World Music for Fingerstyle Guitar

Review Two excellent new instructional DVDs, taught by versatile, globe-trotting Spanish musician Fernando Perez. World Music For Fingerstyle Guitar introduces a truly diverse selection of styles across its two hours and six compositions - Into The Balkans, Samba Para Ti (Brazil), Ame (Japan) Malawi Dance, Kalani (Hawaii) and Tango/ Habanera (Argentina/Cuba). Each tune is taught one phrase at a time, with split screen enabling close inspection of what both hands are doing. Being a guitar player in the farfrom-advanced category, I found the Malawian lesson with its sixth string up one-step to F tuning the most immediately accessible, but a bit of serious practice should reward any player with a whole new guitar vocabulary. On West African Music Perez goes much deeper into musical tradition, with tunes directly learned from griots alongside his own compositions. The main scales and grooves used in West African music are explained, along with the application of specific techniques such as thumb and forefinger picking styles, to imitate kora scale runs and balafon breaks. Starting in open D tuning, Perez explores the connections between West African music and the blues, and demonstrates how the styles can be effectively combined, making this an invaluable tool for blues-based singersongwriters as well as dedicated guitarists. Both titles include a detailed tablature and musical notation booklet as a PDF file on the DVD. --Steve Hunt/fRoots Wait, wait! Don't turn away just because your frets never chordlessly brooded over Japanese minimalism or, conversely, danced to jump-up Malawian giddiness. Globetrotter Fernando Perez, having eyed up this planet of ours as one massive spool of the coolest guitar licks and tricks, tucks all sorts of must-see secret techniques into mysterious melodies and mystical rhythms. Daring, madcap stuff, too. Like plucking notes from behind a roaming slide, dusting strings with an open-palmed maneuver, zapping finger tremolos atop string bends, pinging assorted species of harmonics, and bottlenecking hammer-ons. Perez has got the guts to even go as far as tangoing with that slide. Samba para Ti seductively bathes in the warmest of Rio's sunset tones whereas Ame casts its imitation of the 13-string koto in fractured sunlight. Then there is Kalani, an Hawaiian Frankenstein of sorts, stylistically stitched together from distinct slack key and slide traditions. That's not the really dumbfounding part, though. Pulling off a wind-chime eff