[at_leo_87]

yes, i'd like to know about these mysterious thirds and tenths as well!

i came home last and wasn't able to post my practice yesterday so here it goes:

day 8
technique:
picado - 55

repertoire:
solea por buleria cante lesson - 50

other:
scales - 10
composition - 70

[at_leo_87]

day 9
technique:
thumb work/alzapua - 60

other:
ear training - 15 (man, i hate it!)
scales - 30
practiced my composition - 60

[David and Anne]

Dear Payul and Leo,
I keep trying, on the guitar challenge forum page, to post a reply to your queries about my thirds and tenths practice, but nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

I'll try again here:
These are exercises given to me by my teacher.
They are a base note and a treble note that many tones apart down the scales. Sometimes I play them base and treble together (thumb and index), sometimes the treble a fraction of a second after the base, sometimes as base and tremolo on the treble.

For example:
base string 4 (fret 4), treble string 1 (fret 2)
5 (4), 1 (0)
5 (2), 2 (3)
5 (0), 2 (2)
6 (3), 2 (0)

then
5 (4), 1 (0)
5 (2), 2 (3)
5 (0), 2 (2)
6 (3), 2 (0)
6 (2), 3 (3), ending with the chord 6 (2), 5 (4), 4 (4), 3 (3) [2nd & 1st strings not sounded]

Then try going backup the scale -- which I find hard!

My day 4:
scales, thirds and tenths about 15 mins
Sevillanas falsetas in different keys for about 30 mins
Alegrias and Soleares falsetas for about 20 mins
a Tangos intro for about 10 mins

[Payul]

Thanks for explaining!
Now i understand what you are doing!
( I don,t know why it did not work to posat it on the other thread)

Payul

[dillonpape]

All right, I have decided to join this challenge!

Well, I have been doing pretty much the same things every day in my practice these past few days, so I will use this first post to explain in more detail the specific practice techniques that I use, so then on the next 6 days I can simply and quickly state what I practiced and you will know exactly what I am doing already.

First of all, I have been focusing primarily on my rasgueado, for there is no flamenco without rasgueado and there is no other music with rasgueado. Thus, this is the most foreign task to my hands. The only rasgueado that I know so far is the simple E A M I I (pinky is E, right? I have been wondering about this lately, and I keep thinking that is either C or E) continuous rasgueado. Well, you can do just E A M I (noncontinuous) as well, but I only practice continuous because if you can do continuous, then you can do noncontinuous. haha. Logical. So here is my practice technique...I got the idea from at_leo_87's comment on this page Continuous Rasgueo I thought that I was following these directions exactly until I went back there just now to copy the link. I followed the directions about starting at 60, one stroke per click, then kick it up a notch, except I seem to have very, extremely drastically misread. Somehow (it bewilders me how) I read start at 60, one stroke per click for ten minutes, take a ten-minute break, and then kick it up ten BPMs and do it again. hahaha My mind has inserted extra words into things every once in a while before, but I have absolutely no idea how I managed to read several sentences extra that were not there. But anyway, that is what I have been doing: I started at 60, one stroke per click for ten minutes, take a break (practice something else, eat, etc.) come back ten BPM higher and repeat for another ten minutes. I have done this for a few days, and am now at 160 BPM. Yes, I did rasgueado at 160 BPM for ten straight minutes haha But I can feel myself becoming immensely strong in my hand already, and mentally, as well, I find it to be a very intensive yet refreshing exercise. Helps release any anger or tension, and by the time I get to t-minus 4 minutes I am smiling and laughing. It's great. Although it does make it very hard to play rasgueados with the pinky for the rest of the day...

Picado. I use the metronome technique which I expounded in my comment on this page How can you make your scales faster? - Flamenco at Falseta.com but there a couple details to add about what I do for picado specifically. So I play each string for one beat each, e B G D A E A D G B e B G D A E A D G B e and for each time that I change the tempo, I play that pattern four separate times. The first time I play triplets starting on either I or M (whichever one I feel less comfortable with) so that each string change starts on a different finger. Wait four beats, then second time is sixteenth notes started on the same finger so that each string change starts on the same finger. Wait four beats, third time is triplets again, except starting with the other finger. Wait four beats, fourth time sixteenths starting with the same finger that I started with on the third time. This way, I cover all possible combinations of same finger/different finger and starting with I/starting with M. Today, I started with an arbitrarily-decided 60 BPM and worked up to around 86 or so?

