How to Play Flamenco Guitar

Transcript Hi, so we’re going to talk now about Flamenco chords. There’s really no such thing as a flamenco chord, but there are flamenco harmonies and groups of chords that kind of go together in a consistent way in flamenco. A couple of things you might want to know is flamenco when you transpose a …

Transcript Okay, so we’re going to learn how to play what we call rumba catalana. The style of rumba comes from Catalonia, which is a region in the northeast of Spain, also from the south of France or that area. This style is very popular with bands like the Gypsy Kings and many artists from …

Transcript Okay, so we’re going to talk about flamenco songs and flamenco form. I think at this point we can make a distinction between popular flamenco or modern flamenco and maybe traditional flamenco. Okay, the styles you play in modern flamenco are traditionally rumba, has become one of the most popular styles, like I’ve mentioned …

Transcript So right now we’re going to talk about tangos, flamenco tangos, not to be confused with Argentian tangos. It’s a totally different thing. Flamenco tangos is a style of flamenco that is in the meter 4/4, that means four beats per measure, and it features a 2 measure cycle. Okay, the first measure we’re …

Transcript So we’re going to talk about sevillanas. This piece I was just playing right now is a sevillanas. It’s a style of flamenco. It’s a very popular style, mainly because of its dance. The dance of sevillanas is a very big thing in Spain, especially in the South of Spain. It’s a very beautiful …

Transcript We’re going to talk about soleares or solea, it’s also called which is a flamenco palos, which features a 12 beat cycle. Yeah, there’s a couple of palos in flamenco that feature this cycle. Okay, so 12 beats is a long ways from our usual four beats. So how do we count 12 beats …

Transcript Okay. So, we’re going to talk about different Flamenco styles. Or what in the Flamenco world is called palos. Okay, a palo means a stick basically, but I think it means more like a branch. Okay. Flamenco is a word that encompasses a lot, a lot of different styles. Palos, or styles, are different …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and today we’re going to learn how to play buleria. Buleria is a part of flamenco. It’s a style of flamenco. It’s actually really popular, very sought out because it’s very challenging more than anything. It’s fast. The meter is complicated, so if you can play bulerias you can be …

Transcript I’m Dan Garcia, and I’m a guitarist. I’m originally from Madrid, Spain. I’ve been in the US for about 20 years now, in New York City, since 1998. And I play guitar for a living. I have the privilege to wake up every day and be able to play and teach what I love …

Transcript I’m Dan Garcia and now we’re going to learn how to play rumba gipsy kingstyle. So this is how they do it. Okay, beat one they do a thumb down with bolpe, very effective. Then you’re going to come up with your full hand. You’re going to kind of fold your hand into a …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia, and we’re talking about flamenco guitar. We’re going to talk about how we produce sound on a flamenco guitar and specifically about our nails, and how we’re going to produce a tone that makes flamenco sound like flamenco. So when we strike our strings with the right hand we’re going …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to explain this flamenco technique called pulgar-indice-pulgar, which means thumb-index-thumb. The rhythm I figure that we’re going to use is the triplet, which means you fit three notes on the beat. First note is going to be with the thumb. The second note is with your index and …

Transcript Hi, so I’m going to explain the technique of picado. Picado is a very unique technique and it’s very characteristic of flamenco guitar. It’s done by alternating your index and middle finger on a particular string, usually to play a scale or passage. It doesn’t have to be something very fast, but it can …

Transcript Hi, my name is Dan Garcia. Welcome to flamenco guitar. The technique I’m going to explain right now is called pulgar technique. Pulgar in Spanish means thumb and this is the technique we use in flamenco guitar to play notes with our thumb on the right hand. On flamenco guitar we always or almost …

Transcript I’m Dan Garcia and I’m going to show you now how to put a tremolo piece together. Okay, like I said tremolo is a technique that’s meant to keep a melody afloat. In this way, we can manage the melody. We can do crescendos. We can breathe. We can do certain things. Without the …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and I’m going to show you how you can practice tremolo. Okay, tremolo’s a technique that it really takes a while to get going, but you need to be patient and you can enjoy practicing it. So there’s several ways to practice tremolo and I encourage you to be adventurous …

Transcript I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you some variations on alzapua. There’s many, many variations on alzapua of course, and once you master this technique you can do variations of your own, obviously. But the most common ones are, we learn alzapua as a triplet, now we’re going to learn it as a …

Transcript I am Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you how to practice, and how to fit these rasqueos in time. We learned 3 or 4 different kinds of rasqueos, and each one is used in a specific way, especially at the beginning. Once you master your rasqueos, you can fit them in any way …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you how to do this technique called a tresillos resqueos in avonico, where we play a really fast triplets, okay? And we use our pinkie and our thumb and a lot of help from our wrist. It’s a triplet figure and it begins with your thumb …

