseos and falsetas.
No two guitar players will play Solea or any palo exactly the same. The guitar player has options so long as the themes of the palo are respected. Other than that, the goal is to begin each part of the song slowly and slowly build in intensity and for the entire composition to begin slowly and finish at the peak of intensity. The only other question to be answered is whether the guitar leads the dancer or the dancer leads the singer. Lastly, the singer and the dancer will never perform at the same time but the guitar player can accompany both or remain silent.
The first set of techniques to master is the Rosgueo – the ubiquitous finger strumming technique of which there are many. One rosgueo I’ve learned involves sweeping the strings in quick succession with the ring, middle and index finger. There are some variations which are important, but the technique is simple enough. Coordination on the other hand is more difficult especially when moving strings to account for different chords. Other techniques involve using mainly the thumb to sweep strings both up and down. Simple enough, but there are variations that add to the texture of the song and some variety for the ear. Another technique involves strumming three string with the thumb, picking the fourth string with the index finger and then hitting the first string only with the thumb. When played quickly, this is very beautiful.
The second set of techniques to master are for falsetas – the guitar solos. Luckily in Solea each falseta I’ve learned follows a similar basic pattern. Except they don’t. They rhyme but are just different enough to tell them apart. Anyway, I’ve learned three falsetas, but again the guitar player has choices and is allowed to improvise. I can play the first two pretty cleanly and at good tempos. The third one is a monster of complexity and freely switches techniques back and forth. I’m still fumbling at low speeds with this last one.
There are three techniques central to playing the falsetas that I’ve learned. If it’s a simple three string arpeggio played on consecutive strings (generally the three bottom strings), the thumb plays the top two strings and the index finger plays the bottom string. If it’s a slightly more complicated multi string arpeggio with string skipping, then the thumb plays all of the strings except for the bottom string which is again played by the pointer finger. And for the most complicated arpeggios (with both multiple strings and multiple notes played on the same string), then the notes are played a bit more like a rock and roll finger style (the thumb plays the top two strings and the other strings each have a finger dedicated to it). While for the strings with multiple notes on it, the pointer finger and middle finger work to pick the string with alternating upstrokes (like a bass guitar). This requires the right hand to change position depending on what’s required.
An important challenge is to learn to relax my right hand. Let it drape naturally over the strings vs leaving tension in the hand. This allows for more variety of movement (needed for switching between techniques) but also for speed.
The first two falsetas I mentioned above use the first technique described above. The break between the paseos and the falsetas use the middle technique. The third and most complex falseta uses the third technique.
So what immediately became clear to me is that flamenco guitar is totally different from the rock or blues guitar that I had been learning. First and foremost, flamenco is all about the right hand. Most of the guitar I had been learning was mostly about the left hand. Leaving aside matters of coordination, where the heck do I look? I can play my electric guitar without ever looking at my right hand. Now I needed two sets of eyes to properly catalog my mistakes and I now had two sets of mistakes to catalog – left hand and right hand. Second, playing with a pick is much easier than playing flamenco finger style. Third, to the extent that I knew how to play finger style (say for Babe I’m Gonna Leave You or Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin) – the flamenco finger style can be totally different.
What’s also become clear to me is that I have two bad habits or lazy habits that are being exposed in flamenco. Nobody has ever corrected these errors, and at the speeds needed in flamenco, these habits will be speed inhibitors. The first is that my left thumb likes to creep over the neck especially when playing the higher octave G-B-E strings. I’ve got to work on arching my fingers a bit more and keep my thumb firmly planted at the center of the neck. The second is that I’ve learned to use my right pinkie as an anchor or fulcrum point when playing with a pick. The right hand needs to be more relaxed to properly play the flourishes and arpeggios that an anchored right hand won’t allow. An anchored pinkie also helps me “feel“ where my hand was relative to the strings, so I never needed to look at my right hand. Learning to gently rest my fingers on the bottom string or to play with a floating right hand will prove to be a challenge until it becomes my new normal.
Each of my lessons is comprised of three parts. During the first part, we review the prior lessons and play the entire palo…compas and falsetas. The second part is to build on what we’ve learned and add new portions of the palo. Lastly, we work on technique exercises that mimic the palo but focus on technique. Flamenco is traditionally taught only by oral tradition (nothing is ever written down) but we document our lessons with video that I can review for details or to practice along with.
As our time in Sevilla grew to a close and the flamenco guitar lessons with them, we’ve finished the main elements of Solea and have built a large library of techniques for me to practice during our time away from Sevilla. I hope to find an instructor in Santiago, Chile but there is plenty for me to work on in case we don’t find one. My instructor has emphasized that flamenco involves learning from multiple sources so nothing in my education will be impaired by finding a different instructor with different viewpoints. In fact, it might even be desirable.
Flamenco guitar when played properly is mesmerizing. Unfortunately, very little in my nearly 30 years of playing guitar has prepared me for the flamenco guitar. As a matter of fact, I have to unlearn as much as I’m learning. The good news is that my teacher is very patient and happy to work on building a good foundation. We’re solidifying a plan that I can follow without her dutiful eye next year until we return to Sevilla next June.
In the meantime, you should feel bad for E because my practice sessions are chock full of repetitious errors followed by a partially successful run. The good news is that I’m seeing progress. I just wouldn’t hold out hope for seeing me perform in a show anytime soon.
Wearehere 