Arpeggios. Just open-string double arpeggios. The thumb plays E A D A E while I, M, and A play G B e B G, as in E G B e B G A G B E B G, etc., everybody knows how to do that one. Although I only practiced that for a couple minutes, even though I should practice it more.

Left hand. Just some basic finger-strengthening exercises from Adam del Monte on New Learning Vision, beginner package. First, 7 8 9 10 on each string from E to e and back up, play that a few times, then 7 8 9 11, then 7 9 10 11, then 7 8 10 11. Focusing on stretching the fingers and striking hard to strengthen the fingers. Also, an exercise that learned from another book where you play 1 2 3 4 from E to e, shift up and play 5 4 3 2 from e to E, then 3 4 5 6, etc. The focus is on lifting each finger as the next goes down so that there is only one finger down at a time. This promotes finger independence and making each finger immediately available to facilitate super-speedy playing efficiency.

Note identification. Go to Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net - Welcome then 'Exercises' tab, then choose Fretboard Identification. Options: Guitar, Right-handed (of course). I have been doing these for a couple weeks at least. Up until yesterday, I had done only open, 1, 2, and 3 frets. Half-way through my practice yesterday, I upgraded to up to 5 frets, so today was all doing 5 frets. Today, I did 400 identifications. I think I got 397 correct?

Also, one more thing that I added today that I had not done previously. In Adam del Monte's videos, the first 7 videos were about technique, and the last three focus on the theory and compas behind Solea, Tangos, and Alegrias, respectively. I decided to put off those last three until I had at least a pretty good handle on my techniques, particularly rasgueado. Since I am starting to feel comfortable with the basics of the other videos, I started on the Solea video. So I spent a little bit of time looking at the "comprehensive flamenco scale" which he explained, and then practiced a basic exercise that he gives and says to play oodles of times until you drive everybody crazy, designed to ingrain the feeling of the Solea compas into your being. Also one other short Solea falseta that he showed in the rasgueado video which I have been practicing. I was particularly focusing on the golpes, since not only are they the most difficult part to do loudly and well, but they are crucial for outlining the accents. I broke my A nail doing them, but oh well.

So I think that that is about it. That is my current practice regimen. I don't think that I left anything out, but that gives a pretty good idea anyway. I am supposed to be going to the beach and a symphony tomorrow, but hopefully I will have some practice time in there somewhere!

[at_leo_87]

hey great job dillonpape!
i'm sure you'll see results in no time.
one thing to note, when i said kick the metronome up a notch, i didnt neccessarily mean in the same day. i would advise you not to go more than 5 bpm up per day, i go 5 bpm up per week. in the beginning, it's really good to learn control and get these techniques into your muscle memory, so it's okay to practice really slow. in reality, you'll be playing faster but during your practice, you should work nice and slow and with lots of control.

for rasgueado practice, instead of having a ten minute time limit, try this: do any rasgueao pattern, one stroke per click, then take turns accenting each finger. so say for eamii, accent E say 12 times, then A 12 times, and so on. You can also try accenting every six beats. so it looks like this, Eamii, eAmii, eaMii, eamIi, eamiI, and so on. after, you do one stroke per click, try doing quintuplets or whatever the pattern is. just work on one speed, and perfect it. then increase the speed the next day.

for picado, dont forget scales! triplets, sixteenths, eighths. they REALLY help.

while it's great to work on technique, especially in the beginning, dont go more than an hour and a half, and be sure to start learning some compas and falsetas or else you'll get really bored.

other than that, sounds to me like you're on a really GREAT start! being organized the way you are helps an infinite amount. great job!

[dillonpape]

Thanks, at_leo_87. Even though I have just started flamenco, I have been playing guitar for six years, so I have had time to realize the importance of intense and focused practice and acquire knowledge of specific practice techniques and to develop my own. But not every practice technique is ideal for every guitar technique; I think that probably with any technique that one can learn, one can find a set of specific practice techniques which are tailored perfectly for that specific technique, and I try to find that set. Although of course there is a general background outline of practice philosophy which every set is based off of, and I try to always keep that in mind as well.

