For those of you who are learning to play castanets, you know that it's so important to understand the rhythm, and practise it. That way, at the time of dancing, our dance and castanets will flow with the music.
Hey everyone, here we are learning a Spanish Dance choreography with castanets from Paloma Gómez, our maestra from Madrid.
3 tips on how to practise and learn castanets
1. Focus on the music, practise to understand where your castanets rhythm and accents coincide.
You can mark the time with your body or your foot (you can see that I’m doing that in the video), that also helps you understand where the rhythms fit. Work on precision of the rhythm.
2. Pay attention to the clarity of your castanets sound
This will require proper technique for clarity.
Do they sound clean?
3. Improve one thing at a time
Don’t feel that you need to be able to dance right away together with castanets. That takes a lot of coordination.
So you can put aside the dance sometimes, while you work to improve one part at a time (ie the castanets part).
That’s it for today.
Meanwhile, enjoy the music in the video: A beautiful and well-known piece called Córdoba, by Isaac Albeñiz.
It’s one of my favourite Spanish compositions!
Warm regards,
Tania
