Rumores de la Caleta: mastering the main riff

Picking up where I left off last time, we are now at the grouping of three triplets which is the riff that causes many people to learn the piece. It also causes several to stop learning the piece. When I first began learning the piece, I played this measure by plucking the beginning of each triplet with the thumb. As written, the last triplet is slurred right after the second rather than plucked. This proved adequate until I played the piece at faster tempos.

My final solution was just to play it as written and slur the third triplet from the second triplet. Position of the left hand is critical to having success with this technique. Make sure your fretting hand is either parallel with the neck or that the pinky side of the fretting hand is higher than the thumb side of the fretting hand. If the thumb side of the fretting hand is higher than the pinky side of the hand, you're going to have trouble slurring the last set of triplets because you just can't get the pinky in position.

Another solution is to incorporate the third string instead of just the fourth and fifth strings. So you would add an open G to the mix instead of fretting the G on the fourth string, fifth fret.