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Posts: 15631
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Manitas de Lata)
quote:
who would guess 1961/62
anybody that owns a record player.
sadly many aficionados have no ear for hi fidelity. Also those CD transfers and mp3 conversions ruined by signal processing. Honestly it is a shame there are lots of great flamenco recordings that were made digitally in the 1990s to 2000s and they have no chance for vinyl pressing of the quality of the od analogue stuff. I am at least thankful Universal Music has a lot of the old vinyl masters and can stamp out some classics with no loss of info. In the far future humanity with have vinyl records and zero record of music occurring after 1991 or so.
Posts: 3491
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
sadly many aficionados have no ear for hi fidelity. Also those CD transfers and mp3 conversions ruined by signal processing. Honestly it is a shame there are lots of great flamenco recordings that were made digitally in the 1990s to 2000s and they have no chance for vinyl pressing of the quality of the od analogue stuff.
I have the "Malaguena" vinyl album by Carlos Montoya, as well as several others from that period. I first got into flamenco guitar in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of 17 with vinyl albums by Carlos Montoya in 1960. Saw him perform in Phoenix that same year.
In fact, i have kept all of my vinyl albums collected throughout the years: Flamenco, classical, folk (Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, etc.), Marty Robbins, Willie Nelson, and a host of others. Still have the stereo set I bought in Manila in 1977 while assigned to the US Embassy.
I have CDs as well, but the vinyl recordings are my favorites. But then, I have always considered myself an analog man living in a digital age.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
dont know if that Pepe Romero was remastered when released in 1995 cd format, maybe somekind of mastered due to differente format (i guess)
Mercury Living Presence Profile: Mercury sub-label, famous for the natural sound achieved by producer couple Wilma Cozart and Robert Fine in the 1950s / 60s, also reissued on CD.
Normally Mercury will be valid label to add in addition to Mercury Living Presence.
A Fine Art: The Mercury Living Presence Recordings Robert Baird | Jul 10, 2012
It is perhaps the most cherished tale from hi-fi's primordial past: In 1951—when music was first being recorded on magnetic tape, when the use of much-improved microphones became a mix of science and art, and when Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, was still a little nipper, years away from his first martini (though I wouldn't swear to that)—the team of Robert (Bob) and Wilma Cozart Fine began to build a legendary catalog of recordings of classical music. It eventually included the work of conductors Rafael Kubelik, Antal Doráti, and Frederick Fennell; the Chicago and Minneapolis symphony orchestras; the pianists Byron Janis and Gina Bachauer; and the cellists Mstislav Rostropovich and János Starker—all released with often wildly colorful covers under the still-evocative title of Mercury Living Presence. By 1967, when all of the original members of the recording team had moved on and Bob Fine's trademark three-microphone approach was abandoned, the Living Presence catalog, counting the single-mike mono (1951–55) and three-mike stereo (1955–67) releases, numbered some 300 titles. With hi-fi best-sellers like the 1954 mono and 1958 stereo recordings of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (Mercury MG 50054 and SR90054), Living Presence also marks the one and, perhaps, the only time when audiophile recordings crossed over to become modest hits among mainstream listeners.
Twenty years have passed since Wilma Cozart Fine (who died in 2009) remastered over 100 Living Presence titles for reissue on CD. Now, improbably enough, the catalog's current owner, Universal Music, has launched a new reissue program under the Decca Classics banner with a budget-priced boxed set of 50 CDs ($169.98 list, available at Amazon.com for $92.91) made from Wilma Fine's 1990 CD masters, and a six-LP set in a numbered limited edition ($96.49 list, or $83.76 from Amazon) newly cut at Germany's Berliner Studios. The idea for these sets apparently came from Universal's Asian affiliates; the word from Universal is that if they sell, a second set of CDs will be released.
That the oft-told tale of Bob and Wilma Fine holds an endless fascination for audiophiles is a fact that their son, Tom Fine, managing editor of Beverage Digest and keeper of the Living Presence flame, is happy to repeat. While the mono Living Presence recordings will always have their cadre of devoted faithful, it's the stereo recordings that are the most famous part of the Fines' legacy. And while the audiophile press has published tens of thousands of words about the Living Presence recording chain over years, it's worth a short review.
