Latin songs by dobleA

Community Recordings Audio-Video Of You Playing
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4 - Added La Bamba
3 - Added Travailler C’est Trop Dur (Working is Too Hard) Cover
2 - Added Mi barca (My Boat) Cover

1 - Pueblito viejo (Old Little Town)

This is of one of the songs I played for JGC OM 18. I provided an English translation of the lyrics that is not intended for singing along, it’s just for complementing the musical feeling of the song.

I first learnt it during my in person lessons about 40 years ago. Despite having played the introduction for a long time I still hit the wrong notes, or mute them, or even get lost of where I am at it more often that I would like. I even played it in the dark during the blackouts of the nineties in Colombia and still it hasn’t got automated in a way that I can play it without mistakes over and over. One of the issues is that it has become more muscle memory than actual conscious playing. If I get out of sequence I have to start over. For the OM I practiced individual bars to regain more control of the playing and being able to start in any bar. Best thing of Justin Guitar lessons is that they provide tools to look for yourself what you need to do to improve your playing, or how to approach a new song, or how to play differently a known one. For this cover I followed the song structure of the Garzón & Collazos recorded version and because of that I had to learnt a second introduction/interlude (verse 2 fingerpicked instead of sung) that I was not aware of it before.

I named the topic Latin Songs because I want to leave it open for songs in Spanish as well as other Latin languages. No compromise on which songs and when. Spanish speakers don’t get too excited about me playing “salsas” or “sones” soon. I still have to work in my “clave”.

Edit: I reuploaded the video to fix duplicate words in the translation and updated the link

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Hi Andres,

Really enjoyed this. I thought it was a great little interlude of latin america flavour during the OM. Love the rhythm that I can hear in the song and your voice sounds really pleasant to my ears.
I also like your ?poncho. Is this of some significance, I may of missed hearing during OM.

Best wishes
Alan

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Hi Alan, thank you for watching and commenting. I’m glad you liked my rendition of the song. The poncho is a traditional part of the clothing to deal with the cold weather in the Andean mountains. The one I am wearing is more a fair thing themed with the Colombian flag and a coffee plant (still getting too warm wearing it during the OM). The actual ones are made either from cotton for mild weather or from rough woven wool for higher in the mountains colder temperatures (5 degrees Celsius average in the páramos [kind of moors]).

Edit: In Colombia the poncho is called ruana. There is a traditional song called “La ruana” (The Poncho).

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Hi Andrés,
Your guitar playing and the atmosphere this style radiates I really think is the ultimate summer feeling :sunglasses: :sun_with_face: … of course not if you live there and hear this every week of course :upside_down_face:, but for us Dutch people this is holiday music pur-sang :smiling_face:, thanks for that, it would be nice if more people would like this to attempt.
Greetings

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Hello Andrés & thank you for an enjoyable post!
I live in Albuquerque New Mexico where at many of the restaurants live entertainment is provided - I’m not positive but I believe that a similar version of Pueblito Viejo is performed by a mariachi group at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants! It’s a great song that my wife and I enjoy listening to! They do a solo on a requito while the rest of the group is playing very, very softly in the middle of the song that always gives me chills! Your version is very beautiful too! Thanks!

On another note - I recently saw a post about muscle memory in @Silvia80 learning log that could help with the issues you say you’re having. I’m going to try to copy the link & post it here.

Tod

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As promised:

Only it was in an original post by @Silvia80 , not her learning log (which is a worthwhile read - if only I could get so organized!!!)… and I think it may address what you’re talking about with muscle memory!

Good luck!

Tod

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Hi Andrea, I like fingerstyle songs of any type and I really enjoyed your performance. The guitar sounded great and your singing compelled it very well.
Cheers

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Hi Rogier, thank you for watching and commenting. Good you enjoyed it and brought you a bit of summer feeling.

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Hi Tod, thank you for watching and commenting. Good you have enjoyed this song before. It looks to be a nice arrangement the one the mariachi group plays. Lead play on the requinto is a distinctive sound of many Latin-American songs. Even some people refers to playing an ornamented solo as “requintear”.

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Hi Tod. Thank you for looking for the information. Yes, muscle memory is a flaky friend. Good advice to apply for this one and other pieces I’m learning and future pieces I’ll learn.

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Hi Michael. Thank you for watching and commenting. I’m glad you liked it.

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Hi Andres! This is a nice spanish style piece you’re sharing , I didn’t know it and enjoyed listening!

The way you describe you’re playing is very relatable I’m afraid, check the article that @CATMAN62 linked…thanks Tod!
In my experience it’s very hard to re-learn a piece more properly when it is so strongly automated, it’s a constant struggle to go slow when your fingers want to go fast…it has been frustrating for me and I’m giving it up for the moment…But being aware of this means I’m now learning new thinghs by training my aural memory and that’s very fulfilling!

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Hi Silvia, thank you for watching and commenting. I’m glad you liked it. For Pueblito viejo I have aural and kinesthetic memory but I am working in gaining visual memory. I do not have enough musical theory knowledge to help me with the theoretical memory. For me theoretical memory would something like it cannot be that note because it’s not part of the chord or something like that.

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Mi barca (My Boat) cover

This is the second song I played for JGC OM 18. I provided an English translation of the lyrics that is not intended for singing along, it’s just for complementing the musical feeling of the song.

After my in person lessons about 40 years ago I was for some time collecting a guitar magazine in Spanish and this song was one of the songs I liked to play (and sing) from the issues of that magazine. I play it with a finger style pattern that I know as arpeggiated ballad and that I learnt first during my in person lessons.

