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Posts: 370
Joined: May 23 2007
From: Frederick, MD
Claude Worms
Is anyone familiar with Claude Worms publications devoted to individual palos? He's got these books that deal with each separate palo. There is quite a few on Bulerias like Buleria 2A, 2b, and so on. I'm assuming that the 2A would be the first of the series, a simpler one, and one to start with?
Guitarbudda recommended one of them to me once, he by the way is not posting anymore. Probably couldn't take the ignorance of us - the mortals.
Anyhow, another questions is do the publications come with CDs, or the buyer should buy the records of each of the artists in the book? Thanks for info
ive picked up these books when i was in a music store in england a while back, they are very good however i would have preffered the cd with them, you basically have to have a huge flamenco cd library or a very good ear for melody. they do however have complete falsetas and some full pieces, i regret not getting the buleria with quique paredes cipres on it.
I have a few of these books - none of them come with CDs.
When these books first came out I think the idea was that the books were to be split into the era i.e. A was the oldies and C the most recent recordings - I'm not too sure if they stayed with this concept.
I think that the books are aimed at guitarists looking to expand the repetoire of falsetas rather than a teaching aid to learn the palo.
Well, I've been fighting with Bulerias for quite a while now. And I'm looking for some tradtional bulerias, that are clear. So I can really internalize the rhythm. Ornamentation is not the focus, but the compas is. And I know Cepero, Nino Ricardo have got some classic stuff. So I wanted to get their transcriptions. Claude Worms offers them but no CD. Then I have to dig for a right CD with those compositions. Bummer.
How are the transcriptins themselves, clear? Accurate? As I understand it's both notation and tabs? I want a decent notation, not just tab.
The notation is very good. As the others have said, they are primarily collections of falsetas, to help foreigners learn some of the repertoire that would be common knowledge in Spain (according to Worms's intro). There is a useful introductory section on compás rasg, which appears at the beginning of each volume. There are a couple of complete compositions here and there but mostly it's just excerpts. The one with Sabicas in might be useful for your purposes. (deflamenco.com lists the contents of each volume).
And I'm looking for some tradtional bulerias, that are clear. So I can really internalize the rhythm.
These books, called duende flamenco wont help you. They are very well notaded but its ONLY falsetas, and before playing tons of falsetas do yourself a favor to learn the base. Play with CD´s, videos, tapes, whatever. You wont find basic rythmical stuff on paper which is worth the time.
Yes that's why I wondered if they have a CD. Right now I have a nice buleria by Paco Cepero. Seams to be realitevely basic. And if I get the transcription for it, I think it will serve as a good basis.
I agree with Anders ... leave the falsetas alone until you get the rhythm perfect. I know from personal experience that correcting bad habits isn't easy. I might suggest the Graf-Martinez book with CD and DVD. I got it for my granddaughter and found myself using it to correct faulty compas. His compas clock that can be downloaded from his DVD is a necessity. I have purchased several different books with CD's and found them disappointing, but the Graf-Martinez set is the best out there in my opinion for getting the compas correct.
But Merengue de Cordoba.....well, imo the rasgueados technique he uses (Shhhramm - Shhhramm) is too old fashioned and can not be recommanded....oh, and he plays over the soundhole (also not recommanded )
I got this new title by Claude Worms: Desde la Guitarra... ARMONÍA DEL FLAMENCO . It comes with downloadable midi files; the combination of printed sheet with midi works pretty well for me.
RE: Rhythmical instruction (was Clau... (in reply to Anders Eliasson)
quote:
You wont find basic rythmical stuff on paper which is worth the time.
So true, and it so bugs me, why is that? Why no one ever did a good rhythmical instruction DVD, for a bunch of palos.
Also most DVDs focus on solo playing, not accompanying baile. There are very few for accompanying cante like the Oscar Herrero DVDs for Solea and Alegria, but there is not a lot of rhythm teaching in them. They are a start though, he does offer some rhythmical patterns.
I see here a business opportunity if anyone wants to rise to the challenge...
Posts: 1890
Joined: Dec. 2 2006
From: Budapest, now in Southampton
RE: Rhythmical instruction (was Clau... (in reply to gshaviv)
i found some of his transcriptions very inaccurate and coincidentally these are of the pieces that are also transcribed by Faucher, i guess there's an agreement between them or just doesn't want to risk a fight with him, but the fingering in some of the pieces is very off... i've gotten used to Faucher's way of writing the bulerías too so sometimes it gets confusing for me...sometimes Worms overcomplicates things... but otherwise his work is the best out there excluding Alain Faucher's stuff but i felt i spent too much money on his 6 bulerías books...
I have a couple of his books. A lot of inaccuracies compared to Faucher and others. I like to used score books to follow along rather than to learn from, so I still appreciate the work as a contribution. I don’t have French, so I for one would appreciate a brief summery. The comments allude to a “true history” of flamenco, that I would be interested to hear.
He doesn’t have anything to say about the middle decades of the 19th century.
The ‘history’ is just him telling his own flamenco story and reflecting on how flamenco changed from the 1960s to now. How difficult it was to learn to accompany cante, how you must learn to respond to the singer’s decisions on the fly. Mortifying experiences where he learned this. His first exposure to live cante at a festival in Almeria gripped by Mairenismo. How he realised that he wasn’t going to be a pro player, how he hit on transcriptions as a way of participating in Flamenco.