"My father [who died in 1982] had started experimenting with stereo in 1954," says Tom Fine. "There are pictures of the truck, where my dad was taking along a two-track machine and experimenting with two microphones, but none of that was found to be adequate, because there was always a hole in the middle, or not good depth, or not good sides. They finally got a three-track machine in late 1955. The whole industry was very clear by 1955 that two-track stereo tapes were coming for consumers. So it was clear that labels had to build up stereo catalog.
"In the very early days [of Living Presence] it was a single Telefunken U-47 microphone that went directly to a Fairchild full-track tape recorder. But by 1953 my father had discovered the omnidirectional Schoeps M201 microphone, and he switched to using that as the single mike." (The Schoeps M201, first marketed in 1952, was 140mm long and 23mm in diameter.) "It was ideal for that use because it's a very sensitive microphone, and the way the presence peak in that microphone happens to work, it was perfect for backing it off to where he liked to put it and still getting the strings.
"The whole thing you are doing with this technique is you're basically using the presence peak on these European condenser microphones to make up for the fact that the treble frequencies decay faster than other frequencies in a venue, in a real space. And that's how you get the width and the depth but still the detail. To put it into visual terms, it's like you have a great depth of field to your lens."
The problem was that the Schoeps mikes were virtually handmade, and after a certain point, Dr. Karl Schoeps and his first employee, Dr. Wilhelm Kusters, wouldn't make any more in their small workshop in Karlsruhe, Germany. Bob Fine spent the next six years hunting down more M201s, of which it is rumored as few as 36 were made. Mercury required that the Living Presence team have six M201s—three and three backups—before they could go out on the road to record an orchestra. "At first, in recording for stereo, they tried two Telefunken U-47s on the sides [and an M201 in the center], but they only used that briefly," says Tom Fine. "They eventually settled on the Neumann KM-56s on the sides. And so pretty much everything made from 1956 to '59 has the two KM-56s on the sides and an M201 in the middle. And then, by 1959, they had three '201s with backups, so that's what they used the rest of the time."
From the microphones suspended above the orchestra—the height varied with the project, but averaged 12' above the conductor's head—the stereo signal would go to PULTEC MB1 preamps in the famous Living Presence truck, a Chevy panel van stuffed full of tapes and equipment. The left and right mikes would feed the top and bottom tracks of two three-track tape recorders. The center channel would feed the center track on the two stereo machines that were recording, plus the full-track (mono) machine. The tapes would be edited in three-track, so two tapes were made, an A and a B reel.
"Remember that mono LPs outsold stereo LPs until the mid-'60s, so you had to make sure you had a good mono master," Fine says. "I am often asked, why wouldn't you just make the mono master off the center track of the three-track tape? Too much crosstalk. You could do it off film, but you can't do it off three-track tape. You have to run a separate full-track tape.
"They used audio tape from Audio Devices. It was standard 1960s non–back-coated brown oxide tape. Strangely enough, both of my parents liked the quality of the hiss on Audio Devices tape better than [the hiss on] Scotch [tape]. That's why they used it."
The three-track tapes were recorded on Ampex 300-3 half-inch machines at 15ips. In addition to recording tape, some Living Presence sessions were recorded on 35mm magnetic film; these can be identified by what looks like a strip of film, with sprocket holes, running across the top of the album covers.
"Dad thought the film stuff sounded markedly better," Fine remembers. "It's lower noise, lower print-through, it's wider tracks, and a slightly faster speed so, theoretically, a slightly better dynamic range—and definitely a lower noise floor. My mother's opinion when she was making the CDs was that the film masters sound really good, but it's okay when I have to use a tape master."
The 3- to 2-channel mixdowns of sessions recorded on standard tape were done on a modified Westrex mixer. Wilma Fine mixed from first-generation session tapes, which would become the master from which the LPs were pressed; it's that detail that gives Living Presence releases such an alive sound. For the original LPs, the mixer directly fed the custom cutting chain at Fine Recording, in the Great Northern Hotel in Manhattan (the site of today's Parker Meridian Hotel). There, a Westrex cutter head on a Scully lathe was fed by modified McIntosh 200W tube amplifiers. The mono records were cut with a Miller cutter head.
"Back in the LP day, my mother would mix the 3/2 as the LP was being cut. I always describe her role as a human preview head, because she would sit there with a score, and she and mastering engineer George Piros had hand signals as to when to tighten and widen the margin. She'd be reading a few measures ahead, and give him a hand signal when a loud part was coming up or when a soft part was coming up. That's how he could cut 30-minute sides when he had to."
