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Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#31

Post by shermantanktop »

polishdude20 wrote: post #22
shermantanktop wrote: post #19

If you're on HN, you've probably experienced the dopamine rush of encountering something new, understanding it well enough in short order, applying it, and seeing results; or building something that others engage with in the same way. Or being especially good at math, or science, or computers, seemingly without much effort. Music is (for most people) not like that. For getting proficient at instrumental music, the sk…

As a guitar player of 15 years myself, when I was learning to play, I never thought of the exercises as boring or tedious because I learned in order to play a specific song. Getting good at that song made me motivated enough to continue learning the fundamentals.

For me, I plateaued. I didn’t think I had, because I was learning new material, but I wasn’t getting better. And I had kids and other priorities and so enjoying myself was enough. I then finally found a promising musical situation, admitted my stagnation and got a teacher (after decades without). My primary goal is to be a better musician, with instrumental skill a secondary concern. The grind I am talking about is mostly about this new learning phase for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#32

Post by shermantanktop »

shermantanktop wrote: post #31
polishdude20 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guitar player of 15 years myself, when I was learning to play, I never thought of the exercises as boring or tedious because I learned in order to play a specific song. Getting good at that song made me motivated enough to continue learning the fundamentals.

For me, I plateaued. I didn’t think I had, because I was learning new material, but I wasn’t getting better. And I had kids and other priorities and so enjoying myself was enough. I then finally found a promising musical situation, admitted my stagnation and got a teacher (after decades without). My primary goal is to be a better musician, with instrumental skill a secondary concern. The grind I am talking about is m…

Here’s an example of something that was unattainable for me before a whole lot of hard work. https://www.scribd.com/document/456430254/Groove-Merchant-Pn...

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#33

Post by YZF »

I'll give my 2 cents as someone that picked up guitar playing about 10 years ago. I don't play flamenco but I'm familiar with some of the techniques.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#34

Post by hoytech »

Flamenco can be a very challenging and technical style, but it doesn't have to be. I don't know your background, but if you just want to have fun and sound good quickly, try this.

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!

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#35

Post by hiisukun »

hoytech wrote: post #34

Flamenco can be a very challenging and technical style, but it doesn't have to be. I don't know your background, but if you just want to have fun and sound good quickly, try this. 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 th…

This is a good comment! But I'll add that many classical learners use tab, and I think there's absolutely no shame there. The music is what counts, and I think rarely would someone look down on a learner.

Guitarists love other ppl learning or playing guitar!

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#36

Post by ringeryless »

first of all, stop being an outsider and calling it "spanish guitar" and start listening to decades of recordings made available via the internet.

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

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#37

Post by ringeryless »

ringeryless wrote: post #36

first of all, stop being an outsider and calling it "spanish guitar" and start listening to decades of recordings made available via the internet. 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…

i can promise you that classical theory is not how 99% of flamenco players learned what is essentially an oral tradition folk art.

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

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#38

Post by lucas_membrane »

Back when I learned guitar, guitar players came in only two flavors -- Spanish and Hawaiian. One was a Spanish guitarist if one played the guitar with the face of the guitar vertical (strings forming roughly a vertical plane), and a Hawaiian guitarist if the guitar was oriented horizontally, typically in the lap of the guitarist, with each forearm also approximately parallel to the face of the guitar pointing forward from the guitarist. Nowadays genres are all mostly obscurely defined, fragmented, swirling around, and trying to become world music, which is wonderful, and almost everyone is trying to be one of a kind, so good luck figuring that all out and finding a happy place in it. Don't be like me; if you are not in the water you are not learning to swim -- just play!

Re: Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

#39

Post by TZubiri »

Of course there isn't a single way, here's a couple of questions that might guide your choices, alo

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.

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