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How To Learn And Master Flamenco

I would like to talk about an aspect of learning that is easily overlooked in today’s fast paced world: Patience and methodology.

In a world of instant everything, mobile texting, email, drive-through, microwaveable mash potatoes, etc, our expectation of the world around and what we believe it should provide us with is ever more immediate. If our computer stalls for 5 extra seconds we start to get annoyed and antsy.

If we carry these emotional attitudes into our learning process we are doomed to suffer frustration and our minds will stall more than 5 seconds, we can enter a cycle of endless impatience and dissatisfaction with our selves and our process.

How can we avoid that and how does this apply to learning flamenco?

First of all, to assume that because things change so quickly around us and therefore we should be able to do the same is counter productive and will set you up for failure in your own mind.

Every one has a different capacity of absorbing information, both mentally and physically. Skills that are worthwhile and complex simply take time and we should feel gratitude that we have the opportunity to be exposed to it and are able learn it.

Learning is one thing and absorbing and assimilating a new skill until you feel you own it, is another. That is where patience comes in. Just because we know how some thing should go doesn’t mean we are totally capable of doing it – yet. This is the crucial period where it’s make or break. Here are some strategies that are useful:

• Honesty: Be honest with your self and your true ability and your current level. That doesn’t mean to be self deprecating nor unrealistic about your actual level.
• Time: Realize that the body (your fingers in our case) take time to program information into our nervous system and cells. Our bodies are filled with so much intelligence but it needs time to be absorbed.

  For a skill such as scales (picado) arpeggio, resgueado etc, to be ingrained into our second nature habit we must first embrace whole heartedly the journey of what that process may demand from us. It is during this trial period that we forge our character ( musical and otherwise) and start to build our mental muscles. If we can’t find a way to fall in love with the process then patience will be hard to achieve.

• Strategies: Create a strategy of building on small successes. Whenever we sit down to practice and decide to work on either a skill such as scales, tremolo or a hard passage, we tend to want to solve the whole problem after one practice session. We want 100% improvement. How unrealistic. If it happens, then great, I’m not saying it can’t but don’t expect it.

  But if we go for a 5% improvement at the end of the practice session and actually feel good about achieving it, we are creating little cycles of success, which in turn build our confidence and faith in our selves.

  We many times feel more heroic when we fail at some thing difficult rather than succeed at some thing easy. But that is just our unrealistic ego wanting to get the better of us. It’s good to be ambitious, it’s better to be smart and strategic about how to go about it.

  Imagine day after day a 5% improvement, now that sounds hopeful.

• Simplify: If we spend too much time playing things too high above our level we will get impatient and frustrated. We must first accept our level and be happy about the place that we’re at this moment. If we turn our focus on mastering things that are at our level and or little bits of passages at a time, we will be able to absorb things faster and more effectively.
• Mastery: Don’t just practice pieces or skills, practice Mastery, by taking a certain period in your life to just doing very easy things or in a very slow and easy way. We some times think that if some thing feels too easy then it has little value, so we attempt to play faster than we can without control or pieces that are too hard right now. Mastery can only come with the feeling of ease and relaxation. There can be no struggle in Mastery. By playing easy things really well for a while we are practicing the Feeling of Mastery not just the piece it’s self.

Finally, think of music as a journey of your own bliss. Don’t think of it as some thing to achieve. There is nothing to achieve only a process to enjoy. If you get too goal oriented you’re missing the point. Discipline must come from the love you have for the instrument and the music.

Today there are more people on the planet than ever, and yes, that includes musicians. Now, in the past, access to knowledge and information was hard to come by, but today you find anything on any subject on YouTube and Google and almost any one can have that access.

That means that at some point the big ‘achievement’ isn’t just in knowing how to do some thing ( you and ten thousand other guitarists…) but rather how are you going to enjoy this new knowledge and how are you going to use it in your ongoing creative process and make it your own.

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How can you make your scales faster?

People always ask me “How do you do your scales so fast?” or “What do you suggest for speed development?”

Those are good questions with no simple answers.

First I have to say some thing that may not sound too pleasant but its a fact.

Some people are simply born with more “Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers” than others and there is little one can do about that. Now, just because you were born with a lot of these “Speedy-Gonzalez” Genes, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work on accuracy and tone quality. It is known that flamenco players in Spain, practice scales a lot, and there is no getting around putting in the necessary hours of work.

Starting at an early age is also one of several crucial factors as well. When you do a certain activity at a very early age, your brain creates deeper and deeper neural pathways that are associated with that particular activity. When you do the same thing as an adult, your synapses are already more formed and “set in their ways” and it takes a lot more work to achieve results.

BUT! There is hope. Studies have shown that synapses continue to form in our brain if we continue to push ourselves to learn new things. The combination of focus and repetition create new neural pathways and enable us to improve our abilities.