With the rasgueados, I would do them slowly for perfect control as well, but the ten-minute exercise thing was primarily to develop pure strength. I would usually spend a few minutes doing the rasgueado very slowly (no metronome or anything) in order to warm up my fingers as well as insure that I was relaxed and had proper technique, position, control, etc. However, I think that this extra advice which you just gave to me is great advice, and I will quit doing the intense ten-minute version in favor of slower practice and with the details which you said. I was already planning to stop doing it since I feared that it was injurious to my pinkie. After I was finished with the 160 BPM that I mentioned I had gotten to, the next time I went to practice (I think it was the next morning or maybe later that afternoon or something) I noticed that my pinkie was in quite a bit of pain, particularly in the middle joint. It felt like it needed to be popped, but I could not pop it. I tried doing a rasgueado with it a couple times, thinking that perhaps it just needed a little bit of warming up and stretching out, but that was particularly painful. I decided to just try to use my pinkie as little as possible until it got better, knowing that my particular rasgueado practice technique was undoubtedly the cause of it. Now the pinkie is back to normal, but I will not do the ten-minute technique anymore. I think that its purpose has been accomplished already, anyway.

As far as scales, I would practice scales a little bit, although I did not mention that in the last post and I would not practice them with picado. In addition to all of the techniques which I am practicing, I have also been trying to learn and practice music theory, including trying to familiarize myself with and memorize the various scales in various keys. Doing the fretboard identification exercise is closely tied to that, in that it greatly facilitates my ability to quickly find a particular scale and familiarize myself with where those notes are in various places on the fretboard. So my only "scale practice" per se so far has simply been picking a tonic note and scale type, trying to recall from memory what notes are in that particular scale, and then playing it many times using my new skill of fretboard identification. As I improve at this, I plan to gradually starting practice the various scales using picado, although the main focus with this would be more on the accuracy and precision of left-finger/right-finger execution of the note rather than the speed which I focus on with the other picado exercise. Thus, I want to put off scalar-picado practicing until I am comfortably familiar with the picado technique itself (finger position, etc.) so that I will not have to focus a whole lot on finger position and such when I should be focusing on the interaction between left and right hand.

As far as compas and falsetas, as I said, I just started working on solea a couple of days ago. So far, all I know is this exercise using one chord and a repeated hammer-on in order to familiarize myself with the feeling of solea, as well as 1 one-compas long falseta which I have been practicing. If you know of any simple falsetas for the flamenco beginner which you would recommend I learn at this point, then I would appreciate the recommendation and try to work it in to my practice regimen, but I find that working on this one falseta and the exercise seems to be a good thing to do at the current time as they are good practice for utilizing rasgueado within a musical context, at least until I become comfortable with doing rasgueados at least a few times in a row and at a moderate speed, not to mention until I am comfortable with the feel of solea in its most basic and simple form. Anyway, I don't mind practicing "boring" technique for hours on end I try to devote as large of a portion of my day as is possible (fitting in with other things that I find important to do) to practicing guitar, as it is possibly the most important of all things that are important to me.

[dillonpape]

Obviously I missed a few days in this seven-day challenge. My first days missing practice in weeks and it happens right after the first day of the challenge! What a bummer, but here I am again. However, this post is not my day-two post, or I guess technically I would restart, but this is not my restart post either. A couple days ago (in fact, within seconds of posting the last post that I posted on this thread), I had an epiphany which created a sort of personal paradigm shift for me. The result of this shift is that music is not very important to me anymore. Well, it is not exactly that it is not important, but rather its purpose and function for me and its role in my life became redefined in such a way that it is not the most important thing in my life anymore. My music has become more of an exclusively personal sort of endeavour rather than a central objective to my life (i.e. as an aspiration for my central career goal and most prominent subject of my thoughts) for various reasons. Although it seems like a rather simple sort of change at first glance, it has some dramatic implications for how I will choose to live my life even starting now and possibly for the rest of my life. As far as playing guitar and writing music and such, I will still continue to do so, but even within those things, my focus will change slightly and I will not concentrate on them as frequently as I have been compared to other things that I find important (in other words, that last sentence in my last post about playing guitar being the most important thing to me is now no longer true). As far as how that effects this challenge, I will finish this challenge for the sake of following through and completing a challenge (no one can refuse the triple dog dare! ), starting either today or probably tomorrow, but after that I can't absolutely guarantee that I will strive to practice daily, or at least not for as long as I currently do.

Long story short, music still important, but not vital, more music theory than guitar practice, not for hours on end.