John great to have you here! I am looking forward to hearing your progress and feedback ok how well you felt discovering the Flamenco techniques

Stephen great to have you here! I hope that this exercises can help you to discover a new music style and expand your (already very wide) musical knowledge even a bit more! 

Johan Dahlberg great to have you here Johan! Hope that this basic exercises can help you a little bit even if they are probably not very demanding for you! Let me know if you need more material and I will see if I can upload the other exercises a bit earlier than expected.

Johan Dahlberg great video Johan, I have also seen your Instagram Posts and you are definately already on an advanced level! I have some suggestions, that might maybe help a little bit but on your level it is really difficult to see the small details on one short video. 

when you do the Alzapúa, try to do the golpe (slap on the top of the guitar) with curved fingers as if they would try to go a little more underneath the first string. You will see that the sound changes a bit and that your hand is more in a relaxed position and the whole movement is looking smaller. After a while this might help you to speed up a little bit the Alzapúa. Of course a metronome is always helpful to practice it and also different falsetas from Paco de Lucía, where you learn different types of Alzapúa.

with the Abanico I would recommend you to have a little more distance between your wrist and the strings (like a little twist that the classical guitarists often do) in this case you are able to dig deeper into the strings from the front (you can clearly see it on your thumb that the contact point with the string changes). 

Please let me know if this helps a bit :-)
 

Johan Dahlberg great work!! Make sure to give more accent on the beats 2,3 and 4. the Rasgueados and the Alzapúa always need some kind of direction and in this case they are always going for the beat 2,3,4 from the first bar. 
 

Please keep up the good work, you are already on a high level :-)

Bogac Ozgen great to have you here! I hope that this few basic exercises might help you to get to the next level with the right hand technique. Please feel free to ask me anything if you have any doubts.

Rodney great to have you here Rodney! You are totally right, we can all always try to improve. The basic exercises won‘t be very difficult for you. Maybe you can try to practice version 1 and 2 for the abanico (video three) and then decide which one works better for you. Just let me know in case you have any questions!

Rodney great work thanks for the video! I have a suggestion regarding the Alzapúa technique.

in the Alzapúa I usually like to do the golpe with a and m (both fingers a little bit curved) and going a little bit underneath the first string. This will change a bit the sound of the golpe but your hand will be more relaxed so that you can speed it a little bit up! 

of course metronome is always a great idea because we really want to make sure that the we are rhythmically as precise as possible.

Let me know if this helps a little bit! 

Michel Giroux great to have you here Michel and thanks a lot for your questions! The main focus for the first week is to get to know the basic techniques through the first three videos, which is only for the right hand… of course since you already have some experience playing Flamenco, the first week won‘t be too challenging for you. 

however I do have some tipps that might help you maybe:

1. try to do the three finger Rasgueado more crispy, you are doing it very relaxed but you should still feel that the fingers have some resistance and kind of „pop out“ of your hand with speed. Of course while being careful that you are not exaggerating and hurting your hand.
 

2. Alzapúa technique.

I would try to accentuate the movement while you are going down with the thumb, because I could not clearly hear the second movement. The Apoyando was good and the movement going upwards aswell.

3. Abanico 

when your ringfinger is going down, I see that your index finger is also almost coming down. Make sure that your index finger is staying on the top side of the strings and it won‘t come down while the ringfinger is playing.

As I mentioned previously you have time the entire week to get to know this techniques because we want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable using them. I will talk to Martin and see if we can upload the next videos a bit sooner so that the ones that are learning them faster can move on to the part where we play more.

Please let me know if this feedback helped you a little bit.

Michel Giroux great that you mentioned the sitting position. I normally like to play with crossed legs (as Paco de Lucía and others) since I have a slightly more edgy attack on the string than when I play in the classical position. Also as you correctly mentioned before, I have never felt very comfortable playing the Alzapúa and other techniques having the guitar neck as high as in the classical sitting position. What I also do for Practising, instead of crossing the leg, is to put my right leg on the footstool and get a quite similar position to the one with crossed legs. Another option could be to simply copy the sitting position of Grisha Goryashev who plays with the ergoyplay on his right leg…

there are many different options. Just make sure that whatever position you choose, it enables you to create the sound you are looking for. Maybe we can have a quick look at it in the meeting on Zoom next week.

regarding the Juan Martin Book. I really like all of his works and I also have a few of them at home. They are great! What helps me a lot for keeping the rhythm steady and precise is to use a app called „Dr. compás“. It has a price of approximately 20 USD but is definitely worth a try since it has many different Palos (Flamenco-styles) and you can choose your tempo for practising.

Please let me know if any of this tipps helped you a bit :-)

Johan Dahlberg great idea thank you very much for sharing! I will have a look at it for sure!