Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar? I've recently become interested in Spanish guitar, particularly the Gypsy and flamenco styles, but I don't know how to get started. Are there any beginner textbooks or videos available? I previously bought a book that started with scale exercises, which I found very tedious, and ended up giving up. Thank you very much. |
Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.
Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.
Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.
Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".
Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Guitarists love other ppl learning or playing guitar!
Music is (for most people) not like that. For getting proficient at instrumental music, the skill floor is high, progress is slow, and only comes through hard boring work which rewires your brain. Teachers tell you to do boring things, and say things that don't make sense, and you will be frustrated. Eventually you realize that you can do things you couldn't do before.
There are whiz kids who don't appear to experience this, but I think they do; they are just wired to not hate it as much as the rest of us, and are doing it when their brains are nicely plastic.
When I say "getting proficient at instrumental music" I mean to differentiate from learning how to play Wonderwall or Louie Louie and having a great time singing along. That's absolutely valid, it's a great place to be, and that love of the instrument forms the basis of further progress.
The whiz kids might not even think to mention it, but they wanted it enough to drill scales & chords every day. You can make big investments into physical dexterity long before you understand what's going on, and it will pay off if you stay with it.
Always remember: The notes are not necessarily the most important thing.
That said, there's a lot of overlap between flamenco and traditional classical guitar, so learning classical pieces (particularly by Spanish composers) will help build your fingerstyle technique. Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad was the book I used for classical practice when I was younger.
Also check out pseudo-flamenco pieces that have been recorded by rock and country guitarists, like "Mood for a Day" and "Malagueña", and smooth flamenco crossover artists like Ottmar Liebert and Jesse Cook. You might find these too diluted from "real" flamenco, but they can be another entry point for building up your playing.
So if Brian May can’t do it.. it’s fine.
YT Video: https://youtu.be/X468z5AwefI?si=G929iSPdDwzr4QkK
Ps. Practice. There is no other way. What you are trying to do is hard. Takes practice and dedication.
If you want to listen to something I think very few people in the pop scene could replicate I would suggest listening to Paco De Lucia. Of course people like Al Di Meola who played with Paco were able to crossover into that world but he is a virtuoso in his own right.
Playing with your hand NOT resting on the strings or body, using TPIMRp (little p is pinky), master playing patterns. Travis picking is popular. Boogie woogie is too where you play three notes together with PIM and playing the bass line with T.
A pinching pattern or claw hammer is another method. Once you’ve mastered (I mean, can play Eric Clapton and Co) it then take it into the minor keys and learn the directional flamenco picking. Where you flick RMI downwards striking your fingernails, following it with your T in a downward pluck, then pulling IMR upwards. Some people reverse this but it’s always the same when it’s repeated. Eventually you’ll be able to picado like a pro. Malagueña watch out.
Your finger nails are now important. Learn about shaping them with a filer or getting gel tips. Your girlfriend can help in this department.
As others have said, there’s no short cut, only practice and patience. Eventually it will click.
*EDIT* https://youtube.com/shorts/IfOFLtf0h8c Paco De Lucia is a great one to study.
A lot of the books come with digital downloads of PDFs of the sheet music / tabs along with the author performing the pieces on MP3s.
Get set up with a footstool, and position yourself in front of a computer screen with the PDFs open to practice.
And even then these Mel Bay style beginners books are probably good for 6mo at most before you should be playing actual music
Flamenco in particular is something else. How you grow your nails, how you use your wrist, all this stuff is something you don’t want to spend hours at home doing only to realize you built a bad habit that will never sound right or even worse lead to RSI
However, my path preordained by the universe was interrupted when I watched a professional flamenco tutorial and was put off by the teacher's long fingernails, which are apparently required to play, but which I found absolutely repulsive.
I used JamPlay more than 10 years ago, when I was about 15. I learned really fast. They teach you music theory too.
I always found really good resources to learn the things I wanted to learn back then, not sure how I did it!
1- ABCDEFG or Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si? The first is more typical in the US, the rest in Europe and RoW 2- Tabs or Sheets? Sheets are more classical, tabs are common in pop and rock.
You mentioned gypsy and flamenco style, I think those are very folklorish, so I think video would be better suited (there's just no notation for fast strumming patterns), and tablatures would be appropriate.
But to get a true connection to flamenco you need to find people that play flamenco, whether IRL or online. I don't think it's a style of music that is learned through textbooks, as you mention, perhaps not even in tabs, but I may be underestimating the art.
