A Flamenco guitar solo in the Tarantas style. The Tarantas is a free-flowing slow moving Fandango from the region of Almeria which was earlier a principal mining region of Spain. The style is therefore sometimes called Mineras. Tarantas has long been one of my favorite Flamenco pieces for the guitar. It is notated in the key of B minor, based on a so-called ?Andalusian? cadence consisting of the chords B minor - A major (open B and E) - G major (open B and E) - F# major (with open G, B, and E). These dark and indefinite sounding chords allow plenty of room for the guitarist to open up emotionally with the audience.The material for the piece consists mostly of traditional themes that I have woven into a compositional whole along with a few of my own creations (falsetas). Songs for Tarantas are often expressions of loss of a loved-one in some mining tragedy. The long legato passages demand a complete mastery of the technique and should be played as fluidly as possible. The fanning (abanico) rasqueados in the finish of the piece can be new to guitarists coming to Flamenco from classical guitar. Demonstrations of this type of rasqueado can be found at my YouTube sites: https://youtu.be/sB-rDGtXK34 and https://youtu.be/OVBbUZFIj2s. Another type of rasqueado used frequently in the piece is a soft four finger rasqueado (cami) preceded by and followed by a brush up and down over the strings with the thumb (p-camip), accompanied by legatos on the base strings.The piece is accessible for advanced intermediate to advanced guitarists. As the Tarantas is played sens mesure, not demanding any competence of special flamenco rhythms, it is also a flamenco piece readily playable by classical guitarists. Classical guitarists should however be aware that the thumb plays the dominant role even in the more melodic passages.

An arrangement of traditional themes for the Flamenco style Siguiriyas for solo Flamenco guitar based on material I gathered in my studies in Flamenco guitar in Madrid in the late 1960s. I call the piece Llamas Negras (Black Flames) as the dance for Siguiriyas is often performed by a woman dancer (bailaora) dressed in a long flowing black dress, her hands twirling above her head likes flames. Such were the performances I witnessed at the Flamenco tablao La Zambra where my guitar maestro Juan Gonz�lez ?Triguito? played. Siguiriyas is the most tragic of all the serious (jondo) styles of Flamenco for guitar. The piece moves therefore at a moderately slow pace, although there are passages where the tempo increases for dramatic effect. The piece is in the Phrygian modal of D minor and notated in standard 6/8 time. Siguiriyas embodies par excellence what Manuel de Falla called the ?sonidos negros? or black sounds in Flamenco!