While Bob Fine was an independent contractor, Wilma was a Mercury Records employee: VP in charge of classical records, and producer of the Living Presence releases. Before landing the Mercury gig, she'd interviewed for a producer's job at RCA Records, whose Living Stereo series later became Living Presence's major competitor. According to Tom Fine, RCA had told her, "Women don't run sessions. Women don't edit tapes. Women don't make marketing decisions here." In 2011, Wilma Cozart Fine posthumously won a Trustees Grammy Award.
"She had very acute high-frequency hearing. Up until old age, if she was sitting in the living room listening and someone turned on the TV in the kitchen, she'd hear the high-frequency noise and ask them to turn it off."
By the mid-1970s, Mercury was no longer pressing Living Presence LPs in the US. The Philips label, which by then owned the Mercury catalog, began what it called the Mercury Golden Import series, which included Living Presence titles that had been remastered by Philips and pressed at their plant in Holland. "I'm not going to characterize how they were received," Tom Fine says, "but let's just say they weren't in the market very long. You could say those were the first reissues where the original team wasn't involved."
Several of the tapes that had been used for the Golden Import Series were digitized and used for some very early European CD releases. Tom Fine: "These were not well received either.
"The new LPs were cut from the digital masters made by my mother in the 1990s. This was done because no one from the Mercury team is alive to make a 3/2 mix from the master tapes. The 3/2 mix is much more important to the Mercury sound qualities than the medium of the release product."
Unbelievably—or maybe not, considering the often pathetic archival history of the music business—a few of the later CD reissues of Living Presence titles were made from the B reels because the edited masters had been lost, or the splices on the A reels were so bad as to be irreparable. All of the Living Presence tapes were catalogued in the mid-1990s, and since then have been stored together in a climate-controlled vault at the Berliner Studios, in Germany. Yet a number of tapes were lost after the initial LP pressings.
In 1989, Philips, then owned by PolyGram, asked Wilma Fine if she'd be interested in helming a full-blown reissue program of Mercury Living Presence CDs. "My mother said, 'Sure,' but she'd have to make sure that she did this digital thing right, because she was unimpressed with the early digital stuff."
Wilma Fine ended up taking almost a year to do it, working with engineer Dennis Drake at PolyGram studios in Edison, New Jersey, to decide what would work as a transfer chain. "The dCS analog-to-digital converter came out then, which I think internally used bitstream technology," Tom Fine says, "but it basically output 24-bit/44.1kHz digital. And then they would put that into a Harmonia Mundi Acoustica digital console that had a dither-down module that would take it down to 16 bits after it had been transferred, and put that into a standard AES/EBU signal that went to the Sony PCM-1630 mastering machine. I think she'd run two '1630s at once; that's why she had a digital bus. She never liked the Sonic Solutions system. She was still making '1630 masters up to the end.
"The center was always paramount with the Living Presence thing. The mono versions of the LPs were always made from that single center mike, and the sides would be matched to the center. You'd bring the sides up to add width and depth and height to the soundfield. I was in the studio a few times, and you'd look at the faders, and they were within a half dB of each other anyway—that's just the way the mikes were set up. Basically, what you're getting is what was on the tape. And that's what came from the microphones. The whole secret to the technique is having the ears to focus and set the microphones correctly. Other than that, there's really very little electronic trickery or manipulation involved."
Given the glorious sound that still emanates from these new CD and LP reissues—the ringing cavalry bugle calls in the first volume of The Civil War (Mercury 432 592-2) or János Starker's sensitive readings of J.S. Bach's Cello Suites (Mercury 432 757-2), to name just two examples—what will always remain most impressive and magical about the Living Presence catalog are the Fines' ears for repertoire and performances. Wilma, in particular, is perhaps best known for coaxing classic performances out of often temperamental artists.
"It was a realism," the Fines' rightfully proud son says today of his parents' sonic aims. "They wanted an honesty: the honest sound of the instruments, how they really sounded. They wanted a clarity to everything. They weren't as interested in sounding like you were in the tenth row as they were in hearing inside the music."
Posts: 15631
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
quote:
ORIGINAL: D.A.
Not sure what you mean by zero musical content?
The guy was great, so what’s your point?
honestly amigo, there are issues of musical taste that have prevented Carlos from being taken seriously by the mainstream flamenco community. It did not help that he left Spain and made a career as a solo guitarist in USA. His uncle Ramon was reluctantly pushed into doing his solo guitar recordings because the traditional role of a flamenco guitarist was to accompany singers and dancers, and only that. Carlos did not really make his mark in Spain as the maestro tocaor for cante, before embarking on his journey as a concert artist. Back in Spain they were like "huh?" when Americans came over wondering why there are not statues in his honor on every street corner.