So, you may ask, does all this relate to scale playing? You bet it does!

If you practice your scales with optimal motion alignment in your fingers, learn to feel how your muscles in you arms, hands and fingers are responding to your attack on the string, learn how to feel the necessary degree of relaxation in your fingers, be aware of the release after you’ve played a note and see how quickly you can reload and prepare your finger for the next note, and be happy doing it, then there is a strong chance that you maximize your potential in relation to your ability. All of this, plus coupled with a regular and disciplined regimen of practice should put you in a good position.

Remember, We are all different but if we work right with patience, love and self- acceptance, we will surprise even ourselves. Good luck and look out for the Piccado Package on New Learning Vision coming soon.

Hasta Luego, Adam del Monte.

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Teaching Philosophy by Adam del Monte

Is it possible to learn flamenco and not be a Gypsy or a Spaniard? Since I grew up in Malaga, and later in the caves of Sacromonte in Granada spending four long summer months living with the Gypsies as one of them, I can say that the answer to that question is yes.

Does that mean every one should now follow in these exact footsteps? Of course not; everyone creates their own path to their own way of learning. However, there are a few cardinal principles I have identified for myself during my thirty-one years of playing guitar and twenty years of teaching. I think that my experiences can help people maximize their learning ability and avoid major pitfalls of wrong and harmful beliefs about the learning process.

In school we are mostly taught in a linear way. Every bit of information is supposed to be fed to us one piece at a time. Most of the information is not transmitted in full context and without any emotional value or connection to out life. Music should definitely not be taught that way. Don’t misunderstand me- there is a part of learning music that is linear in nature like learning the notes off a page or a video etc. But it should always be placed on a foundation of an emotional understanding of your particular instrument, style of music, the culture, the language, the people. In short, the total space that gave birth to what it is that you are learning. Then, and only then, does the linear part become alive and fun. This can inspire one to practice one passage slowly one thousand times and not go mad, but actually benefit from it and go deep inside your self as a result of it. Therefore, I encourage anyone who wants to learn flamenco to listen to as much as possible, see videos of flamenco dance, visit Spain if you can understand the mentality, eat Spanish food, drink Spanish wine (if you’re of drinking age), etc.

How does one go about teaching flamenco or learning flamenco outside of Spain? If you don’t speak Spanish, have never been to Spain, and didn’t grow up in a flamenco environment, how do you learn? Good question?! Well, you gotta start somewhere. But where and how? Good, solid, quality knowledge is obviously very important. You have to have a teacher that knows the forms, can play, and can transmit the information, so by the end of the lesson you feel that you own this knowledge. Whatever little bit it is – you own it; it’s yours. You then need to understand that any falseta (musical variation) or compass pattern you know (groove licks), no matter who composed them (traditional/anonymous or not). It is only one compositional example of infinite possibilities that exist within the vocabulary of the language of flamenco.

One must cultivate the ability to listen with the heart. What does that mean? When you hear the brooding sound of Seguiríya or the agitated riding gallop of the Buleria and it makes your blood flow in the other direction – Bingo! That’s listening with the heart. Once you have this feeling inside you, you must use your intuition to find the path that connects the linear learning (the mind) of the material, sensitizing your awareness to every possible nuance of what you are learning from the teacher or the CD, video, etc, and assimilate not only what is being played, but HOW it is being played. The how will lead you to create that path to the heart. This is called learning by osmosis.

I consider Pepe “Habichuela” my master and mentor. How many falsetas did he show me over fifteen years of hanging out? Ah, about four to five tops. Why then do I consider him my mentor? Because instead of studying from him, I studied him. I understand not everyone may have this luxury, but it is my hope and wish to transmit some of this spirit in my lessons, be they private or on New Learning Vision.

I can’t stress enough the importance of studying slowly and in depth. Pepe always used to tell me, “tranquillo, la saldra.” – “relax, take it easy, it’ll come out”

It is my desire to utilize to the maximum, the medium of online lessons to transmit exactly that; slowly explained and in depth knowledge (linear information) that is grounded in understanding of the total process. The total process being: a correct understanding of technique and how to develop it in its various stages; a natural way of progressing through the levels of complexity and difficulty of repertoire and paying close attention to your musical execution of what you are studying. Not only the technical-mechanical, but also the expressive. They all have to be in constant balance.

Remember, once you tread on the path of learning, you will never feel satisfied because you will (at least you should be) aware of what you don’t know and how much more there is to learn. It is that feeling of dissatisfaction that will drive you to learn more and therefore make you realize that you’ll always have something new to learn and look forward to for the rest of your life.

Now that I find quite satisfying.

Enjoy,
Adam del Monte
New Learning Vision

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