On Time & Timing (or, "Wait--What Month Is This?")

Oh my. Has it really been over a month since my last blog post? Do I still have any actual readers out there? (You kind, tolerant, understanding souls, you?)

As we all know, I get these terrible pangs of guilt when I ignore a writing project (at least one I haven't deliberately decided to murder). It's like locking a puppy in the car in the mall parking lot on a hot day and then lingering at the Häagen-Dazs stand, or "accidentally" losing young relatives in the inescapable bookshelves limbo at Ikea. But never fear! I'm here to make amends--or at least excuses!

And there will be a point to all this--I promise! But first, the up-and-comings: As you've no doubt surmised, I've been laying low performance-wise for the last month or two (doctoral dissertations have this way of wreaking havoc on one's practice/performance schedule). But all this low-lying business changes in the weeks to come. My cuadro Zamani Flamenco will be back at its regular spot, Kristos Eastlake, on the 14th of November, and I'll be playing Winterfest at the Seattle Center with La Peña on the 29th. Then on the 12th of December is the big semi-annual Peña show at the Ethic Cultural Theater in Seattle.

Hooray for getting out of the office!!

But wait, you say, wasn't there some question of time (as in not having it for practice)? Indeed there was--and still is, in fact. And the upshot is this: if I'm going to have time to teach literature to college undergrads (or at least keep them from chewing the covers off their books) and otherwise get some writing done, I've decided that I have to find another approach to practice.

The new approach boils down, essentially, to the fact that instead of playing as much as I feel like I need to in a day (usually several hours), I can generally only get an hour in. Which means that I have to prioritize. Do I work on repertoire? Drills? Do I nuance pieces I know, or grind through the really challenging stuff?

What I decided--and it seems to be going well so far--is to concentrate on some essential drills (rasgueado, arpeggios, picado) and then hit the hard stuff (Paco, Vicente Amigo, Tomatito). I've found that my other (i.e. easier) repertoire material is still where I need it (as long as I hit it once a week or so) and that the technical challenge of the hard stuff (and the repetition of the drills) keeps my dexterity and strength up. And, perhaps as important as all else, working on challenging music gets me looking forward to practicing so that when I sit down to play I'm generally focused and task-oriented.

The other thing that having to pare down my practicing has done is make me focus on the quality of how I spend my time. This is where "timing" comes in--and it comes in more and more these days with a metronome (cf. penguin above). Example: I've been working on Vicente Amigo's solea Tio Arango for a month or two. He plays it fairly libre, with lots of push and pull in the tempo. What I discovered when I started playing it more frequently with a metronome is that I was actually rushing through the most challenging passages (and consequently mutilating them), but that when I slowed them down (to tempo, as it were), I could pull them off much cleaner.

This, I realize, in writing it, sounds painfully obvious. Of course it's easier to play hard stuff slower. My point is that before setting "the clock" to it and making myself play this otherwise libre piece in strict time, I didn't even realize I was rushing. For that matter, since there's so much syncopation in this piece (and because the tempo is slow), I've been using the "flamenco compás" metronome (right here at RF, BTW) almost exclusively as a study tool (i.e. versus mixing it up with other compás recordings). Tying this piece down to a rigid tempo makes it feel a bit "square," but it also makes it correct (as in, in compás). I will eventually untether myself from the metronome, but only once I'm sure I can do it in time. In the mean time, the clock keeps me from rushing (and consequently massacring) the passages that are still a bit squirrely.

Which makes for better, more precise, and more effective practice all crammed in to a paltry sixty minutes. (Which, I'm afraid, is going to be the case more often than not until I finish with all this dissertation tomfoolery!)

And now, alas, in keeping with this post's theme of temperance (despite its being fueled by Jameson's best), I'm actually not going to go play--but only because it's late and I'm still not entirely convinced that my wife is categorically opposed to spousicide if the conditions are right.

But you, on the other hand, should definitely go play!

~A

Kristos Round III: Two New Songs, a Full House, and a Broken Castanet

For those of you following along at home, just for the record: yes, this recent spate of shows is why other additions to Ravenna Flamenco have been slow lately. But fear not! I've got more in store in the article/tab/online tools department soon. (Okay, fine: after the Arts in Nature Festival show this Saturday, but soon all the same!)

