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Florian doin palmas for a left handed, strat playing chimp.
Dominic;
That was funny.
We had a “famous actor" named Ronald Reagan, who played in a movie called “Bedtime for Bonzo”. Bonzo was a Chimp. Playing second fiddle with a Chimp could get you the Presidency of the United States!
omg i could run circles around your jokes and be done insulting you before you even begin to get the first punchline but that would be way too easy
Out of respect for your age i wont call you an idiot but please enough is enough things have just started to calm down around here, let it go.
I defer to Mark Twain's comment...
When I was 16, I hated my father. I thought he was ignorant and a complete fool. When I reached 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in just 5 years...
Other than both being flamenco guitarists, I can't really see any worthwhile comparision to PDL and JM.
PDL was probably a prodigy and is a virrtuoso. Comparing any non-virtuoso to such a player is worse than an apples to oranges comparison.
JM is a great player, but of course he's not a virtuoso, but so what? He's good and I hear his influence almost everywhere in modern flamenco. So he can't be that bad.
Personally PDL is too sophisticated for my limited ability to fully appreciate. JM is somewhat simpler, but pleases my insufficiently cultured ear just fine.
There is one thing, other than genre, that both have in common. I love their clarity and tone.
Before this thread ends I have a quick question for Florian. I tried to find your comment about Emilio Maya's second album, I know you mentioned it somewhere in this thread but for the life of me cant find it. Maybe you edited it out. Theres been a lot of editing going on.
Anyway thanks for the great comments about Emilio's first album. As for the second well we still have to pay for the first so it may be a while, though Emilio has quite a few new compositions ready to be recorded.
I was wondering where you bought your copy of Temple ? CDbaby? Or did you do a digital download?
I've just been looking at our CDbaby stats and the download sales go well, suprisingly ( well I thought it surprising) it is the rumba, Algo de Mi which has outsold all the others. Its amazing that we can sell digital downloads at 99 cents a copy and make more profit than an actual CD.
And if anyone is reading this who has bought a copy, any comment ( well any good comment) you can make at the CDbaby site would really be appreciated.
I just learnt that CDbaby is going global and will soon be available in Spanish ( the Frenchand Japanese versions are already up). It is amazing to think that Spanish people will buy a CD from from Spain which has been shipped to the USA at no small cost, only to have it shipped back again, coals to Newcastle but unless the Spanish music distributors support the flamenco music industry ( despite lesser profits) this is what will happen.
I was talking to a record store owner here in Granada who tells me that Paco Cepero is the best selling guitarist, and that he, ie the shop owner, can literally live of the profits he make from this artist. It was funny as he was just not interested in stocking Emilio's album but we were playing it for him (the Rondeña I think) anyway a woman passing walked in to the shop all starry eyed and dreamy asking who was playing and could she buy a copy. Yet still he was not interested, not enough profit for him apparantly as he can get Paco Cepero CD at 2 euros and sell for 12 so he'd rather sell them.
Wow, that's cool, when I saw Emilio it could have been from this very same shot. But it was at night and full of people and he seemed to have had less hair at the time? :)
I'm surprised you've not seen the album cover already. Simon posted it here on the front page when it was first released. Have you not heard the album yet ? I thought you would have been one of the first to buy it to learn the rodeña
could anyone explain how Juan Martin did the tapping? i think there could be many like me, followed the thread until the end and got nothing. is it really that simple that even just talk about it will disgrace your public images? really appreciated if anyone could help.
could anyone explain how Juan Martin did the tapping? i think there could be many like me, followed the thread until the end and got nothing. is it really that simple that even just talk about it will disgrace your public images? really appreciated if anyone could help.
There was one guy who described it Exitao, the 4th post or so. But if you don't get it just by seeing him do it, the verbal description may not be helpful. I have some break downs of rumba strumming over at Flamenco-teacher, but you have to pay for it unfortunately.
The best I can tell you is he does the two beat up tempo strum which just 4strokes reapeating, but he does it in a flashy way where he moves the hand around on the sound board so it looks cool. He is doing it to show off and speeding up to impress, rather than groove with it. Basically slap up down up, slap up down up. You move the hand forward and back so the slap occurs at different places. It it is really silly visual thing, but rumba can be fun.
The graf-martinez books has a little rumba stroke chapter that builds up to something approaching that (you'll have to add the large arm movements). He also has a rumba book that would include the same material I'd imagine.
For a second I though Juan was going to break into the into to Van Halen's "Mean Street" with all that slapping but serisously it does remind me of a piece by Atahualpa Yupanqui.
You know, it's funny how the most unsophisticated things are what get the most attention from the average audience. If you want to impress people, learn how to play rumbas and make lots of noises by slapping or hitting the guitar on the beat. If you slap or hit the guitar in two different places, you can imitate a percussionist using two drums to an extent. Subdivide the beat into 8 sections, with the accents being 1, 4, and 6. Everything else is fair game.
I was playing a thought experiment about how to impress an average audience the most. What you are looking for, I think, is dynamic contrasts and speed.
So learn how to play melodies with artificial harmonics and follow that up with a loud and aggressive rumba strum. Make sure to hit the guitar a lot. Start kind of slow, to make it even more impressive when you speed up! Finish by hitting the strings really hard, and make sure to make a big motion with your arm to let everyone know you are finished...
I think you're right Mike, Most "average" entertainment audiences are used to the "singer/guitarist"sort of stuff. When they hear a few aggressive rasgueados, followed by some harmonic playing or tremelo stuff, they are pretty captivated into thinking they are witnessing a unique event in their lives that they can report to their friends. Don't knock it Mike...Manitas made mucho dinero off this sort of stuff!
Playing for yourself, or your friends is one thing.. Playing for a living and pleasing audiences is another. So long as you know where you're at yourself... That's all that really matters to be happy IMO.
Ron, the more I play in public, and the more "high profile" these events are, the more conscious I am of making them happy! I want to tread a balance between playing what I want and doing things that the audience likes. But it never really ceases to amaze me how average listeners weigh the difficulty of various maneuvers. They are only right, probably, when they are impressed with a crushing, fast picado, or maybe when they pick up on an outstanding rythmic pulse.
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thats what you got for me ? thats you clever joke ? lol 
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