I would suggest:
- Get a guitar that you think you will like picking up and playing. Whether it's electric, steel string acoustic, classical, or flamenco. Whatever rocks your boat and you like the sound. Have it somewhere where you can just grab it and play a little when you feel like it.
- Learn the basic open chord shapes and some simple songs. Don't worry about flamenco technique for starters.
- Once you have some very basic control of the instrument and you know a few shapes and forms (e.g. 3-6 months) you can pick up some easy tutorials of basic flamenco chord progressions and try those out. You don't need a ton of fancy chords or technique to get some flamenco like sounds out of your instrument.
- You will need to build what people call "facility". This is your ability to move your fingers quickly, put them in the right places, etc. this needs to happen with a combination of drilling and playing progressively harder pieces. I would still say you don't have to aim for super complicated flamenco techniques yet but you can learn something about spanish scales and chord progressions and start experimenting.
- Learning some simple fingerstyle songs/patterns will likely help if you do decide to specialize more in flamenco.
- A teacher will certainly help and may be necessary at some point. Probably a good idea to take some lessons early on just to get corrected on basic mistakes. Then you can go back to playing/practicing on your own and come back again when you feel you need more help.
- A book is really hard to learn from when you don't know anything. Videos are better. But you will need feedback from a person at some point.
- Record yourself playing. Challenge yourself to learn progressively harder pieces (in whatever style).
- Practice with a metronome to improve your sense of time.
- You will need to learn some theory, scales etc.
- You also need to develop your ear. Listen to music and try to figure out notes/chords etc. Sing a tune and try to play it by ear.
It's a journey but it's easy to get to a point where you can play some simple songs and have fun and build from there.
do you want to learn flamenco techniques? there are a zillion youtube tutorials on rasgueados, on alzapua, on picado, etc.
i find that you can watch the legends and masters directly playing their music, and watch their fingers.
song forms, chords, all can be learned if you know what it is you seek to learn.
i taught myself flamenco guitar to quite a high level of competency during the pandemic, and i can promise you that with a few hours practice a day, and some passion for listening to and discovery of new music, you too can achieve what normal mortals consider to be extremely developed skills, because, truth be told, it's like any human endeavor: you can get competent quickly, but it will take a lifetime to master.
playing a musical instrument is a different modality than verbal wankage and supposition about this or that, aka it's the opposite of an online comment, IMO
OTOH, classical guitar, if that is what you are after, is exclusively a repertoire music, you learn it by playing songs. here, get some guitar sheet music and start playing. they include numbers for fret positions above the staff of notes, sometimes, and they often indicate which finger to pluck with on the right hand. you literally can just follow the directions on the box
Technically, you paused and could restart this afternoon or next year or twenty years from now…
I've recently become interested
Unless you are guitar virtuosic, against adult standards non-beginner level Spanish guitar competence is years ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun (and you probably should). But doing things you don’t do well is the only way to learn. Good luck.
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988256921/c-tangana-tiny-desk...
From "Noad" there's a Spanish Study that is on track with your goals: https://youtu.be/p_YHVf_pan4
Flamenco (traditional) uses a unique rhythm called a "compas", 12 beats, and "should" be practiced with dancers stomping the counterpoints.
Flamenco Guitar Basic Techniques (Juan Serrano)
Flamenco Guitar Method (Gerhard Graf-Martinez)
...it's a loooong road, and the climax of it has you buying a new (specifically for flamenco) guitar, as it resounds better in a crowded dance hall or theater.
You have to decide to learn to play by ear, by tab, or by notes, and as I mentioned in my blog post, you have to struggle through a long period of time "nobody thinks I sound like anything worth a damn".
As an adult student, you may end up in a recital going up against 11 year olds and thinking to yourself "Damn! Their twinkle twinkle little star is kicking my versions ass!"
It's a loooong road, I've been an off and on student for ~15 years, mostly self-taught, classical with Spanish/Latin influences.
Malagueña (Juan Serrano) - https://youtu.be/18rSqD5My40
Guardame las Vacas - https://youtu.be/O-LzDvRRxNU
Antonio Briebesca, Paco de Lucia, Johannes Linstead (Para La Habana), Gypsy Kings (of course), Rodrigo y Gabriela are all (non-flamenco), and some are slightly more modern flavor of the direction your question was probably in.
Shoot for the stars and you'll eventually be able to bang out a few decent tunes after a year or two. Good luck!
https://blog.google/technology/ai/musiclm-google-ai-test-kit...
If you want shortcuts to playing guitar enough to impress many, you can skip (some) theory and learn a few chord shapes. To play like the masters will require dedication to craft impossible for most. I applaud your efforts.