Flamenco guitar and fingerstyle lessons

Learn to play flamenco guitar
guitar It's not as hard as you might think. Just watch the videos, follow the instructions and practice, practice, practice. Fingerstyle techniques are also explained here. If you want to brighten up your song chords with an interesting blend of flamenco and fingerstyle sounds, then I invite you stay a while and look around.

Requirements

To play the music on this site you will need a NYLON string guitar.

You won't be needing music theory here

If you can read tab, that's basically all you need. But don't me wrong. Understanding music theory is still important to really get to know your guitar. I will be recommending some good guitar resources that teach theory as we go along.

Before we go any further

I need to tell you something straight up. I know absolutely nothing about using a flat pick (plectrum) or playing electric guitar or steel string acoustic. But I do like to strum song chords using flamenco strumming techniques.

I'll show you how

sal-guitar Strum your songs with flamenco fingers
It's great fun to mix exotic fingerstyle techniques together in a song. Apart from playing traditional flamenco and classical pieces, I get great pleasure from singing songs and making up fancy rhythmic and fingerstyle arrangements. That's why this site is not just about flamenco and not just about fingerstyle. It's a 60/40 mix.

60% flamenco and 40% fingerstyle.

DOWNLOAD a sample video - 'Angel'
(Right click and "save as" to download it to your hard drive)

What will you learn here?
Genuine flamenco guitar techniques. Rasgueados, tapping techniques, Rumba styles, how to play fast runs etc
The theory behind 12 beat flamenco styles (compás) and the historical roots of flamenco
Picking styles borrowed from classical, ragtime and folk guitar styles
Lots of practice exercises, complete solo pieces and songs

Let's define our terms
Flamenco guitar music:
Traditional Andalucian folkloric and gypsy music.

Fingerstyle guitar music:
ANY guitar music that is played using the right hand fingers and thumb.

Enough talk

Pick up your guitar and let's get started

rasgueado-sequence-ieam

Flamenco history
A brief look at flamenco history, including an overview of the political environment in which flamenco was born

About flamenco
Some of the more unusual aspects about flamenco that are not often discussed. Things a flamenco beginner should be aware of.