Accents 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8] 9 [10] 11 [12]
Learn first Lesson 9: Three-four time
Soleá (plural soleares) is one of the central palos, or styles, of flamenco: a slow, weighty form for cante (song), toque (guitar) and baile (dance). Its compás, the repeating rhythmic cycle that every performer keeps, is the model for a whole family of palos that includes alegrías and bulerías, so the time you spend on it carries over to many other styles.
One compás has 12 counts, and five of them are accented: 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12. The counts fall into two groups of three and then three groups of two (3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2), with each accent closing a group, so the cycle starts in a triple feel and changes to a duple feel halfway through. Many guitar transcriptions write it as four bars of 3/4 starting on 1, and this page does the same, with one click per count. Other writers use a bar of 6/8 and a bar of 3/4 starting on 12 (as on the alegrías and bulerías pages here), and some scholars prefer 6/4 plus 3/2. All of these describe the same cycle.
| Pattern | Count |
|---|---|
| Accents | 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8] 9 [10] 11 [12] |
| Groups | (1 2 3) (4 5 6) (7 8) (9 10) (11 12) |
| From 12 | [12] 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8] 9 [10] 11 |
| Spoken as | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 |
Teachers do not agree on where the count begins. Many teaching sites count 1 to 12, so the cycle ends on an accent. Others start on 12, which puts an accent first and matches the usual habit in bulerías. A third habit counts 1 to 10 and then says "1, 2" for counts 11 and 12. The flamencologist Guillermo Castro Buendía finds it in the classes of the dancer La Argentinita around 1940, whose guitarist Manolo de Huelva described the soleá as ten beats plus two rests. Whichever count you use, the accents stay in the same places.
Cante y Toque describes the accents as a rise and fall, with tension starting on 3, building through 6 to a peak on 8 and settling on 10, so many sung lines, guitar phrases and dance steps finish on 10 and leave 11 and 12 open. Guitarist Paul Bosauder suggests marking the five accents with your foot while you practise. Palmeros, the people who keep palmas (rhythmic handclaps), usually play palmas sordas in soleá: soft, muffled claps with cupped hands that suit its inward mood. The bright palmas claras belong to festive palos such as bulerías.
Soleá is slow. A singer on their own may stretch the time, but the pulse stays steady under a dancer. Published figures vary: guitar teacher Jonathan Richter gives 50 to 110 beats per minute, Bosauder 70 to 120, and one commercial flamenco metronome offers 70 to 140. The practice tempo here sits at the slow end.
The form probably took shape among Gitano (Andalusian Roma) communities around Seville and Cádiz in the nineteenth century, and the earliest known mention, as soledades, dates from 1862. Writers since 1879 have linked it to the jaleo, an older festive song. A common mistake is to lose count 12 after a phrase has closed on 10; keep counting through the silence.