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I just checked with Alain Faucher, his updated price on his home page is not yet 100% ready, and it should be within a few days. The price has indeed gone up, buy 3 and add 1 free, buy 5 and add 2 free, buy 7 and get 3 free, buy 9 and get 4 free. If one can manage to buy 7 or 9, that will bring down the price to just over €13. Some of the modern tabs took him two months to complete. Apparently one of the main reasons is "intellectual looting", it's difficult for him to make a living as his tabs are circulating for free on the internet, and it will not encourage people to buy more even if he brings down the unit price.
Apparently one of the main reasons is "intellectual looting",
Much as I sympathise with Alain, and think that someone of his skill level should be able to make a decent living; and much as I think he's doing really useful work: the intellectual property belongs (let's face it) to the people who wrote the tunes.
good point. The really odd thing is the disparity between the books and the indvidual transcriptions.
As far as I can tell the books are made with the co-operation of the artists (he mentions in the introductions that he transcribes from special video sessions he as with them as well as the original cd's), and the books seem more accurate than the individual transcriptions.
The prices are now about 20 Euro's per transcription, but if you buy the books they work out about 5 or 6 Euro's per piece. And the books are professionally printed, neater and better laid out (and you get standard notation too).
So the books pay the artist royalties, are more accurate, better printed and are cheaper.... how does that work?
I used to think that the prices for individual transcriptions were ok, because although they were about 20 Euro's each, there was a reduction in price if you bought 2 and bigger saving if you bought 3, so I would always buy 3 at once, but that offer seems to have gone now. The only incentive to buy more is the "free" offers. So if you want one of the "free" tabs you have to spend 60 Euro's on tabs you dont want to get the freebie. If you don't want any of them there is no incentive. This is crazy.
I think he should make them priced about 5 or 6 Euro's each (in line with the books), and available to download (saving him printing and paper costs).
I'm sure that he pays royalties with the books he sells, though not sure regarding his individual transcriptions. The premise is that even he brings down the price, people will still prefer free transcriptions to paying materials at all. He further explains that he tries to encourage bulk buying, and will have a longer list of gift transcriptions. The next newsletter will be available in March or April 2011.
I used to buy 3 at a time, now I'd would have to buy 7. The difference is quite hefty indeed, and I could probably afford it only a year. I hope he'll publish more music in book form.
I used to buy 3 at a time, now I'd would have to buy 7
to get the price down to 13 Euros you would have to buy 7, as you say, but that is AVERAGE price, and includes FREE transcriptions, so you would buy 7 tabs for 133 Euros, and get 3 free.
The average cost of the 10 is 13.30 Euros, but THE AVERAGE COST OF THE 7 YOU ARE BUYING IS STILL 19 EUROS!!!!
so he gives the impression that he is selling for 13 Euros when that is the average including free tabs, not the average of the ones you pay for, so it is giving a false impression - maybe he thinks we can only count up to 12 and can't do maths and work out his real prices?
and to get his free tabs you have to buy tabs you maybe don't really want to get them - this is insane
and the books still work out much much better value, cheaper, more accurate, better presented, and pay the original artist for their colaboration
Apparently one of the main reasons [for the high price rise] is "intellectual looting", it's difficult for him to make a living as his tabs are circulating for free on the internet
I'm not arguing against what you say, but adding something else, that there is also much, much more competition now. In the eighties, he was the only one (at least the only one i knew about) producing these kind of transcriptions from leading flamenco guitarists' albums.
Now there are the Encuentro vids, there are the Claude Worms books (both Maestro's Contemporaneos and Duende Flamenco), there are the Paco De Lucia "official" books, there are the Enrique Vargas books....
In addition we discussed in the past about how Faucher deliberately inserts covert "mistakes" so he can identify any forgers of his work. Yeah it is annoying but easy to fix if your able to actually play these transcriptions at speed. Kind of funny when you realize he is himself making and selling under the table (illegally) these transcriptions with no permission. But anyway it is true some folks have stolen from him, including the Encuentro people. Oh I have found similiar mistakes in his "official" printed books as well.
What are the Claude Worms books like as to quality? I want Manolo Sanlúcar's Callejón del Carmen (from Candela) and it's in one of his books, but I don't want anything else, so it would have to be a pretty average good transcription to be worth the price.
Faucher deliberately inserts covert "mistakes" so he can identify any forgers of his work. Yeah it is annoying but easy to fix if your able to actually play these transcriptions at speed.
So are they otherwise completely accurate? How do you tell a "covert mistake" from a genuine one?
Most of the "mistakes" I have found have been either of timing/time values or of LH fingering/position, both of which could be my interpretation, so I don't worry about them too much (even though I'm not super fast/right up to speed).
Most of my tabs have bits crossed out, and little extra bits pencilled in the margins where i have "corrected" some errors, or noted my "version."
I used to do mine in pencil so I could erase stuff easily, but now I do everything straight into Finale. An advantage of using staff notation is that you can get the notes first and work out the fingering later, whereas with tab you have to get them both first go.
Also, if you find out half way through that you've got the capo in the wrong place (example: Mantilla de Feria, which on casual inspection appears to be in A), you can simply transpose what you've done so far into the new key.