In hindsight, historically, it is safe to say he opened the door to concert programs of flamenco guitar solo for later, much more seasoned and respected artists like Sabicas, Juan Serrano, and Paco de Lucía, but honestly the records he made had close to no impact whatsoever ever in Spain. I find his St Louis to Seville jazz fusion very interesting, coming out around the time of Miles Davis hit records Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue. Very innovative, but his proper flamenco was questionable. His uncle, conversely is arguably the most important flamenco guitarist in history along with Paco de Lucía.
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
who would guess 1961/62
anybody that owns a record player.
sadly many aficionados have no ear for hi fidelity. Also those CD transfers and mp3 conversions ruined by signal processing. Honestly it is a shame there are lots of great flamenco recordings that were made digitally in the 1990s to 2000s and they have no chance for vinyl pressing of the quality of the od analogue stuff. I am at least thankful Universal Music has a lot of the old vinyl masters and can stamp out some classics with no loss of info. In the far future humanity with have vinyl records and zero record of music occurring after 1991 or so.
A great deal of music after 1990 is embarrassing anyway
Should also be pointed out that Sabicas was in the US at the same time and he was recording albums which were popular and still have significance as flamenco documents. Carlos is a gateway drug to harder mainlining flamenco.
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
I believe Montoya left Spain because of the outbreak of World War 2. But I’ve read that he toured extensively with La Argentina. Also, I believe he was a pioneer of solo flamenco guitar which was more popular outside of Spain of course which makes sense because nobody outside Spain really understands the cante because of course the language.
Posts: 3491
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
quote:
I believe Montoya left Spain because of the outbreak of World War 2. But I’ve read that he toured extensively with La Argentina. Also, I believe he was a pioneer of solo flamenco guitar which was more popular outside of Spain of course which makes sense because nobody outside Spain really understands the cante because of course the language.
Carlos Montoya frequently did an extended ligado while holding up his right hand, and, of course, the audience loved it. That was one of the reasons many disparaged Carlos's playing, along with his extended tremolos and lack of compas discipline. Nevertheless, Carlos could actually play very well when he wanted to, and in his earlier days he accompanied some fine dancers, including La Teresina and La Argentina.
Carlos's uncle, Ramon Montoya, refused to tutor him, and Carlos first learned flamenco guitar from Pepe el Barbero and was tutored by others until he was playing on his own in the cafe cantantes at the age of 14. I think Carlos gets a bad rap from the flamenco community. I understand their lack of enthusiasm for his showmanship and lack of discipline, as noted above. But I also think there was a bit of envy that he attracted large audiences and became so popular. In reality, as noted by others, Carlos put flamenco on the map in the US.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 3491
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
Should also be pointed out that Sabicas was in the US at the same time and he was recording albums which were popular and still have significance as flamenco documents. Carlos is a gateway drug to harder mainlining flamenco.
My understanding is that Sabicas had a fear of flying, and that severely restricted his travel to perform in concert. Carlos, on the other hand, flew from city to city and performed constantly. This made Carlos a lot more accessible to flamenco audiences than Sabicas. For example, I saw Carlos perform in concert in Phoenix in 1960, but I never had the pleasure of seeing Sabicas in concert.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 15631
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
I think Carlos gets a bad rap from the flamenco community. I understand their lack of enthusiasm for his showmanship and lack of discipline, as noted above.
There are exactly zero legitimate tocaores of that era who would have had "envy" of Carlos, other than that he could afford those Arcangel guitars he would change every 10 years cuz they would get "worn out". . I mean in the same modern sense that any tocaor of the recent decades that would be "envious" of the success of Ottmar or Rodrigo and Gabriela, etc. Carlos gets a bad rep because of artist choices, that't pretty much it. Sabicas did some hand wavy cheesy things as well and gets no flack for that because of his artistry. Listen to his accompaniments of Pena Hijo for example. If you show me Carlos playing anything at all like that then I would admit he had a deeper dimension overshadowed by his concert career and albums. But I have yet to hear that. Instead I found a video where he tunes the strings down a 4th so they are like rubber bands so he can do cheesy ligados all over the place on an otherwise amazing high quality Arcangel (or barbero, they look similar).
quote:
My understanding is that Sabicas had a fear of flying, and that severely restricted his travel to perform in concert.
