Flamenco and Tap-Guitar
– by Daniel Schell
Flamenco guitar is a fascinating world. The sound of the guitar is full. The rhythm is exciting and extremely accurate. How can we adapt the techniques of flamenco to our tapping instrument?
In order to explore this technique, I have decided to start the project, ‘Tala, guitarra & compas,” with guitarists Antonio Segura, Jesus Aunion and tabla player Sandip Banerjee.
All the students of the E-Tap seminar have met the great Antonio Segura, as he is the flamenco guitar teacher there. Another interesting guitar player is Jesus Aunion from Spain, who has also studied at the E-Tap Seminar in Belgium. Jesus taps on an ordinary 6-string electric guitar, but he uses many techniques which are also used in flamenco.
Open strings
The main thing with flamenco guitar is its great ‘open’ sound. The chords resonate mainly because the players almost always use an open string in their chords. For instance, suppose you choose to play the famous flamenco (close to Phrygian) scale in G. Play a chord of G on the standard classical. After that you will need a chord of Ab. A flamenco player will often just move the hand one fret higher. See the following table for the result.
In fact the Ab chord has retained the two open strings D and G of the G chord. Actually, this chord is now major 7th, augmented 4th., which you could write AbM7+4.
Of course the flamenco player does not play it with the intention of producing a complicated chord, but just because the open strings are there. This concludes the discussion of harmony.
On our tapping instruments, specially the ones with two regions, we have almost forgotten what ‘open strings’ mean. Therefore, the idea is to arpeggiate or divide one chord on both regions. Also we should try to use as many repeated notes on both sides. For instance to reproduce the AbM7+4 chord, we could play Ab2 G2 D3 with the LH, and C3 Eb3 Ab3 with the RH. So in this chord we can hear the C3, D3, Eb3, three notes close together which produce a kind of rich resonating ‘open’ sound.
Arpeggio or chord spread out between two hands
The idea is to play one chord, for instance G, by alternating fingers. For instance finger 1 LH, then 1 RH, 2 LH, 2 RH, and so on. Many players, like Wolfgang Daiss and myself have produced studies for developing this technique. Teed Rockwell, plays a tiptar with both regions practically at the same pitch in order to produce many doubled notes. Bob Culbertson has mastered these spread out arpeggios on both regions, in order to perform his Latin pieces.
Jesus Aunion uses this technique practically all the time. He has quite an idiomatic technique because he uses the classical electric guitar. There is a lot more tension in the strings. That means that he can retain advantages ( and of course disadvantages) of both worlds.
Golpe: Antonio ( we take him as the prototype of flamenco guitar) taps with the four fingers on the body. Jesus does it on the strings. Purely percussive without pitch.
Rasgueado: strumming a chord held by LH, with 4 fingers in succession. There are many varieties. This can not be done on a dedicated tiptar because the strings are too close to the board.
Slap: A technique developed initially on the bass guitar, but which is also used now on the guitar. On the tap-guitar it can also be used to some extent near the bridge.
Harmonics : Are used extensively, mostly the natural ones.
Hammer on: What the guitar players call ‘hammer on’ is in fact just the same as our tapping action. So we shall call it ‘tap’ for the facility.
Pull off comes after a hammer on. First hammer the string on the board, then leave the string with a “pluck off”. We prefer to call this action ‘cut’.
There are three types of tap – cut:
1 – tap and cut on finger 1: tap with finger 1 and hold it on the string. For example play an A. While holding 1, you can now tap with finger 3 and produce a B. Pull off or ‘cut’ the string, by plucking the string with finger 3, you hear now again an A, the one held by finger 1. In short we call this tap 1- tap 3- cut 3. A variant of this is: tap simultaneously with fingers 1 (on A) and 3 (on B), on the same string. You hear only the note B. Then cut, you hear A.
Of course you can perform these tap-cut actions with fingers 2 on 1, 3 on 1 or 4 on 1. You can also cut on finger 2. Notice that this action is usually performed with one hand, but it can be as well with two hands.
2 – tap and cut on an open string. tap with whatever finger you want and then cut on the open string. Suppose you choose string #2, the open B. You tap on fret 3, producing D, then cut on open B.
3 – tap and cut on harmonic. This is performed with two hands. Touch gently an harmonic (for instance at fret 7) with finger 1 or 2 of LH . With RH tap above this fret, for instance at fret 9, and cut on the harmonic.
During the preparation of ‘Tala, guitarra and compas’, Jesus, Antonio and myself have worked extensively together in order to produce written scores. I have personally arranged the compositions of Antonio Segura and Jesus Aunion for the two-region tiptar. These scores are available with clicmusic.be
The fact that we have worked also with tabla player Sandip Banerjee is not the real subject of this article but you will find more on the tala-compas subject on the clicmusic.be site.
Article written by Daniel Schell with the help of Jesus Aunion and Antonio Segura, November 2003
Daniel Schell, a well-known touchstyle guitarist, educator, and composer, is host of the annual E-tap seminar in Belgium (www.tapguitar.com/tapseminar.html). Contact Info: www.clicmusic.be
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