Fingering: Makes of Breaks a Player! (tabs)
"I cannot play this falseta fluently no matter how long I practise it!"
I hear this quite often, and very frequently from very advanced players with strong and fast fingers. Sometimes even professional players inquire to book Skype sessions with me to find out whether they have a fundamental flaw in their technique.
9 out of 10, the problem is with fingering.
Let's get the not so obvious stuff out of the way:
Playing guitar is mainly an activity of the mind rather than muscles and tendons. Therefore, my advice to you is to use more brains than fingers when you approach a piece. In other words, before you attack the strings with brute force, devise an attack plan and think about which finger should go where.
The amount of time you put into practising is very important for sure. However, if you are asking your fingers to do nonsensical and inefficient movements, no amount of practice will get you satisfying results.
During the many hours I have observed Paco de Lucia's playing, besides being blown away by his inborn talent for speed I was also quite impressed with how well-calculated his fingering strategies were.
You can reduce the difficulty level of some falsetas by 50% if you finger them properly :-)
As a classical player I remember discussing with fellow players how such an such edition of Bach's whatever piece was much better because it had better fingering. We were talking about two separate fingering versions of exactly the same order of notes!
Why not apply the same logic to flamenco guitar?
Here, I am posting the tabs for a granaina falseta by Paco de Lucia with specific right hand fingering notes (P-a-m-i). I believe this is the only way this falseta can be played properly. Give it a try.
I hear this quite often, and very frequently from very advanced players with strong and fast fingers. Sometimes even professional players inquire to book Skype sessions with me to find out whether they have a fundamental flaw in their technique.
9 out of 10, the problem is with fingering.
Let's get the not so obvious stuff out of the way:
Playing guitar is mainly an activity of the mind rather than muscles and tendons. Therefore, my advice to you is to use more brains than fingers when you approach a piece. In other words, before you attack the strings with brute force, devise an attack plan and think about which finger should go where.
The amount of time you put into practising is very important for sure. However, if you are asking your fingers to do nonsensical and inefficient movements, no amount of practice will get you satisfying results.
During the many hours I have observed Paco de Lucia's playing, besides being blown away by his inborn talent for speed I was also quite impressed with how well-calculated his fingering strategies were.
You can reduce the difficulty level of some falsetas by 50% if you finger them properly :-)
As a classical player I remember discussing with fellow players how such an such edition of Bach's whatever piece was much better because it had better fingering. We were talking about two separate fingering versions of exactly the same order of notes!
Why not apply the same logic to flamenco guitar?
Here, I am posting the tabs for a granaina falseta by Paco de Lucia with specific right hand fingering notes (P-a-m-i). I believe this is the only way this falseta can be played properly. Give it a try.
| granaina.pdf |
Here is the atrafanaSchool video for the falseta.
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