Every time you play something badly you have given your body bad information. Every time you play something properly you have given your body good information. The more times you play a part well, the better it is going to sound next time! When practising scales play only groups of 4 or 5 notes. When learning new repertoire or revising old repertoire practise only groups of 4 or 5 notes at one given time. Accuracy is the key! (David Russell).
This is a great quote:
“Taking an honest inventory of our musicianship is difficult. Some feel more comfortable condemning themselves totally than accurately assessing their strengths and weaknesses. They are usually defeated by a sense of futility before they play the first note. Others believe themselves as better than they are, not wanting to face the gap they need to work on. Their performances tend to be hit and miss, but they rationalise that there best performances are how they really play, and their worst performances are flukes. It’s not really them! In this way they avoid fixing and cleaning up what needs to be fixed and cleaned. In either case, the disclosure of flaws in their playing hurts. because there is so much emotion attached to the flaws, the latter group would try to overlook them, and the former would use them as evidence that they stink. Improvement is delayed for year or perhaps forever”
(Kenny Warner, Effortless Mastery, page 53)
In flamenco we have various rhythms and styles called “Palos”. There are more that fifty different palos in flamenco! Most of them are not commonly played by young guitarists and singers. The scales we use in Flamenco are either in the mayor key (Alegrias, Guajira, Garrotin, Bulerias por fiesta and many other palos) or in the Phrygian mode (Soleares, Siguirya, Rondena and more).
There are three main scales we use when playing in the Phrygian mode (por arrival or por media).
1. Phrygian mode that is the 3rd mode of the C major scale:
2. Phrygian dominant scale that is the the scale built on the 5th note of A harmonic minor scale. Also known as Altered Phrygian scale or Phrygian Major scale where you raise the 3rd note of the Phrygian scale from minor to major:
Sometimes we combine the two scales by playing both the G and the G sharp note.
3. Double harmonic minor scale also known as Arabic scale, Gypsy minor scale or Byzantine scale
In modern flamenco we also play the following scales over the F chord before resolving to E:
-F melodic minor
-F whole/half tone scale
-F Lydian Dominant