Progressive Chacarera Lesson

Progressive Chacarera

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  • This is a fragment of a song of mine called "Arriando Chanchos a la Luna" (herding pigs to the moon) This song is my progressive approach to a traditional argentinean style called "chacarera".

    Its meter is 3/4 and is usually very difficult to perform for rock musicians. Let's see why: the 1st beat of the bar is the weakest, the 2nd is strong and the 3rd is the strongest beat of the bar, yes!, absolutely the opposite of what you're used to.
    So, we should count: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 and so on.

    During the first bars we have the main riff of the song (E dorian). This motif is built out of three 3/4 bars and one 5/4 bar (I prefer counting 11 = 6 plus 5)

    Due to the fact that the rythm section is playing 3/4 over the whole arrangement, during these bars we'll find a polyrythm. You’ll hear the main riff making a rhytmic displacement and - if you pay attention to the bass and percussion - you’ll easily hear the accented 2nd and 3rd beats of the bar.

    The arrangement continues with a variation of the A section motif (you can download the song from my profile). There, instead of the original Em, we play E mixolidyan b6 (A melodic minor, 5th mode), then it goes to C#m, then to A lydian b7 (E melodic minor, 4th mode), then F#m, then D lydian b7 (A melodic minor, 4th mode).
    The section ends with an Em scale lick that leads to the next section...

    tuning: (from thick to thin) Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb

    tempo:170

    A melodic minor:


    C# aeolian:

    D melodic minor:

    E aeolian:

    E dorian:

    E melodic minor:

    F# aeolian:
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