How to Sound Great on the Flamenco Guitar Using One Simple Method (Octaves)!

I’ve taught you several falsetas for the rumba now (all at increasing levels of difficulty), but now you’re going to enjoy a little break from all the fast picado you saw in the last lesson.

…And notice I said that it would be only a “little break.” Trust me. After the last falseta we went through, anything following that would rightfully be considered by most players to be a well deserved “break.”

You will be using octaves on the fourth and first strings for this falseta. Octaves are very easy to fret for two reasons. First, the fretting hand naturally forms to the octave shape. Second, no matter where you move your fretting hand, the fretting positions do not change! That’s good news, right?

As for the right hand, you will strike the fourth string with the thumb (p) while striking the first string with either the index (i) or the middle (m) finger. Remember to alternate between the index and middle each time you play these octaves, which is to say, play like this: p-i, p-m, p-i, p-m, etc.; and NOT like this: p-i, p-i, p-i, p-i, etc.

As always, remember to take it slow, paying close attention to what you are doing, which means you should be listening to what you are playing. Enjoy!

PATREON LINKS:

Lesson guide with TABs + standard notation for this lesson

Audio backing/practice tracks

SoundSlice interactive TABs

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