Learn Spanish guitar / Exploring The Sound Of The Flamenco

basics of spanish guitarDid you wonder how to easily learn Spanish guitar? Well, this process has gradually changed along with changing of the instrument itself.

Yes of course that it’s always best to acquire some basic lessons, and it’s really far easier to learn other guitar styles by yourself that to learn this one.

It is worth to say that left handed guitars truly exist, but beginners must learn to play with a standard type of instrument, well, even left-handed ones.

The Basics

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Playing Position

The player is seated during his playing. An armless type of stool or chair of around average height appears to be mostly sufficient. The very top of the left thigh of the performer is the place where his guitar rests and is also held very close to his body.

Spanish guitar body position
Spanish guitar body position

And a footstool is also used for raising the left leg to achieve a comfortable height. Also, precisely guitars twelfth fret must be relatively central to the performer’s body.

His back must be straight, to prevent strain on the back, neck or arms.

Basic techniques

Guitarists widely use their fingers and thumb of their right hand for creating the sound, and there is no usage of the pick. The pinkie is rarely used. The right player’s hand performs arpeggios, chords and fine single note regular lines.

Guitarists who play fingerstyle acoustic type have mostly some difficulty when they adapt with this one.
spanish guitar strings overviewThere are also some techniques used here that are clearly not used in regular acoustic playing. And, in basic classical guitar, tones are sounded using mostly one of the original two styles: ‘apoyando‘ or ‘tirando’. Tirado is a ‘free stroke’.

Where the finger precisely strikes the strings as the basic stage of a perpetual motion. This is how tones are usually played in the case of acoustic guitars.

Apoyando is ‘rest stroke’. Here the string is also stricken by the finger, but it comes to firmly rest on the single adjacent string, rather than normal continuing and advancing past the original string.

This gives a far stronger tone and is widely used mostly to emphasize melodies or notes. The basic one is the tornado, but, of course, both styles should be clearly practiced.

Other techniques

When each single note of a compact melody is activated by exactly three fingers of the right hand in a very quick succession, that gives the right impression of a single perpetually sustained note – that is Tremolo technique. Also, the thumb is mostly used to produce notes between this interesting tremolo part.

Another one is the strumming motion called Rasgueado, mostly played with the performer’s second finger. And the third one is Golpe, mostly used for flamenco, unique percussive tap performed on the body of the guitar.

Technique (Left Hand )

This one is really similar to that of acoustic and electric styles. Well, the thumb must remain clearly behind the neck of the guitar, and not too much near the sides of the guitar. Half barres and also barres are also both clearly utilized.
Left hand acoustic guitar image

Do You Need To Grow Nails To Play Spanish Guitar?

nails length to play spanish guitarMost performers got the bigger nails on their right hands. Nails give clearer and stronger sound. This is not completely necessary, but doing it with nails is really beneficial and it is mostly recommended.

However, there is a long debate this topic for over the one hundred years.

More useful information

Many guitarists of this type read their music, so they are truly able to play completely from scores. Of course, music is also memorized for various performances. This clearly enables a performance of the higher-quality.

So if you have played acoustic or electric guitar before, and now you really want to play a Spanish one, then you really must learn to precisely read music. Otherwise, the playing can be restricted.

Final thoughts

Of course, it is a true fact that you can’t really learn how to completely play the real Spanish guitar from careful reading from this article, but I truly hope and wish that this text has precisely given you great and useful tips, and also a helpful advice for the start of your learning.

With some amount of serious practice and dedicated effort, you could maybe become the new Segovia, and have some real accomplishments!

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