
Originally Posted by
urucoug
This is a fun thread! It's a nice little groove you made for us, Los Boleros. This is the first attempt at a Latin style I've ever attempted, not to mention one of my first attempts at playing with other musicians. And, for sure the first piece of music of mine that can be found online.
Hopefully more capable people will also post theirs. It's too good of a back track not to have some contributions from some other of you guitar whizzes.
My method was to listen to the back track, and then sing into a microphone. Then, I imitated that singing on guitar, and kept redoing it, tweaking it until I liked it the most. One day, I may be good enough on guitar to play what's in my head the first time.
Critiques welcome.
Nice try - nice phrasing, good choice of notes, etc.
BUT - you've made one crucial error: mistaken the rhythm. It seems from your phrasing that you're feeling the percussion and bass rhythm like this:
Code:
BEATS: |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |
CLAVE: |x x x | x x |x |
BASS: |G______ C |D_____ C |G______ etc
That's a very natural way to feel it - for a non-Cuban musician! - but it's wrong. The correct beat placement is as follows (as I posted earlier in the thread):
Code:
BEATS: 4 . |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |
2-3 CLAVE: | x x |x x x |
BASS: G____|_ C D_____ C G______ etc
So the bass actually starts on beat 4, and beat 1 of the first bar is missing. The clave at the beginning starts on beat 2.
(My apologies if you do understand this, and were deliberately phrasing off the beat!)
I'm posting my own version here, as a demo to try to help you hear the beat. What I've done is added a cowbell on beats 1 and 3, with a heavier beat on the first downbeat of each pair of bars. Follow the cowbell. (try to ignore the bass to begin with)
Code:
BEATS: 4 . |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . |
2-3 CLAVE: | x x |x x x |
COWBELL: X x x x
BASS: G____|_ C D_____ C G______ etc
On guitar, I'm not improvising, but quoting a couple of tunes you may recognise: Guantanamera and El Manisero (the Peanut Vendor). The last one in particular should help you feel the groove.
(Apologies to Los Boleros for using such a cliche! And also for using Guantanamera, which is really a cha-cha, not designed for this tempo. It just happened to fit the changes.)