Falseta Recycling: Use Solea falsetas in Buleria
Buleria is probably one of the most popular palos (styles) among flamenco guitar players. When I started accompanying flamenco cante I had quite many of them in my repertoire and if felt prepared. But then the cantaor (singer) told be that he wants to sing “en el 4 por arriba”. This means I had to put the cejilla (capodaster) in the 4th fret and play in the key of E phrygian (which is actually Ab phrygian). However all the falsetas I knew were “por medio” which means in A phrygian. So what to do?
If you want to play por medio then you have to put the cejilla in the 11th fret, which is obviously not a solution. There are some exotic solutions like playing without cejilla in Ab phrygian or playing in the 5th fret in the position of Eb phrygian. But if you don’t know any falseta in E phrygian you probably don’t know any in these positions neither.
So the most obvious solution is to learn falsetas for buleria por arriba. Great. You studied the flamenco guitar for years and you know about twenty buleria falsetas and now the first time you’re trying to accompany a cantor you can’t use any of those.
But wait… there’s probably a solution… First, if want to accompany buleria por arriba you have to know the chords of course. It is not necessary to play falsetas if your accompanying. Here is the andalusian cadence in A phrygian which is often used in buleria:
Dm / C / Bb / A
The cadence would be the following in E phrygian:
Am / G / F / E
These are the chords commonly used in solea. If you know buleria falsetas then you probably know also some solea falsetas. And that leads us to a solution to our falseta problem: Let’s convert solea falsetas into buleria falsetas. It was Vicente Cortes which mentioned this idea in a workshop I visited years ago. I tried it myself and it works!
So how to do it? It’s almost too simple to be true:
- duplicate the duration of each note
- start falseta on 12 instead on 1
- change endings and give it a buleria touch
That’s it. Let’s examine this using a simple solea falseta many of you probably already know. It’s kind of a classic:
Simple Solea Falseta
This falseta is written as 3/4 but of course it uses a solea compas (12/4). Note the accents (Marcato sign ^ ). They are on beats 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12 as usual for solea.
In order to convert this falseta into a buleria falseta we follow the instructions above which means we duplicate the duration of each note and start it on 12:
Simple Buleria Falseta por arriba
I wrote it down as as 6/4. Note that the tempo must be much faster in order to sound like a buleria (e.g.220 bpm). The notes are exactly the same just the feel changes due to the tempo change and due to the accents that are now in different places than before.
Now we can proceed to the last point and give it a buleria touch. Measures 2, 4 and 8 are typical for solea. Let’s change it to something more buleria like. Here’s an example but there are of course many other possibilities.
Improved simple Buleria Falseta
That’s it. With this simple “trick” you suddenly have buleria falsetas “por arriba” without actually learning new ones. Just experiment. Of course you can change everything as you like. In our example you may decide to play straight notes instead of the quarter triplets (e.g. the first note of the triplet a quarter note an the two following as eight notes).