Musicality, melody and the guitar obstacle

So I'm always learning from teaching my students, and I've been emphasizing what I think is a very crucial point in this whole flamenco guitar challenge. This applies to all music, but what I'm talking about is making difficult passages easier on the guitar and better for your audience.

Us guitarists easily fall into the trap of the guitar itself, as in the shapes of chords, scales, arpeggios and technique. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, would this sound cool if it was sung? Or on a violin? When you start looking at your falsetas and solos this way, you quickly realize you are playing guitar often, but not always being very musical. Because of the way the guitar is set up, it is easy to fall into this trap.

There are two reasons I bring this up. The obvious is that you should try and make your music sing, so when you perform, it gives maximum pleasure to yourself and the audience. After all, don't we play music because we love it?

The second is the technical aspect. Because flamenco guitar is so challenging, we spend countless hours on compás, technique, scales, arpeggios, chord changes, falstetas and speed exercises(all which are necessary). Even with all this practice, we still find many passages and chord changes difficult to pull off live or in compás without a retard. This is not acceptable in flamenco. So what do we do?

After you've worked hard on the technique, and are warmed up, try only concentrating on the melody and forget the guitar. I know it is easier said than done, but if you focus on hearing the melody in your head and your heart, the guitar will play itself, and you will make less mistakes because you are focused on MUSIC, not your hands!

So let's forget the technical advantages, and talk about music. What are you trying to say as an artist? How able are you to show yourself honestly as a human being(as Bruce Lee would say) and channel something greater than yourself if you are focused on the guitar? This in my opinion, is what separates the masters from the pros.

When you see Paco de Lucia, Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Wonder in their great live moments, they are not focused on what they are doing physically, they are making timeless music. This is the real reason we should look up to these masters.

The beautiful thing about all this, is it is the most achievable aspect of music. If you can find a way to give yourself honestly, no one can take that away from you, and it doesn't matter how much faster or cleaner someone else can play. No one has what you have. A lesser guitarist can blow away an advanced flamenco player with aire, spirit and compás.

Look what Kurt Cobain did with a couple bar chords and some anger.

I hope this is helpful for some of you striving artists out there. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts. Keep hitting that metronome, just give your self some time after to play some music.

Un abrazo grande -El Comanche