Aguinaldos & Seises for the Puerto Rican Cuatro: Samuel Ramos

Everything is good

Exelent work, tab and music; almost always in the cuatro music books is either tab with no rythym figures or just music notation. This book have them both! It would be helpful a cd to follow the music and the play along.

Le falta explicación no es muy fácil de entender

Good job in writing a beginner book. Well thought out.

Not what I expected.

great

i love it

This is a very thorough look into to some of the most popular Puerto Rican folk tunes, with very good descriptions of the styles and some helpful playing hints at the end.I found the rhythms extraordinarily complicated and difficult to read (at first) until I spent some time in Puerto Rico and I think that "latin rhythm" got stuck in my head. When I came back and "struggled" through my first tune, then found it played on Youtube, they sounded exactly the same...For many of these tunes, he just gives you a few bars of the "theme" and an alternate "accompaniment".Typically these tunes are played in this way. You learn the basic them, you plat some arpeggio and scale-based accompaniment during the singing portion, and/or some other variations on the "theme", then come back to "theme" between verses.Solos are usually highly embellished improvisations based more on the "sung melody" than the theme. The sung melody usually has very little relation rhythmically or melodically to the "theme" melody of the Aguinaldo/Seis. You need to listen to some CDs or Youtube videos to understand how the two fit together.These tunes can also be played as instrumental solos which are usually a series of wild variations on the "theme" some you can get from listening, but others you can just make up on your own based on the relatively simple chord progressions of these tunes.It's a whole lot of fun.But expect this book to just give you the basics of how to play these songs, to get the real "feel" you need to find some youtube videos of groups or individuals playing the entire tune.