jorge wrote:the bonko floreo pattern they are playing is more different from that than just a "retarded" or "pulled" feel added to the oversimplified "straight" pattern.
jorge wrote:Western music notation is in effect useless to provide the necessary information to accurately reproduce that sound, hence my claim that that floreo is unwriteable.
jorge wrote:By the way, how would you translate "floreo" into English? Riff, motif, pattern and phrase all seem a bit different from floreo and don't capture the complete, salient, improvisational, but non-repetitive nature of the floreo in rumba or Abakua music.
jorge wrote:I think the first note in the third set starts a little early, not late, and the second and third notes in that set fall right where the "straight" notes fall.
jorge wrote: how would we tell the students to modify the "straight" notes to get the sound right? Which note(s) would they modify, would they advance or delay them?
jorge wrote:They have to listen carefully and repeatedly and study the sound and timing, practice playing it, and respond to feedback from whoever is teaching them, whether they have written notes or not, so I am not seeing how creating a written representation of the floreo helps at all. Maybe as a first step to playing it right?
440ranch wrote:a conversation that follows between the Kings of Rhythm
jorge wrote:the "feel" derives from a lot more factors than just the theoretical understanding of triplets, 3 on 2, 2 on 3, 6/8 and 4/4
jorge wrote:the "feel" comes more from playing, singing, dancing, and enjoying the rhythm and the other people at the session than from the theoretical understanding of the rhythm.
jorge wrote:Most of the best players with the greatest "feel" for Afrocuban rhythms that I have listened to, met and played with don't even read music. This is an oral culture, played, spoken, danced and sung, not written and definitely not electronic/digital.
davidpenalosa wrote:Of course, but we are not limited to choosing one over the other. Pity the fool who would initiate a discussion of music theory at a rumba. On the other hand, what if your band is playing "Afro Blue" in the wrong meter because the chart is written in 3/4. You have only a limited amount of time at the rehearsal. Telling the band that the feel ought to be based on 6/8, rather than 3/4, may be enough to remedy such a fundamental problem.
jorge wrote:Even that doesn't always work. These are professional musicians (piano and bass) who play jazz and teach music for a living and they still can't get it from the charts.
jorge wrote:I suspect a much more important factor in changing how he feels the pulse will be whether someone takes him to a bembe or guiro or cajon or something similar while he is in Cuba and he gets a chance to dance the beat for a few hours nonstop while hearing and marking the clave/bell.
jorge wrote:I see what you are saying about the afro jazz waltz label, and how the 3/4 notation may create a tendency to artificially break the clave in half.
jorge wrote:I think I am going to ask the bass and piano player to each transcribe a whole song - all parts including clave, conga, timbales, bell as well as piano, bass and horns - as an exercise in intellectually analyzing the rhythmic relationships among the different parts.
jorge wrote:Maybe I will start with Afro Blue, the exercise would probably be most instructive if they wrote it in 12/8 rather than 6/8. What do you think?
Return to Congas Technique, Rhythms and Exercises
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests