Comprehensive Seguirilla Intro Videos Now Available on Flamenco Explained!
We’ve been adding Seguirilla material to the site for a while now, but we finally have a good comprehensive series of Seguirilla intro videos and just about everything you need to get started with this great Palo.
Seguirilla is one of the most Jondo (deep – profound, sad) of the flamenco palos. When sung, it can be heart-wrenching, and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. And its “backwards” compás makes it one that students either fall in love with immediately or sometimes get very frustrated with. So we’re happy to be able to guide you through understanding this beautiful palo from the beginning to avoid some of the pitfalls and frustration.
Three New Videos…
To get started we have three new videos – Counting and Llamada, Compás, and Variations. These videos help you understand how the compás works and will give you some good resources to play nice varied compás. We also have a video on Seguirillas Palmas that will help you reinforce your compás and teach you what you need to know if you have to do palmas for Seguirillas or so you can check your compás.
Once you feel comfortable with this we recommend you go over to the Seguirilla Survival Guide. Take a deeper dive and learn about some of the more common figures you’ll run into when accompanying Seguirillas. And of course we have some fun falsetas over on our Seguirilla Falseta playlist for when you’re ready!
TAB and Music Notation
If there’s one Seguirillas falseta you need to know, it’s the traditional escobilla falseta that dancers expect to hear and that every guitarist knows if they play for dance. The video below is a performance of this, and we cover it again in the second lesson video: Compás.
Download the TAB for this falseta here!
Make it all click!
And just to make sure you have the tools to practice we’ve created Compás Loops in various tempos. As with our other Compás Loops, these are not intended to be interesting loops that sound fun. However, the are loops specifically intended to be as simple and repetitive as possible so you can really learn to hear the compás as you play. Think of these as training wheels for hearing compás loops.
Even more for your ears!
And to top it all off, we’ve created a Seguirillas playlist over on Spotify where you can listen to some of our favorite recordings of Seguirilla. As always, we recommend you use the playlists as a jumping off point to search and discover new singers and guitarists who inspire you to listen and play even more!
There’s something really special about Seguirillas, and while it’s not the easiest palo to learn it can be immensely rewarding, so we hope these resources help you and as always look forward to any questions any of you might have. As always, send in an email with your question.
For the record…
We’ve seen it spelled every way imaginable – Siguiriya, Siguirilla, Seguirilla, Seguiriya – so we just chose one that feels right to us!