The interesting bits for me were an argument about why it’s difficult to come up with a genuinely new estilo (I’d want to listen again before I could summarise it). Then there’s a claim that playing with a rhythm section liberated PdL to play much longer melodic lines than was possible in falsetas. He pushes back against some bits of romanticism, e.g. yes, some flamencos do learn the art from family members, but everyone learns from touring performers and from recordings (which have been available for a century or more). So let’s not overdo the family-transmission thing. He doesn’t like any noble-savage stuff about untutored geniuses playing or singing by intuition, because, like any art, there’s a huge amount of work to produce the effect of direct, intuitive performance, and this should be recognised and respected. The day of the pure flamenco guitarist is over because guitarists are rounded musicians now who could play other stuff and probably do. There’s no point regretting any of these changes.
He understood early on that he’ll always play like a Parisian who lives in a comfortable district, because that’s who he is. Play it, respect it, don’t get into cosplay (he didn’t use that term).
Flamenco has the discipline of classical, the freedom of jazz and the energy of rock.
So, nothing extraordinary, but interesting reflections of someone who has been studying flamenco for a long time and thinking about his own relation to it.
“L’histoire vécue” is the lived history or oral history. The other comments thank him for this ‘testimony’.
I forgot one other interesting thing, he claimed that in the late sixties nobody in Spain was playing Ramon Montoya material because the recordings hadn’t been reissued.
Thanks for that summary sir! About Ramon Montoya, I don’t understand that at all….everybody from Diego del gastor, to paco de Lucia, to Sabicas in the US, was playing Ramon’s licks. Paco’s first recording has Rondeña note for note, 1964. For sure that BAM record made it out of France.
His teacher introduced him to Manuel Cano (he relates at about 12’), and he took some lessons from Cano. He tells a story about a concert where the young PdL was the opener, then Serranito and finally at the top of the bill, Cano.
Cano recorded an album of Ramon Montoya material in 1964, and according to Worms toured it a lot and made a name for himself with it. So maybe that’s where PdL got the idea of doing the Rondeña. And perhaps Cano told Worms that it was he, Cano, who reintroduced Montoya to Spain.
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His teacher introduced him to Manuel Cano (he relates at about 12’), and he took some lessons from Cano. He tells a story about a concert where the young PdL was the opener, then Serranito and finally at the top of the bill, Cano.
Cano recorded an album of Ramon Montoya material in 1964, and according to Worms toured it a lot and made a name for himself with it. So maybe that’s where PdL got the idea of doing the Rondeña. And perhaps Cano told Worms that it was he, Cano, who reintroduced Montoya to Spain.
Interesting possibility. There is a simple way to rule it out, but I can’t find the audio of that track on line. I did find a live performance by Cano in the 80s, and the phrasing was significantly different than Montoya’s version, where as Paco is copying Montoya’s phrasing almost exactly. But perhaps Cano changed it and used to do it more like Ramon and that would be what paco copied? I will keep looking.
One thing I notice just with these two is that Cano has a more lyrical free expression, vs. Montoya’s manic stop start rhythmic phrasing. Things like the Verdiales compas on the tonic C# chord (1 &ah2 &ah3 &) that bookend the Levantica falseta for example. Paco could not have intuited that on his own, if Cano’s version was always like that (meaning he doesn’t do it here).
EDIT: Aha! I was right I think, Paco is getting from Ramon not Cano, or he couldn’t have intuited that detail (same spot described 1964 and 1988). Here is the Cano 1964 version at 7:36:
Do you know what year the French reissue of Ramon’s recordings was? Maybe it provoked a little ripple of people interpreting his stuff. Worms is vague about the dates of his stories—fair enough, he’s reminiscing, not talking to the police.
Do you know what year the French reissue of Ramon’s recordings was?
I don’t find a specific year, the label has no date and the jacket refers to the original 78s of 1936. I am not real clear why the 78rpm version would not have been popular in Spain? Long before Paco, Sabicas was learning from Ramon’s records and those all would have been 78s anyway, cante or solo. The Faucher transcription book has an intro about the recording event from Zayas, stating a contract for at least 6 7 inch discs (there are 12 tracks on the LP), and the album was advertised/listed between Monteverdi and Bach selections from the same BAM company. There is a discrepancy of date of his death, Zayas giving 1949, and the jacket giving 1951.
Don’t forget Montoya’s cante accompaniment recordings. They’ve always been widely available in original format and later as reissues, and they’ve always been a big influence (including during the 1960s, which is what you guys are discussing).
Also, there’s always been an indirect influence of Montoya’s playing through others. Niño Ricardo was very clever and original, but when he recorded toques levantinos (malagueña, taranta, granaína, etc.) on cante recordings, he played Montoya nearly note for note.
Montoya made a few films, too. There are close-up shots of him playing in “Carmen, la de Triana” and, I think, other films. That one came out in 1938 but has been a staple of TV rebroadcasts since then.
My first teacher was montoyista and so was his teacher, who he learned from in the early 1960s.
To be fair to Worms here, he’s specifically talking about Montoya’s solo material, and he excludes Sabicas because he’s talking about Spain. And I doubt he intended to suggest that all memory or influence of Montoya had vanished. That would be mad. All he says is that few players were performing the solos as concert pieces—which could still be false for all I know, but it’s not crazy.
I’d also like to say, this thing about Montoya is the one detail that snagged on my mind out of an hour and forty minutes of interview. He comes over as a modest man with a deep respect for the art and its artists. I’ve got a stack of his transcriptions and I’ve just ordered his most recent book.
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