To contextualize this, this is a cultural thing in general. Ramon also feared flying and went to War rather then risk taking a plane out of Spain. And it did not stop with these early players, Vicente Amigo refused a tour offer to America in the mid 1990s for the same reason. He got over it, but it is a "thing".
Also about Ramon refusing to teach Carlos....keep in mind Ramon's own father was a tocaor and refused to teach, and he said the reason is gitanos were always secretive and guarded about toque. He admitted learning from his dad by hiding in the closet of his practice room, and that to get fingerings he learned from BLIND street guitarists that could see him copying them. Pretty crazy but that might have gone into his mentality there. If you want flamenco proper you gotta work for it.
Posts: 1990
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
I heard a recording of Carlos accompanying a dancer a long tine ago and my recollection is that his playing was tight. I might still have that record. Also, I read somewhere that he was respected as a player and accompanist in Spain before he embarked on his solo career.
My first flamenco record was called "Giants of Flamenco" and it features Sabicas and Montoya on alternating cuts. It was Sabicas' rondena from the record that hooked me.
My teacher, Mariano Cordoba, was friends with Carlos. He didn't really respect his solo work, and called his style "Hollywood style" but he acknowledged his rather incredible popularity and career. He also said he could play in compas when he wanted to.
Mariano related the story of Carlos saying that his uncle didn't teach him anything, and Mariano said "And it shows!!!"
I went to a Carlos concert in the 80's and he killed it. Did his whole routine and the people ate it up.
Rosa Montoya, who I believe is his niece, was a dancer who taught in San Francisco for years and years. Her instruction produced some local pros. When I was just starting to learn to play for dance I was able to play for some of her classes and student gigs. She was a character.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
I think Carlos gets a bad rap from the flamenco community. I understand their lack of enthusiasm for his showmanship and lack of discipline, as noted above.
There are exactly zero legitimate tocaores of that era who would have had "envy" of Carlos, other than that he could afford those Arcangel guitars he would change every 10 years cuz they would get "worn out". . I mean in the same modern sense that any tocaor of the recent decades that would be "envious" of the success of Ottmar or Rodrigo and Gabriela, etc. Carlos gets a bad rep because of artist choices, that't pretty much it. Sabicas did some hand wavy cheesy things as well and gets no flack for that because of his artistry. Listen to his accompaniments of Pena Hijo for example. If you show me Carlos playing anything at all like that then I would admit he had a deeper dimension overshadowed by his concert career and albums. But I have yet to hear that. Instead I found a video where he tunes the strings down a 4th so they are like rubber bands so he can do cheesy ligados all over the place on an otherwise amazing high quality Arcangel (or barbero, they look similar).
quote:
My understanding is that Sabicas had a fear of flying, and that severely restricted his travel to perform in concert.
To contextualize this, this is a cultural thing in general. Ramon also feared flying and went to War rather then risk taking a plane out of Spain. And it did not stop with these early players, Vicente Amigo refused a tour offer to America in the mid 1990s for the same reason. He got over it, but it is a "thing".
Also about Ramon refusing to teach Carlos....keep in mind Ramon's own father was a tocaor and refused to teach, and he said the reason is gitanos were always secretive and guarded about toque. He admitted learning from his dad by hiding in the closet of his practice room, and that to get fingerings he learned from BLIND street guitarists that could see him copying them. Pretty crazy but that might have gone into his mentality there. If you want flamenco proper you gotta work for it.
Posts: 3491
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
There are exactly zero legitimate tocaores of that era who would have had "envy" of Carlos, other than that he could afford those Arcangel guitars he would change every 10 years cuz they would get "worn out". . I mean in the same modern sense that any tocaor of the recent decades that would be "envious" of the success of Ottmar or Rodrigo and Gabriela, etc.
I don't mean envy of Carlos as a tocaor. I mean envy of his commercial success in spite of not being in the top tier of tocaores. Also, I think you are stretching the analogy to compare Carlos with accomplished tocaores of that era with Ottmar and Rodrigo and Gabiela with accomplished tocaores of our era. Carlos could actually play well (although not in the top tier) when he wanted to. Neither Ottmar nor Rodrigo and Gabriela come close to flamenco in our era.
Just my opinion.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
to the OP,
stick with Ramon a little longer. If you wish to learn how to play flamenco, or just listen to a more pure flamenco, Carlos can be a way in, but don't stop there.
