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Hi, Does anyone know of a good book with solos (solo pieces) for a beguiner? Well, not really a total beguiner in guitar but perhaps beguiner -intermediate in flamenco. Thank you Antonio
Hi Miguel, thank you for your answer. the book by Dennis Koster is this?: "The Keys to Flamenco Guitar with CD Volume 1 " and the book by Juan Martin :"Play Solo Flamenco Guitar with Juan Martin " with cd and Dvd? Gracias Antonio
Hi Antonio. I would go with either Juan Martin's or Paco Peña's books. I thought the material by Koster was a little 'dry'. I don't know how else to explain it. It was as if it was missing something. Don't get me wrong. It is a good source but not challenging enough.
I don't know, if you are talking about material to play, ie repertoire, I would go with Paco Pena, probably. If you want something that's going to show you how to play, you probably want to get a video like Juan Martin's. The best might to get all of them, perhaps used on Ebay? Dennis Kostner has a lot of very important information in his book.
Hi, Thank you Miguel and Tom. My english is not very good ; what I meant was more repertoire material, I mentioned the titles of the books to make sure that it was those ones (the authors you mentioned have other several books).
Antonio, Fully agree with El Zurdo. I like all Juan Martin's instructional stuff but you may not be aware that his 3-video course (La Guitarra Flamenca) is now available on DVD (2 disks & 3 books) from his website (http://www.flamencovision.com) at a give-away price. Highly recommended. Graeme
ORIGINAL: antonio Hi, Does anyone know of a good book with solos (solo pieces) for a beguiner? Well, not really a total beguiner in guitar but perhaps beguiner -intermediate in flamenco. Thank you Antonio
Paco's Toques Flamencos is a great collection of traditional style solos stuffed full of trad falsetas, but they are definitely pitched at intermediate level, and assume that all the techniques, compas knowledege are already there. There is no real 'instruction', save a couple of pages at the beginning which really only serve to de-mystify Paco's unique method of scoring this stuff.
A couple of the pieces in the book (the rumba, eh Mike? ) are IMO quite advanced. They are long (often running into a dozen pages of score or more!), and require a fair bit of work if you want to learn whole pieces (not necessarily a good idea anyway).
It might be better to opt for the Juan Material. IMO, the video series that Grame mentions is the best bet because you get playable solos that aren't too long AND lots of instruction/explanation. Only drawback is the tiny books with them that have about two lines of score per page
Personally, I do not like Juan's latest DVD material as its targetted at beginners yet there doesn't seem to be much instruction there. I am teaching a guy some stuff at the moment who bought this DVD and dived straight in - I am having to unravel a lot of stuff with him - all he is seeing is notes on a page and he's missing the fundamental compas and aire of the different palos.
Graf Martinez has some excellent tuition material, but he concentrates on compas and doesn't really go in for solos until you get to the end of book 2 which is really intermediate/advanced.
Jon, don't be so sore about the rumba, anyways, Ron was just as harsh as I was. Anyways, I play that piece myself so I know how hard it is. If I could play it well I would have uploaded it already :)
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria Jon, don't be so sore about the rumba,
Ermm... Mike, you misunderstood. No soreness - I was just admitting that it was tricky - you said before that you had difficulties playing it yourself, and so I knew you'd agree.
Printable Version
) are IMO quite advanced. They are long (often running into a dozen pages of score or more!), and require a fair bit of work if you want to learn whole pieces (not necessarily a good idea anyway). 
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