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HOME > WORKSHOPS > STEVE MULLINS
Turkey Editor's Note: Wherever one might travel in the world, there's a good chance of finding the mandolin already there. From India to Turkey, Eastern-Europe to the British Isles, from East-Asia to the Caribbean, and throughout the Americas, the mandolin has found its way into the hearts, ears, and musical traditions of millions around the globe. This column investigates music from around the world that is played on the mandolin (or closely related instruments), with the hope of inspiring mandolinists to further explore the rich possibilities of our instrument. For this installment of Global Mandolin, I'd like go to one of my favorite styles of music--Spanish Flamenco. Most of my performing career has been as a mandolinist, but in recent years I've also focused on the daunting task of trying to become a flamenco guitarist. In the process I've had some fun transferring techniques from the flamenco guitar arsenal to the mandolin. Flamenco comes from the south of Spain, the region known as Andalucia. It grew out of Spanish Gypsy culture with a strong influence from the Moors from North Africa (who were in control of the region for nearly 800 years), along with influence from Jewish culture and Spanish classical and folkloric traditions. In the twentieth century, it also absorbed a great deal from Latin-American music and from American jazz. There is not yet a flamenco mandolin tradition per se, though there have been a few mandolin appearances on flamenco recording--the playing of Carlos Benavente on his own records and recordings of Paco de Lucia, and my own playing on a CD with gypsy guitarist RenŽ Heredia for example. The mandolin appears more often in other forms of Spanish music--popular, folkoric and classical. The more prevalent instrument in Spain is the bandurria, which looks and sounds quite similar to the mandolin. The connection between the bandurria and the mandolin in the United States is an interesting and well-documented story. A group from Spain known as the Figaro Spanish Students toured the U. S. in 1880. They performed on bandurrias which were often mistaken for mandolins. They were so successful that they began to be widely imitated, beginning with Italian immigrants on the east coast (who of course played mandolins) and spreading worldwide, becoming the "Mandolin Rage" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The bandurria, like the mandolin, rarely appears in most flamenco forms. The exception would be in the more classically-oriented styles such as sevillanas. Also, a larger member of the bandurria family--the laœd has become popular in modern flamenco. The type of piece that I've chosen to arrange for this example is known as soleares--one of the oldest flamenco forms. This is not necessarily a complete piece. Each flamenco form is in a sense incomplete--an ongoing composition--with various artists sharing in its development, borrowing certain melodies (called falsettas) from the tradition while adding variations of their own and developing their own personal interpretation over years or even a lifetime. Each artist therefore has his or her own soleares with a grab-bag of melodic variations that can be plugged in or omitted depending on the needs of the dancer or the mood of the guitarist. Improvisation in the flamenco tradition is primarily of this sort--choosing which of the pre-composed melodies to use and what sequence to use them in. I've chosen some of the classic soleares themes to arrange for mandolin along with some minor variations of my own. What I want to demonstrate is some of the specific flamenco-guitar techniques and how they might be applied to the mandolin. Section A begins with the basic soleares theme played with the E-note inserted between each melody tone the first time through and the octave note above each melody tone the second time through. This is a common flamenco guitar technique alternating the thumb and first finger, accomplished on the mandolin by cross-picking. At the end of each phrase there is a triplet sixteenth-note chordal figure which would be played on guitar with the technique called rasqueado--rolling the fingers outward one at a time to strike the strings with the topside of each fingertip in the appropriate rhythm. I like to use this technique on mandolin for some interesting chordal accompaniment rhythms in any style of music, but it does take considerable practice to master. It is perfectly acceptable in this example to substitute a rapid triplet strum with the pick. Section B begins by emulating the arpeggio technique of flamenco guitar, again with a cross-picking technique on the mandolin. Section C borrows the technique from flamenco guitar known as alzapœa. This very characteristic flamenco sound involves playing a melody tone with a down-stroke followed by a chord or double stop on adjacent strings played with a second down-stroke, followed by an up, creating a down-down-up sequence. This is accomplished on guitar with a quick flipping movement of the thumb, and actually feels easier to execute (to me) with a pick on the mandolin. Section D utilizes the flamenco tremolo technique. Tremolo on classical and flamenco guitar owes a great deal historically to the mandolin. The Spanish classical guitarists of the late 19th century, such as Tarrega, were aware of the popularity of the mandolin at the time and consciously tried to emulate its sound, resulting in the development of the tremolo technique on guitar. The classical guitarists tried to sound like a guitar and a mandolin together by playing bass tones with the thumb followed by tremolo tones with the fingers on the upper strings. This was usually in a regular four-note pulse--thumb-finger-finger-finger. This guitar technique, in-turn, influenced the mandolin virtuosos of the early twentieth century who incorporated a cross-picked version of guitar tremolo into the "duo-style" repertoire of that era. Sometime later, the flamenco guitarists altered the classical tremolo by adding an extra tremolo tone per each beat, using a five-note pulse in a thumb-finger-finger-finger-finger sequence. This is very difficult to accomplish on mandolin with adequate velocity. It requires the use of a down-down-up-down-up picking pattern (as indicated). It's perfectly okay to play section D with a four-note pulse, thereby maintaining a continuous down-up-down-up picking motion, but if you ever have the opportunity to play with a flamenco guitarist and you want to stay in perfect sync with the guitarist's tremolo pulse, you'll need to learn the quintuplet version. Be careful in Section E to follow the pick directions as indicated. When playing two down-strokes in a row on adjacent strings, drag the pick from one string to the next allowing gravity to assist in the fluid downward motion--don't lift the pick off the strings between the two attacks. This is equivalent to a "rest stroke" with the thumb in flamenco guitar technique and an important element of the proper sound. This section also presents a challenge for the left hand--playing the E-note with the fourth finger on the G-string, while playing the F with the first finger on the D-string. If you can't make this stretch, go ahead and play the E-note on the D-string and slur into the F. The reason for doing it the hard way is to allow the two notes a half-step apart to ring together, creating a dissonance that is characteristic of soleares. Also be careful to slur from note to note as indicated--this creates a sound that is very characteristic of flamenco. Buena Suerte! |
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