Click here to get the pdf of Cuban Dance
The “rumba flamenca” style of guitar playing is so fun and there are so many songs out there to play. Not to mention a tremendous variety of ways to strum a rumba, as I talked about in my “Play Romanza as a Rumba” video lesson. In this arrangement, I’ve included a new variation on the rumba pattern with a different kind of slapping technique. More often than not, when you hear a Gipsy Kings style rumba, the percussive slap you hear comes from the palm of the hand slapping the the strings and the wood of the guitar. In this rumba pattern, we are actually striking the strings with the index finger and simultaneously killing them. This creates a very different vibe, almost the sound of a snare drum!
<<<The “x” indicates we are muting the strings and the arrow tells us we’re striking downward with our index finger.
Getting this slap down takes a while – you need to find that “sweet spot” on the strings and also time it to where your hand doesn’t cover the strings too early. After you’ve got that, we’re going to strum downward with the thumb on the “and” of 2 (the spot directly in the middle of the 2nd and 3rd beats). Finally we strum down with the index on the 4th beat. These elements combine to give us the standard rumba accents: on the 1, the and of 2, and the 4th beat.
This is just the tip of the iceberg! Then we’ve got a very cool arpeggio pattern that also follows our rumba guidelines, and then we get into the main melody of the song. Check out this tutorial for my solo guitar arrangement of this rumba and get the pdf to play along: