Escola Portatil: 55 violoes in the big parade

For a pandeiro player, one of the great advantages to getting to Rio before mid-December is that the Saturday choro classes at the Escola Portatil are still running.

For those who don't know, choro is an old-fashioned instrumental music, featuring mandolins and guitars, sometimes flutes and other wind instruments, and always a pandeiro. I think of it as a sort of Brazilian bluegrass-jazz - it's got bluegrass's old-school retro feel, love of tradition, and appreciation for virtuosic master instrumentalists, but blended with a classy urban feel.

The Escola Portatil ("portable school") is a little music school that runs classes in only choro instruments, only on Saturdays, right near the Pao de Acucar. Classes run from about April to mid-December (the Rio school year). They also run a week-long camp in January. Anybody interested in choro should get to the Escola Portatil. (I'll put a link in the sidebar.) The teachers are some of the best choro players in Rio, and the students are all local Brazilians, all ages and both genders, and all levels. There are classes in all the separate instruments from 9am to noon, and then at noon, all classes unite in the shady courtyard for a massive choro ensemble, "Furiosa Portatil" (a play off all the escola baterias who call themselves "Furiosa Bateria").

For a pandeiro player, choro is the most rewarding genre (I think) because, as the lone percussion player, you have much more responsibility, and much more power and everything you do, good or bad, is heard very clearly. Good choro players can practically play the choro melodies right on their pandeiro, and it demands complete technical mastery of the instrument, particularly in the finger-bass and the left-hand turn. (Many people think the finger-bass and the left-hand turn were invented by Suzano, but they are actually classic choro style. Suzano adapted them for other genres.) Escola Portatil runs three pandeiro classes in a row on Saturdays: advanced pandeiro at 9am, beginner at 10am, intermediate at 11am, all taught by either Celso Silva (one of the all-time great choro pandeiro players, and son of the legendary Jorginho do Pandeiro), or his son Eduardo, who is a magnificent player too.

I can never seem to get over there in time for the advanced pandeiro class (9am on Saturday morning? after having usually been up till 5am at some escola?) - and that class would be a stretch for me anyway, since "advanced" seems to mean "already a professional player with total mastery of all technique and doing beautiful solos". Not quite there yet. So I dropped in on the intermediate class instead, which was really fun - first a workout in 6/8, then a set of fun riffs and tags that can be dropped in at the start or end of a choro phase. Eduardo was teaching; he sang choro melodies for everything he did, emphasizing how the whole point of the riffs is that they emphasize and support the melody. I was impressed by how precisely crisp and powerful his playing is; it made me realize that some of my phrasing is a little muddy and lazy.

At noon we all trooped out to the big courtyard, scrambled over some mossy stone ruins past an army of guitarists and flute players, and took our places in the far back rows of the enormous Furiosa Portatil. At California Brazil Camp this year, some players were frustrated with the size of the choro ensemble - "Six pandeiros? You only need one!" They would have been appalled at the size of this ensemble. I counted:

20 pandeiros,
3 snares,
1 surdo,
1 tamborim,
1 cymbal,
28 cavaquinhos,
55 violao (guitar) !, about a fifth of them seven-string guitars. I have never seen so many guitars in one place. But even so, I couldn't hear the guitars at all because of the:
20 flutes, plus some more who were hidden behind a tree,
7 clarinets,
7 saxophones of various types,
6 trumpets,
1 trombone,
... and last and completely inaudible audible, 3 mandolin players huddled together around a single music stand.

Plus an audience of probably 100 people. Friends, family, and passersby, all sitting on the lawn watching. It was the size of an escola bateria. It was amazing. It looked to me almost double the size of last year. It's so cool to see choro generating such interest among young new players; it had almost died out a decade or so back.

Now some pandeiro stuff. A few scraps from today's pandeiro class. (anyone who isn't a pandeiro player, skip the rest of this post)

Both these patterns go into double-time, so I'll have to write these all out in 32nd notes. I'll use clumps of eight 32nd notes (one clump per quarter note; each clump on a separate line).

Slightly different key than usual (The more sophisticated your playing get, the more complex the key to write it out! I've now got about 16 strokes on pandeiro and can no longer use just "F" to describe my 8 different finger strokes. But I'll keep the key at these 8 strokes:)
t=muted thumb bass, T=open thumb bass,
h=unaccented heel, H=accented heel
f=unaccented finger treble, F = accented finger treble
b=muted finger bass, B=open finger bass.

1. A doubletime riff for slow choro as a dramatic end just before a measure-long rest:
t-F-h-f- (basic samba-choro)
T-F-h-B-
t-F-h-f-
hb-TB-TBT (& into a big rest for the next measure...)


2. We also did a three-across-four double-time motif, fairly common for choro pandeiro, but this one's phrasing is a bit unusual because it starts just after the 1.
h-Tfh-f-
Tfh-f-Tf
h-f-Tfh-
f-Tfh-T-
T.... back into basic samba-choro.

3. Best drill of the day was a rapid series of TfhTfhTfh.... using a heel hit that was so far sideways it was almost on the back of the hand. "Almost on your arm, in fact!" said Eduardo.

that's all for now! more next week! everybody go practice!