With the help of Justin Guitar lessons I’ve bee able to revisit the song and polish it in a way that I can say to myself it’s a good version of it, either for playing it for myself of playing it for others. In this case it was mostly about better sounding chords and better synchronization of the chord changes with the bars. There is still a rough spot at the end that I have to work on it. The other huge progress was being able to listen to the recorded version and spot changes of the accompaniment that could be good to replicate with the guitar and find a way to do so. In the recorded version after the lyrics end, the orchestra goes back to what I think is playing again the introduction before fading out, but for my version I preferred to finish the accompaniment together with the lyrics. I may try the other way later and see how it works.

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Andres, I enjoyed them on the night and I’ve enjoyed watching them again today. Wonderful playing and singing> it is also nice to be able to read what you are singing.

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Hi Stefan, thank you for watching and commenting. I’m glad to read that you enjoyed it.

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Muy bien Andrés! That sounded great :clap:

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Hola Sandro, gracias por ver el video y comentar. I’m glad you liked it.

19

Travailler C’est Trop Dur (Working Is Too Hard) Cover

Once upon a time, there was something called Yahoo Music and I used to access it alternating Yahoo country domains and getting a different selection of music from each one. It’s likely that was doing this that I listened this song for the first time (the other option is that was listening a streaming website called Accuradio). I don’t remember which singer version was, but I instantly liked the song. At that time I searched for the guitar chords, but what I found looked to be beyond my guitar skills back then. More than a decade later, Justin Guitar lessons, a YT tutorial video in French, and a YT video with the lyrics and the chords put this song at the reach of my current guitar skills.

Un, deux, trois (one, two, three) was repeatedly said by the instructor on the video while I persistently kept on looking for the missing fourth beat until I realized it was a 3/4 song. It can be played with the same finger style pattern that I play Pueblito viejo, but I decided to look for a different sound. The tutorial explains a few options of how to accompany the song and from there I selected mine. Thumb down on all the strings on the first beat, and index down on all three thinnest strings on beats two and three. For the interludes I changed to thumb down on all the strings on all three beats and index up on all three thinnest strings after beats two and three. Justin Guitar lesson How To Strum Without a Pick is a good resource for this.

I still don’t know how I managed to play this song in the JGC OM 20 as I intended to play it. That weekend after the show I spent the rest of my practice time trying to get a take for this AVOYP. I only got three decent takes, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. Take 2 at the end was the one I liked more.

This song isn’t related to any contemporary work or lifestyle trend. It’s related to all time everyday struggle to make ends meet. It has come to us through a farmer singer called Caesar Vincent. The version I’m playing is the one from Zachary Richard’s 1977 album Mardi Grass. The lyrics on the YT video I followed are someway different from the lyrics on the album, but most of it matches the album version. For example the video uses the expression “j’ai cherché juste pour toi” (I’ve searched just for you) while the album uses “j’ai cherché longtemps pour toi” (I’ve searched long time for you). For that specific case I used the one of the video that I liked more.

As French is third language for me, I recruited Google Translate for the translation. It only failed miserably with ti-gars that is short for petit-garçons, that can be translated as little fellows, as another source suggested, and not tigers as Google translated it. By the way, there’s a Lisa Leblanc’s song called Ti-gars with somewhat similar subject that the song I played. Some other nuances of the lyrics may have not been accurately translated.

When I wrote that Caesar Vincent was a farmer singer I’m not saying that he worked as a farmer and also had gigs as a singer. I’m talking about a farmer who sang all day old songs in French. For their neighbours he was a loon singing out of fashion tunes, for the ones who led the revival of this music genre in the seventies shortly after his death, he was a valuable source of material to work from. The last track of the 2018 tribute album Travailler C’est Trop Dur: The Lyrical Legacy of Caesar Vincent [YT Music Link] is a short recording of Caesar Vincent singing this song as he used to. The other ones are more contemporary versions of other songs he used to sing.

Edit: YT link has been updated a couple of times because the video was reuploaded with some spelling typos in the titles fixed.

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La Bamba

This song that I played at JGC OM 24 is the second song of a Hal Leonard songbook that I’m able to play thanks to Justin Guitar lessons. I started practicing it on April of last year. I don’t remember what exactly drove me to learn it. Maybe it was watching Justin Guitar lesson for it on Grade 2.

I started with practicing the two-bar mixed flat picking and strumming pattern the songbook suggests for most of the song, but at some point I replaced it with a two-bar all strumming pattern and left the other pattern as an exercise for my regular technique practice routine. After several months of practice it suddenly started to sound like the song and I also was able to sing along.

I replaced the solo Ritchie Valens plays with playing the riff with some variations I discovered while practicing and accidentally hitting the wrong strings, but liking what I heard. If it sounds good, then is good as Justin says. The ending I used was kind of the same thing, while having fun playing with the sound and the speed I liked what I heard and looked for ways to incorporate that in my version of the song.

Some research provided me with some information about the history of song well beyond being an unintended B-Side worldwide success by Ritchie Valens. This son jarocho is an 18th century or earlier dance song from the region of Veracruz in Mexico. When played and danced at weddings the newlyweds tie a bow with a ribbon using only their feet while dancing. It’s accompanied with harp and several other stringed instruments. There are hundreds of known couplets of the song so the song can go on and on just by adding couplets.

The son jarocho songs sound very similar to the music of the plains between Colombia and Venezuela that I may tackle in a future post.

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