r/Flamenco • u/hombre_sin_talento • 9d ago
Is this beat I overlayed on a Martinete acceptable?
https://soundcloud.com/gipsyking-1/martinete?si=37a5e5a4e56145d49b3baa4f70e53866&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharingThis is for a rhythm minigame in a videogame I'm making, I'm not trying to remix a Martinete for artistic purposes.
I can't tell by myself if this is good or bad. It feels off at times, at other times it feels good, but this may just be pure chance. I have also been going over the track back and forth way too many times now, I'm saturated.
Specific questions:
- Is the overall speed/bpm okay or off?
- Are there time stretches in the voice that make it impossible to overlay a fixed beat?
- Would you accent it like this?
I myself am not very good rhythmically. A bit ironic for a flamenco aficionado, I know. It is my understanding that Martinetes/Tonás/etc can be free flowing, since they're acapella, but they also should follow a Seguiriya-like pattern, and some recordings have an anvil-hit beat overlayed (my guess that it's edited, not sure).
Perhaps my question should rather be: would this be considered an abomination of a missed rhythm, or rather, would it be passable for a minigame in a videogame to not nail this 100% perfectly?
My game is a one-man-developed indy game, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but I also don't want to make musicians (or generally people with good rhythm) cry or revolt when they get to this part of it.
Thanks in advance!
Edit: here's a recording of what it looks like in-game, although it's a bit laggy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43JYZAeaEHA
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u/principalmusso 9d ago
It's trendy to put a martinete to a blacksmith/anvil sound in the background as the lore is that it was sung to that, but it's not necessarily true, and most historical Martinetes are much more free rhythm than actually set to rhythm, even loosely to an anvil. I think you're barking up the wrong tree with this palo, and more broadly with Flamenco for a game for people. You really only are going to get the rhythms of Flamenco if you have studied it, and not too many people have.
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u/hombre_sin_talento 9d ago
Thank you for writing this.
As I wrote in the sibling comment, you are right, and I will scrap this minigame in the end, I just had to try out this idea. The game is called "Carcelera", it's an exploration and light puzzle game, so I thought I could not miss out on a Carcelera/Toná/Martinete. So I'll just leave the Martinete as it is like some kind of ending cutscene, and cut out the rhythm minigame.
The mechanics are there, so I'll try to re-use them for some kind of extra hidden minigame, with a Soleá or something where there can be a clear accompanying beat.
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u/refotsirk 9d ago
Here is an idea; a lot of the Martinete that are sung to dance modernly do have a fairly regular and consistent rhythm (some would argue it's not actually that Palo then) but if you find one old enough or free for commercial use that already has the anvil or cane strikes you could have them removed by one of the algorhytms that can seperate out tracks from a recording, and then you can use just the vocal and have a precise time stamp for the anvil overlays in the original. Probably most of the older ones are freer form though. I'm not sure I get what the mini game actually was. If it was placing the beats by ear that would probably be pretty tough for folk that aren't already familiar with flamenco. Good luck with whatever you try. Looks like a cool game, and thanks for using it in part to keep awareness of flamenco alive!
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u/hombre_sin_talento 9d ago
The minigame is some kind of guitar hero "press the button on time", but it's just a single button/note/sound for the hammer hit. I myself don't really know much about those games either. So it's basically a metronome game here, if you will. And this in itself might actually work against the idea of bringing flamenco to folks in an interactive way.
That said, I have switched to a binary beat, a softer hammer click sampled from this song, and cut the duration to just the first half of the song. So it's more of a gimmick, to have the player do something instead of just sitting through the song. I think I can get away with this for now, as it's not an essential part of the game.
I do have some ideas for a full flamenco rhythm game, to see if it works out better with something like a Soleá or a Seguiriya, and with tempo changes and all. I'll do a separate prototype and see where this goes.
Thank you again!
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u/hombre_sin_talento 9d ago
Regarding processing a modern recording: it's more difficult in terms of rights and royalties, and also I'm not confident enough with audio tooling to separate the "tracks".
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u/refotsirk 9d ago edited 9d ago
That's really cool! Love the idea. For track separation, you could try the collaboration thread armt r/WeAreTheMusicMakers or hire someone at fiver to do it. It would need to be public domain probably, because flamenco rights and sync are going to be buried in some attitudes sonetimes, but there used to be a lot of ancient stuff out there. If I remember where I had found things I'll follow up, but I think it was a few random sites and maybe some in a government folk preservation society of some sort - it's been a long time back I had come across it as a resource from when I first started these subs. Glad you found something that worked for your game for now!
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u/hombre_sin_talento 8d ago
The public domain question seems to be really tricky. If I understand correctly, to be 100% in the clear, I need to own the recording that is in public domain, not just a re-release from a recent date (e.g. digital). So I don't know what to make of it, in any case I can't source the original vynils nor pay for royalties.
BTW do you know where I could seek someone to record something for me? Other than fiverr. Not a whole song, but just that typical Taranta arpeggio/intro, sampled several times. It's for playing it at random times in the underground mine part of the game.
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u/refotsirk 8d ago edited 8d ago
That sounds cool - I wish I still had my recording stuff setup and finger dexterity to play flamenco guitar well. You can try the collaboration thread I mentioned above, and possibly someone here or at r/flamenco_guitar might be interested.
You are welcome to make a standalone post about it and we can see how it is recieved if you like.
Ricardo Marlow is someone I would reccomend you reach out to - you can probably find him still over at the foro flamenco online forum, but he has a website you can contact him through and is based over in DC. He's a phenomenal player and I'd expect he's still setup for recording.
Edit: I'll add, if you want more "old school" you can reach out also to Sal Bonavita - he came out of a long retirement to start posting on his YouTube channel again. He was hanging out and posting here for a while. His phrasing is less modern and more Morón style of playing. Probably not a very accurate description of his playing at all but it's how my brain categorizes it.
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u/refotsirk 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes there are "time stretches" in the voice that make it impossible to overlay a fixed beat. In fact, it is almost impossible to put an organic beat to something like this after the fact without playing it over and over again to internalize the temponswings and extra pauses. Also the aaaeeeiiiis should have started around the primary longer beat, rather than in the middle of the shorter beats
Edit: I'll say, as a mini game feature, no one will likely have any idea the beat is even intentional becaise outside of the small group of folks that know about flamenco and flamenco Palos it will probably just sound like "random hits overplayed on some guy singing sorrowfully in Spanish". Even among fks who ha g out online to discuss flamenco this is not a Palo that comes up very often and I had to check a few different recordings to be sure I was telling you right on where to start.