Transcript Hi. I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you how to play tremolo, flamenco tremolo. This is a very attractive technique; it’s one of those techniques that people ask you always, “How do you do that? It sounds like 2 or 3 guitars played at the same time.” Yes, it’s one of those techniques …

Transcript So how do we hold a flamenco guitar and how do we position our hands? Flamenco guitar traditionally was held with both feet on the ground, the guitar up like this. If you see really old pictures of the flamenco guitar players you would most likely see them in this position. In the modern …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you a flamenco technique called golpe. Golpe means strike or hit. It can mean many things in Spanish, but in this case it’s when we hit the guitar, usually in this area here, with our fingers to create some kind of an accent or percussion effect. …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and we’re talking about arpeggio. This next arpeggio we’re going to talk about is the sextuplet and that means we’re going to fit three triplets into the beat. Let me show you how to do this. We’re going to start with our bass note. Remember our thumb always a rest …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you this technique I just played. This is an arpeggio roll. Okay, this is very common for introductions to pieces or endings, or maybe when you reach a really juicy chord in the middle of a piece, and you want to arpeggiate it a very fancy …

Transcript Okay, so I’m going to show you a good method to practice your scales and to get better and a little faster when you practice scales. It’s very important that you practice with a metronome. Like I said in the previous video, if you don’t have a metronome on, you’re probably not practicing. So …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. We’re going to talk about flamenco scales. There’s some scales you can use when you’re playing flamenco. There is such a thing as a flamenco scale and I’m going to show you what it is. Flamenco is very commonly played in what we call Phrygian mode. Phrygian scale is the …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and we’re going to talk about arpeggios right now. An arpeggio is when we break a chord down into individual notes as opposed to strumming. You can strum a chord or we can arpeggiate it, okay? Arpeggios have unlimited combinations. You can do millions of different combinations with your fingers …

Transcript Hi. I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you how to play alzapua along with a golpe. I warn you that golpe is a technique that you have to be ready to use with any other kind of technique you’re going to play on the guitar. In this case we’re going to throw a …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to explain to you how I did this technique called pulgar-indice, which means thumb index. Okay, we said in the previous video that the thumb will always play a rest stroke technique, okay? Coming from the wrist, to get as much sound as possible. Now what I’m doing …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and we’re going to talk about how to practice flamenco on guitar. Okay, there’s a big difference between practicing and playing and I hope this video inspires you to practice better so you can improve quicker and play better. Okay, when we’re practicing flamenco guitar we’re really targeting a technique …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and we’re talking about arpeggios. The next arpeggio I’m going to show you is where we fit four notes into the beat. So it’s a sixteenth note arpeggio. Okay, I’m going to start with a bass note. It’s going to be our first note of the beat and the downbeat, …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and now we’re going to talk about what really flamenco is. The flamenco is a style of music that originated in the South of Spain, probably around the 18-19th century. It’s a style of music that derives from singing. Okay, it began with people singing, like the gypsies in the …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you another golpe technique. In this case, we’re going to do a golpe while we play with our thumb. This is very common sometimes at the beginning of phrases or sometimes we just want to play a chord with a percussion accent, kind of like this. …

Transcript Hi I’m Don Garcia and I’m going to explain this technique called alzapua. This is a very unique and particular technique in flamenco guitar. It consists of a thumb movement and it’s three different moves that your thumb is going to make. First, your thumb is going to come down on the target string, …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. I’m going to show you a new rasqueos technique that we call abanico rasqueos, abanico is the fan, one of those fans you kind of open up and yourself a fan. This is a more approachable style of rasqueos and this is the one used mostly by classical guitarists or …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and I’m going to show you this technique called rasgueardo or rasqueos. This is a very unique and very characteristic technique on flamenco guitar.The technique consists of pretty much shooting your fingers up from your thumb, sort of in an aggressive way to hit the strings with a lot of …

Transcript Okay, so I’m going to show you how to get your picado fast. The key, like we said in the last video is alternating your fingers, okay? Like we said, when you switch strings it’s very tempting to repeat the finger, because the finger’s already leaning on it, so your brain is going to …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia. We’re going to talk a little bit about left hand technique for flamenco guitar. A left hand should be straight with our fingers kind of parallel to the frets. Okay, our thumb behind the hand in such way without the thumb sticking out too much, and either without it being …

Transcript Hi, I’m Dan Garcia and we’re going to talk about flamenco guitar. The first thing we need to know is what is really a flamenco guitar or is there such a thing as a flamenco guitar. Yes, there is. The first thing we need to distinguish is a nylon-string guitar from a steel-string guitar. …