General Outline:

Music from the north east of Brazil, more specifically 
from Recife (Pernambuco), Frevo emerged at the end 
of the last centure from the interaction between music 
and folkloric dances.

The first frevo groups were derived from military bands, 
using primarily martial band instruments (saxophones, 
piccolo flute, trombone, tuba, clarinet, snare drum and 
a handy cymbal).

Primarily dance oriented, the frevo is a basically a 
march with syncopated figures in the melody and in the 
rhytmic patterns, usually up tempo.

Subdivisions: 

Marcha-rancho: Slow to medium tempo, usually in 
minor keys and sometimes using 3/4 time signature.

Frevo-ventana: A frevo played at a very fast tempo.

Musical characteristics:

Frevo is usually written in 2/4 although you can find 
use of 3/4 or 4/4. The examples in this book are 
written in 4/4. The melodic accent comes on the up 
beat and the melodies are pretty much syncopated.

The guitar has een used in frevo more recently. 
Usually the melody is played on a piccolo flute with a 
large use of melodic embellishments and counterpoint. 
The bass part is much like a jazz "walking bass", 
playing even quarter notes, and the harmonies are 
quite, usually turnarounds.

1. Basic Pattern:

Basically what we find in the right hand guitar patterns 
are simulations of a frevo ensemble rhythm section. 
Keep in your mind that the syncopations are played on 
the top voices of the chord, while the bass note comes 
on the beat.

You can also feel it in the 4/4 time signature (Figure 2).

Top voices is plaing with the 1, 2 and 3 fingers, bass 
note is plaing with the thumb.

As in other Brazilian styles, the bass line keeps 
switching between the root and the fifth of the chord, 
and it's a better choice to play the fifth below the root. 
If the bass note is already placed on the 6th string, you 
may keep the same note fore the whole measure.

Figure 3: musical example applies the basic pattern on 
a typical frevo turnaround.