In the mean time, how about a show rundown? Actually, I think the title and the pic pretty much sums things up. Kristos was all of about standing room only during our first set. It thinned out a bit through the second set, but my suspicion is this had more to do with the advancing hour on a Sunday night than with any artistic transgressions on our end. There's word that we may be remedying this day-of-the-week problem for the next show, by the way. I'll keep you posted.

How, you might be wondering, did this full-house-ness affect my infamous nervous system? (Toque devotees know this is a favorite topic/obsession of mine.) Mercifully, there wasn't an all out neural mutiny. In fact, thanks, I think, to just sitting down and chilling the hell out before going on (cf. the 7/15 post), I think I was calmer for this show than I have been in the past for shows with half as many people.

My hands were still cold (hence the Dickensian urchin gloves for the first four or five songs), but they weren't stupid. As they usually do, they warmed up quite nicely about half-way into the first set. This cold business is still obnoxious, but it's not nearly as obnoxious as a completely non-compliant extremity. I'm still experimenting with my zen/hippie pre-show ablutions, but so far so good.

I'm also starting to tune in to concentration issues. For the last week or so I've been meandering my way through a book called The Natural Classical Guitar by Lee Ryan. There's a lot of interesting stuff in here (a book review could soon follow); among other things, Ryan's gotten me to thinking about where my mind goes when I'm playing. On a certain level, this should be obvious: I should be thinking about the music (though in reality, of course, it doesn't always work that way). But even in "thinking about the music," whether I think ahead a few notes or revel in a passage that just came off well (or cringe at one that didn't), were my mind goes and how long it stays there matters.

Ryan's advice is to "play in the moment"--i.e. to think about the note you're playing now. It turns out this isn't always easy to maintain for long periods, but even staying aware of where your mind is going on a meta-level (nerd-speak warning!) means that when one's thoughts go awry (or away), one can more easily bring them back on track. The idea is that the more you consciously do this, the easier it gets.

I bring this up only because Kristos can be loud: it brings my attention to (and challenges) my concentration. In some ways, the constant din of restaurant noise can be a pain, but it also forces me to be selective in where I let my attention wander. My hope is that learning to tune out crowd noise and crashing dinnerware will also teach me to tune out (or more easily let go of) other aural irritants and concentrate on making good music.

This said, I feel I should point out that the audiences and staff at Kristos have all been great and have all been really supportive in helping us create successful shows. But it's still a busy restaurant and a lot of people out having a good time--and raucous or not, I wouldn't have it any other way. (And, to Kristos's credit, the broken martini glass during the alegría was in perfect compás.)

But wait! What about the title? This blog post has nothing to do with what I said I was going to talk about! An abuse of artistic license? I should say so. Well here be the details: the new songs were a new bulería and Dani's solo arrangement of Zorongo (both of which came off swimmingly); the full house bit we covered; and the broken castanet was all Zanbaka--and it was broken while playing (and yes, they were fiberglass castanets and no, they're not supposed to break--no mercy for props!).

Now go play!

~A

The Walrus, The Thumb, and The Dancers.

No, this isn't a post about some long lost CS Lewis book in the "Narnia" series (besides, wasn't the Walrus Lewis Carroll's schtick?). Anyway, what this post is about is the latest Zamani Flamenco show--or series of shows, actually: there were six of them (which goes a long way, I think, toward explaining why I've been neglecting Ravenna Flamenco so heinously this last week or two).

Walrus Performance Productions (of the clever logo pictured above) is an arts promotion organization based out of the Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) in Seattle. The Evening Produced In Collaboration ("EPIC"--we like acronyms!) is a month long series featuring emerging performance artists in music, dance, and theater. Zamani Flamenco was involved in the first two weekends only, but there's still lots of stuff going on--check out the Walrus website for details.

But wait, you ask, I get the Walrus thing (now) and the dancers are a gimme, but what's up with the thumb? Was there some strange performance art related amputation incident? Have your hitchhiking days met an untimely end? No, nothing so dire, I assure you. Actually, the story with the thumb is this: it has finally sunk in to my compás addled cerebellum how important--particularly in acoustically interesting situations such as this--the thumb is.

Like most other guitar players, I'm chronically obsessed with all the things I can (or can't, depending on the day) get my fingers to do. Playing successive and different bulerías (in particular) over these last two weekends, however, has done wonders for my thumb-esteem. Basically, at issue is this: when trying to play forcefully enough to be heard over a dancer in full swing, nifty little picado runs or filigreed arpeggios aren't going to do it. Such was the case with me, anyway. With the thumb, however, I could insert some melody lines into what would otherwise have been a very rasgueado-heavy performance and still be heard over the lady with nails in her shoes.

