Reviews for Stuff! Good Drummers Should Know: An A-Z Guide to Getting Better

The average rating for Stuff! Good Drummers Should Know: An A-Z Guide to Getting Better based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-12 00:00:00 Mike Carnes Overview Gerhard Graf-Martínez, according to the Preface, has played guitar for forty years, and been a professional Flamenco player and teacher for over twenty, having organised classes with Andrés Batista in 1983 and 1984. Shortly after giving this information, the author writes: "I will be pleased to answer any questions related to this guitar method and Flamenco in general", giving address, phone, fax, website and e-mail! This is certainly a generous, not to say astonishing, offer. His Flamenco Guitar Method is an ambitious undertaking, comprising two DVDs and their corresponding books, plus a CD. This Method is not for beginners to the guitar, although it might serve for beginners to Flamenco: "Notation and tablature are not explained in this book because I assume that everyone knows these facts, as well as the basic techniques of the classical guitar". I would advise at least a year of playing, and preferably two, before attempting it. Also, of course, to play any kind of music well you must listen to it ' lots of it ' until you know it intimately. The books I received are entirely in English; German versions are also available. The DVDs allow either German or English to be selected. In either case the underlying video is the same, but if English is chosen the captions are in English ' as is the audio, except when the author is shown speaking. When the latter happens, his German explanations are muted, while he provides voice-overs in English that is fluent, clear and grammatical. The effect is quite satisfactory, rather like the BBC showing one of Yasser Arafat's speeches. There is none of the nightmarish sensation you get from the dubbing in old Bruce Lee movies. The English of the books is also idiomatic (with a very few exceptions, noted later). Mercifully, the English as She Is Spoke days of books like Historia y técnica de la guitarra flamenca seem to be behind us. Content Volume 1 is concerned primarily with building technique. It exhibits a finer-grained attention to detail than I have yet seen, starting with photographs of, and a discussion of, the different playing-positions of Manolo Sanlúcar, Sabicas and Paco de Lucía, plus the traditional position and the casual one with legs crossed. The first glitches come with the explanation of signs. We may easily forgive the use of mano izquierda and derecha for left and right hands, similarly bemol and sostenido for flat and sharp. And the use of the German H for the note B, while an error in English, is understandable. But the symbols given for the strings of the guitar appear to be gibberish. Three of them seem to be from the Zapf Dingbats font, which certainly contains circled numbers that can be used for guitar string indications ' I use them myself. But only one of the symbols is a circled number, a 3, and that is assigned to the top E string; the other two symbols are an arrow and a club (card suit) symbol, assigned to the 4th & 3rd strings respectively. Normalcy resumes with explanations of rasgueado, followed by rasgueado exercises. All the exercises in the book are simple but accurate flamenco rhythms. 3-finger, 4-finger and continuous rasgueado are covered. From here we pass to thumb exercises, and then thumb plus rasgueado, progressing to ayudado (thumb plus finger), taps, and the right-hand rhythm for rumba, followed by more advanced types of rasgueado. Lesson 5 switches to the topic of the flamenco guitar itself, its makers and its players. I particularly liked the chart on p. 82 showing how the styles of the famous guitarists of the last century have developed from each other. While I (and I doubt the author either) would not claim it expressed any fixed eternal truth, it gave (for example) Paco de Lucía's immediate ancestors as Esteban Sanlúcar, Sabicas, Escudero, and Ricardo via Ramón de Algeciras, which I thought was pretty accurate. Next come discussions of nails, palmas, compás and the flamenco clock (which is a metaphor for understanding flamenco rhythms). The tutorial material of Volume 1 concludes with a page on the Phrygian mode, here referred to (correctly) as the modo dórico. Finally there is a pretty extensive glossary, a list of flamenco establishments, and an index. Presentation The benchmark in instructional flamenco videos has hitherto been set by Encuentro Productions. The present production certainly matches this, and goes further to include features I have not yet seen elsewhere. The demonstrations in the video, like the photographs in the book, are extremely clear. But further, by using the cursor buttons on your remote, you can vary the camera angle, from facing the artist to one of about 45°, which gives the best view of the right hand. When musical examples are played, the bottom third of the screen shows the relevant tablature, with a moving cursor showing the notes currently being played (if you have Finale, you already know how this feature looks). But not only this, you can switch at will from a full-speed version to a slow version; the transition is absolutely seamless. The picture quality is high, and the whole production is extremely professional. As regards the book, I should say that it also contains many good photographs of flamenco artists; in particular, absolutely beautiful black-and-white full-page ones by Elke Stolzenberg. This book is also available in a version without the DVD. See also my review of Volume 2. Disclosure I received a free copy of this item for review.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-24 00:00:00 Gerry Mcguire This book has great technique for flamenco beginners. It layers the lessons on top of each other and builds your skills. Great lessons on a tough playing style.