For some context, when I was growing up in the 80s, I had only my grandmother and my father's love of Spanish classical guitar players to guide me. What did I know about flamenco. Then I got my hands on some Carlos Montoya, then of course the Gipsy Kings were everywhere. Maybe some Paco Pena at a point. It was really with the beginnings of the internet that I started to research and listen to cante with the CD collection "great figures of flamenco" which was a French compilation, then of course Ramon, Nino Ricardo and Sabicas, and ultimately Paco de Lucia who I did not even like at first. I found his playing lacked fire. Seems ridiculous now but there it is.
I would love to check out that flamenco jazz fusion mentioned by Ricardo. Donn Pohren who craps on Carlos Montoya a great deal in his encyclopedia of flamenco actually has a bit of praise for that project! Well, a tiny bit anyway.
_____________________________
"I'm just a poor crazy man in love with his art." Santos Hernandez
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
…of course Montoya could play in compas when he wanted to.
and of course he didn’t play traditional flamenco as a soloist because he’s not accompanying a dancer or a singer. It’s solo flamenco guitar, it’s all technical and flash.
The guitar is subordinate to the singer and dancer; it’s third.
If they played the solos like they were accompanying a singer then it would be boring
And if you’re going to talk about a player who played out of compas, Manitas did but again wasn’t accompanying a dancer either.
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
If you’re going to play along with that 27 minute video of Montoya place the capo on the 3rd fret and tune to a high C#. On my tuner it registered a little passed C# 472 Hz with the capo in place.
Someone try this and get back to me.
I tried it and it pretty much harmonized with Montoya’s guitar.
Posts: 2855
Joined: Jan. 30 2007
From: London (the South of it), England
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to hamia)
quote:
What a mess - zero musical content. Why on earth are people clapping.
haha ouch.
It's not my cup of tea to be honest. rasgueado down the neck territory.
quote:
It’s solo flamenco guitar, it’s all technical and flash.
That kinda backs up Hamias criticisms. but also answers his question of why people are clapping....(they like flash and exotic technique..haha)
I would say that's a reason to dislike it not like it.
and solo flamenco guitar CAN be in compas and with less focus of flash and technique. so thats no defense.
quote:
The guitar is subordinate to the singer and dancer; it’s third.
So where do you put the compas in this? isnt that the thread that holds them all together? throw that away and it becomes... something else?.....flash and technique?
quote:
https://youtu.be/A-DsyYTzb98
I usually try not to get into debates about taste but this is a painful watch/listen.
are you on the wind up? or do you have genuine intentions?
Posts: 15631
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
quote:
ORIGINAL: D.A.
If you’re going to play along with that 27 minute video of Montoya place the capo on the 3rd fret and tune to a high C#. On my tuner it registered a little passed C# 472 Hz with the capo in place.
Someone try this and get back to me.
I tried it and it pretty much harmonized with Montoya’s guitar.
Gracias,
D.A.
Hate to say your tuner knows even less than you do about guitar. Much less flamenco. The opening piece is capo 3 key of F# meaning tonic is at 5th fret so A phrygian. The actually PITCH sounds in E (a 4th below, exactly as I explained before). It is completely freaking ridiculous. I am not going to make any more excuses for his "innovations" nor contextualize what he was as an artist. I leave it at my last two posts. Some of us do this for a living and this type if thing is literally insulting (if we cared to take it to heart which we don't bother). I am glad that some of you enjoy it or respect it or whatever. Hurray.
RE: Solo Flamenco guitar, Carlos Montoya (in reply to D.A.)
No offense taken Ricardo..
But try this. Tune your guitar down to B alittle sharper around B 458 Hertz on the tuner then place the capo on the third fret raising the pitch to 458 Hertz or so D. then play along with the video.
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. I mean in the same modern sense that any tocaor of the recent decades that would be "envious" of the success of Ottmar or Rodrigo and Gabriela, etc. Carlos gets a bad rep because of artist choices, that't pretty much it. Sabicas did some hand wavy cheesy things as well and gets no flack for that because of his artistry. Listen to his accompaniments of Pena Hijo for example. If you show me Carlos playing anything at all like that then I would admit he had a deeper dimension overshadowed by his concert career and albums. But I have yet to hear that. Instead I found a video where he tunes the strings down a 4th so they are like rubber bands so he can do cheesy ligados all over the place on an otherwise amazing high quality Arcangel (or barbero, they look similar). 
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