But enough blather, you say. We want examples! Well fine then. Here's a bulerías for you. This was actually the last number on our last night; it took me about this long to get over the finger business and just roll with the thumb:

Granted, in other, future performance situations, I will definitely bring the fingers back for some equal opportunity string time. Given the room and sound situation here, however, learning (eventually) how to adapt my playing to fit the space was an important lesson. But enough moralizing. How about another clip? Here's an alegrías:

The different camera angles are a function of whether or not I had conscripted my very patient wife/occasional ZF videographer Anna to film on the night in question. The peculiarity of the next (and last) clip, however, has nothing to do with visuals. Let me explain: the CHAC, like most of Capitol Hill, is part of a "block building" where all the structures are connected. It's just sort of a building cube. And there are lots of spaces (connected, as it were, by Kafka-esque corridors and staircases), built out for every purpose under the sun (and some, I suspect, that have never seen the light of day). In any case, the night of our last performance, there was something called INDUSTRIAL MUSIC WARFARE going on in the space below the Walrus Theater (you might know, by the way, that, verbose as I am, I'm not generally given to typographical hyperbole, but believe me: all caps and bold is the only way to represent this).

The upshot is that just as I was getting my mic situated for our last set, a miasma of industrial-grade electronic music came welling up through the floor. It eventually stopped (an exploratory skirmish, perhaps?), but then came back for a second attack just as we were starting our tangos. There's little else to do but laugh and press on (I believe the audience was asked if they were ready to get funky--I won't say by whom)--which is exactly what we did. In the end I think we managed to pull it off:

And there you have it! Our next couple of engagements (for the moment) are private (i.e. unless you're already going, you can't come), but keep your eyes on the ZF calendar for more dates over the summer.

Now go play!

~A

Zamani Flamenco to Appear in Startling Proximity to Corn-Dogs

It just occurred to me the other day that it's been some time since I've written a post about my little ensemble Zamani Flamenco. In fact, as the last post includes the infamous carpeted stage fiasco, it further occurs to me that many of you might imagine that Zanbaka and I have since thrown in the proverbial towel and chosen to focus on less self-abusive pursuits. Driving school buses, for instance. Or late night impotency pharmaceuticals telemarketing.

But this is not the case. In fact, we have a show coming up in less than a fortnight--April 27th at 1:45, to be exact--at the Seattle Center's "World Rhythm Fest." And the "we" has grown: Zanbaka and I have added two more dancers--Daniela Serrano and Julianna Jones--to our little clowder for this appearance. All of which means that I've been busily grinding away at a new set arrangements and accompaniments.

Which, of course, is just how I like it. We're doing a roughly half hour set which will include some tangos, alegrías, bulerías, and, or course, some good ol' sevillanas (which is apparently my all consuming obsession these days). It has been good to work through some of these palos with multiple dancers (sometimes in sequence, sometimes all three at once). What I've discovered probably won't surprise you: I need to play slower.

But you might be surprised that this playing slower business is difficult. Not difficult in a "getting out the notes" kind of way, but difficult in a "getting out the music" way. A falseta that I was playing for Tangos at a brisk clip, for instance, virtually played itself--and accenting the compás came easy. When I slow this same falseta to a more rolling, "groovy" sort of tempo (credit to the dancers for that nomenclature), the notes come easy enough, but the compás has to be worked at.

The factor at play here, I think, is what my guitar teacher Marcos Carmona calls "bounce." I've had a hard time getting my head around this idea and now, as I try to explain it in writing, I can see why: it's hard to explain. I suspect that bounce has a lot to do with not only the volume and velocity of the accented compás notes, but also with the space that is left around those notes. Instead of playing an accented note right on the beat, that note might be a fraction of a second before or after the beat. And I'm talking nanoseconds here--not the kind of time you could notate in 64ths, but really just a hair one way or the other.

[This is, of course, a lot different than contratiempo accents, or accenting the 7 of the bulerías instead of the 6. These too are ways of accenting compás by not playing it "straight," but aren't quite what I'm trying to get at here. I might keep working on this one.]

"But Andy!" you say: "What's up with the title? You promised us cordogs!" Indeed I did. In fact, the title is an oblique reference to the fact that the World Rhythm Fest stage is in the "Center House" at the Seattle Center--which also happens to be the "food court." This will be the second time in recent months that Zanbaka and I have performed there (the first time being Winterfest) and I have a secret dread that if I show up too many more times they're going to start making me wear one of those paper hats or a hairnet or something.

