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RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
if you really want to improve your sight reading, try "Progressive Reading For Guitarists" by Stephen Dodgson and Hector Quine, published by Ricordi, or "Musicianship and Sight Reading for Guitarists" by Oliver Hunt, published by New Musical Services
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
quote:
I meant specifically flamenco books
yeah i know you did, but i didn't want to comment on the "unusual" nature of your request 'cos i'm trying real hard not to "start a massive for/against tab argument"
um.... i could explain, but maybe you don't really want me to....
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
Like I said, there are no good flamenco books, I know of, that are in standard notation only. There are a lot of good books in tab though.
Maybe you should try the paco pena book "music from the student reportoire" It's in tab ánd standard notation.
The reason flamenco is mostly in tab is maybe because there is no history in standard notation. So there's no need to use standard notation. In fact, when you take flamenco guitar lessons there's very often not even paper involved.
In classical it's of course very useful because there's loads of 500 year old music that needs to be reanimated.
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
I would leave the standardnotation for classical guitar. If you want to improve your sight reading ability, try the sight reading samples for classical guitar here:
However, if you really want flamenco pieces in good standard notation try to get a copy of "flamenco puro" by Joseph Trotter.
There are also a lot of tabledit, guitar pro and powertab files available on this foro. I think all three programms allow you to switch off the tablature line.
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
quote:
I must admit I was wondering why tab is used so much with flamenco music, so feel free to enlighten me.
quote:
"It won't help you to learn to play flamenco though."
Why do you say that?
Most flamenco guitarists who grow up with it etc. play solely by ear, by listening and watching, and don't write anything, don't have any need to read or write any music (I said MOST, not all, Manolo Sanlucar, Rafael Riqueni and Cañizares being notable exceptions, but they learned to read long after they learned to play...).
Athough structure is provided by the palos or flamenco forms, and by compas and various conventions, there is also a lot of freedom and improvisation, and notating can have an effect of "fixing" things a bit too much (i have had lessons where the teacher not only didn't write anything down, he wouldn't even hardly show specific things, but would play stuff and tell me to go for my own interpretation rather than note for note details).
Flamenco, when transcribed at all, is usually transcribed into either tab (with or without "best of both worlds" time value stems and beams) or tab/dot notation combined in double staves. Tab is used, if at all, as a memory aid, with an assumption that you either were shown how to play it by another guitarist already, or have a video or audio source as reference.
Compared to the amount of flamenco music that exists in audio and visual form, there is very little transcribed, paper is just not the currency (or gp, pdf, whatever), and ultimately you are going to have to use your ears and to some extent your eyes, so why bother developing sight reading? why not spend the time developing ear? if your ultimate goal is to play flamenco then it's probably better to spend an hour learning one falseta by ear that you can play by heart than spending an hour sightreading ten pieces composed of ten falsetas each (ie. a hundred falsetas) that you can't remember and/or play afterwards.
There is seldom any need for anyone to read music for any other instrument as, at least historically, and until very recently, the guitar is/has been the only instrument involved. Tablature was one of the first forms of music notation developed by lute players, and the need for "standard" notation came about writing for groups, orchestras etc. where players of different instruments all play off the same score, so in a sense there's no need for standard notation/dots....
The really big advantage of tab is that as you can play the top E in 5 places on a spanish guitar (more i guess on electric) tab will tell you which one, whereas dots can be ambiguous. Tab will give you the fingering, hand positions etc. very clearly. A lot of flamenco guitar music is based around fingerboard positions and chord shapes etc. and chords which mix notes fretted up the fingerboard with open strings are much simpler to read in tab than in dots (in my opinion/experience).
The main gripe that dot readers seem to have about tab is that it doesn't convey the time values of the notes indicated in the tab, but this problem can be solved by adding stems and beams from standard notation (which is why i called it "best of both worlds") onto the fret numbers. Alain Faucher uses this method for his individual transcriptions (website here: http://www.affedis.com/) though in his books he uses the double line standard notation/tab layout. The other gripe is that even with time values added, tab cannot convey the musical information of standard notation. In classical music, as i understand it, the composers score is the ultimate source, but in flamenco the reference is going to be the actual sound, either live, or recorded, so the necessary musical information is contained in that, not in any transcription of it. In classical music the score is primary and any recording is secondary, an interpretation of that score. In flamenco the live performance, or recording of it is primary, and any transcription is going to be secondary (and probably riddled with errors, lol!)
The only non-tab flamenco notation i've come across is either weird japanese transcriptions of more or less correct dots but clueless fingering, or "flamenco for classical guitarists" atrocities - simplifications of older style flamenco guitar styles with no idea how to notate or transcribe rasgeo, and usually played by people with no idea how to execute them....
There are several ways to quote. One is to highlight and copy text, and click reply. If you already clicked reply, you can go back to the original, copy relevant text, come back to the reply box/window, press the quote button, and paste your text in between the two bracket things. I'm really not a techie so this is probably a crap way to do it.
Posts: 71
Joined: Nov. 24 2008
From: St.Helens, England
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to sam_m)
Cheers guys, the abundance of tab makes more sense now - the reasons you give are things I was aware of but I thought more would have been appropriated to standard notation by classical bods for teaching and so forth.
quote:
why bother developing sight reading?
Well, because the better my sight-reading is, the more music I have access to. I fancy that's a whole different discussion though.
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
Most flamenco guitarists who grow up with it etc. play solely by ear, by listening and watching, and don't write anything, don't have any need to read or write any music
Yeah, no need except when they want to play with non-flamenco musicians. Wonder how paco learnt cocierto de aranjuez?
If flamenco is all about playing in pubs and weddings then reading and writing is indeed not needed.
RE: Recommend Some Good Non-Tab Books (in reply to Taranto)
quote:
except when they want to play with non-flamenco musicians.
no problem, just get them to play and you can pick it up/play along....
quote:
Wonder how paco learnt cocierto de aranjuez
he probably heard it a million times before he did that recording....
actually, re the De Falla album Paco did, I read that he knew all the music sort of anyway from hearing it many times in his life, growing up etc., but for the album he got the orchestral scores and a "learn to play (presumably classical) guitar" book with the notes set against a fretboard chart showing how the dots on the stave corresponded to the frets on the guitar.... and worked out his own arrangements.... he said it took him months. That in itself is pretty awesome, just the patience and the time and work he put it. So it was part reading and part ear.
For the Aranjuez, again, he heard it many many times throughout his life and could probably hum most of it ( ) already, but i also read he got a classical guitarist to help him. I'm not sure in what capacity, maybe to just play through the score section by section from the page....
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