Well, as they say, those who play must also eat.

Speaking of which: You! Go play!

~A

PNA Winterfest: Rolling With the Punches

Yes, winter has--yet again--been fested. I guess we really like winter around here. Who knew?

Anyway, Winterfest this time around (sponsored by the Phinney Neighborhood Association) was a whole different ball game than last week's gig: no Peña-huge support group of musicians and dances, but just the Zamani Flamenco trio: Rachel, baile (dance); Stephanie, cante (vocals); and yours truly, toque. Overall impressions: it wasn't perfect, but there were no major train wrecks and no decomposing produce thrown. This is a good thing. And I think we all learned something. This is a very good thing.

I won't speak for my fellow musicians, but I know my lesson is all about the importance of "rolling with the punches." I.e., that there's a big difference between missing a note and messing up a whole song--or set.

Artist's disclaimer: Before I go into examples, I feel the need to issue a caveat: in general, performance artists weed out their trip-ups and only make public the material that "works." This is what I do on the Zamani Flamenco website. I have a hard time buying, however, that any performance history is nothing but a long string of perfect sets. That's why I'm giving it all to you here--the good and the . . . otherwise. This blog isn't about showcasing the things I do well, but about discussing the ups and downs of Toque. End of caveat.

We opened with a Sevillanas. I'm a fan of these for starters because they're not especially technically demanding and since they're a fixed form, there aren't any arrangement surprises. This one, I think, went over pretty well. Here it is for your bemusement:

The second number we did was a Tangos. This is where the "punches" I refer to in the title come in. Remember my mutinous nervous system from the last post? I haven't shaken it off yet. I had arranged the introductory falseta for this Tangos to be about twice as long as I play it here. In the fifth bar, however, when the Moraito melody line came in I found myself in the most ridiculous of panics: is that first note on the fifth fret, or the sixth? In general, there are no fret markers on a flamenco guitar; since we use capos for almost everything--and we move them around depending on the tonality we're after and the range of the singer--they would probably be more confusing than helpful. In any case, I lost my point of reference and had to guess--and guessed wrong.

I recovered the next beat, but by then I was shaken. It's amazing the thoughts that can go through one's head between beats. At this point they were something like, "I could keep going and probably play the rest of the silly thing in the right key--but if I do goof something up, the trip I just had could turn into a full-on plunge-off-the-balcony-pelvis-shattering-catastrophe. One mistake: largely unnoticed; two mistakes: now you're permanently labeled--'Oh, yeah, Andy--that guitarist that can't keep track of his frets. Lovely turtleneck; shame about the music.'"

So I chickened out and closed, hopped over the next few bars and went right to the end of the intro. To the careful listener (which I'm sure the vast majority of the audience was not), this sounds, I suspect, rather inelegant--but still potentially "correct." Kind of a short intro, doesn't really develop musically very well, lunges a bit into the song. But, aside from that first missed note, at least it sounds like it was played the way I intended it. Rolling with the punches. Here's the clip:

The bit in the middle goes for the most part, I think, pretty well. Brilliant? No. But "correct"? I think so. And at this point (remember this is only my second small group performance) that's all I'm going for. There is a bit of chord confusion at the end--I should have hung on a C7 one more bar than I did. Having realized that I'd gotten out of sych with the vocals, I closed three or four bars early to avoid making the same mistake as the progression continued. Same frenzy of thought as above. Because I signaled it clearly, however, we all ended at the same place. Rolling with the punches.

Notice Rachel (the dancer) here--she's a model of composure. If Stephanie and I hadn't reacted, I don't think anyone would have been the wiser. In fact, I don't really think anyone was much "wiser" anyway--you might not have been if I hadn't pointed it out. But this is the lesson--or at least what I got out of it: it may be the hardest thing in the world not to react, but the musician's reaction might just be the only thing that signals that something has gone awry. Granted, major train wrecks are a different story, but if you're making changes on the fly, there's no reason to let the whole world in on it. If your fellow musicians are astute, you can get away with murder up there (musical murder, that is) and come out smelling like roses--instead of decomposing produce.

Just for kicks, here's out third number, an Alegrías. I'll spare you the analysis--the song is long enough as is:

And that, my friends, is enough for today!

Now go play!

A.