Ravenna Flamenco is an online multimedia resource for the anglophone flamenco guitar enthusiast. Ravenna Flamenco starts with the assumption that flamenco is a skill, an art, a passion, and a pursuit—–and as such, with work and perseverance, can be learned.

You won’t find a structured set of lessons here. There are scores of teachers and organizations on the internet that offer excellent lessons and I don’t have any improvements on these. You will find articles intended to be instructional, but if you want a structured set of lessons, check into one of these programs—or, if possible in your area, find an instructor and take lessons.

About the Tab

As anyone who’s done even the most superficial internet search knows, guitar tabulature abounds online. It’s everywhere, freely available, and often catastrophically inaccurate. Many sites already regroup much of this tab willy-nilly in one place for your convenience. I see no need to repeat that here (you can easily find such catchalls elsewhere).

The tab you will find here has been edited, played and checked over by an actual human being—better, by an actual flamenco guitarist. Is it perfect? No, but it should help you understand how flamenco moves—and the techniques that make that possible—so that you can build a solid foundation of skills over time.

Many of the transcriptions here are very accurate. In some cases, “official” transcriptions of artists and albums also exist—for those of you looking for exact transcriptions of songs and albums, buying these tabs through the usual channels is often an excellent investment.

Copyright & Fair Use

Except where otherwise noted, the material on this site is created for this site. You’ll see ideas and concepts from all over (no one’s reinventing flamenco here), but you’ll see it put together in a way that takes the information that’s already available and tries to make more sense of it.

If you see something that you think is an infringement of a particular author’s (or your) copyright, please let me know! If credit is not given where credit is due, that will be corrected; if a piece infringes on another author’s protected work, it will be removed.

Articles

For the most part, if you want to reproduce an article that you see here, all you need to do is contact me by email and ask. In most instances I will only ask that you provide a working and visible hyperlink back to where the content originally appeared. But please ask first—it’s simple and it makes things easier for all of us.

Tabs

For the moment the policy on tabs is that you may circulate them at will – but that you may not change them. If you want to make changes to an arrangement I’ve posted here, feel free to tab it out yourself. I’m not particularly proprietary about these tabs; they are all arrangements of popular or traditional music and as such I feel that they should be freely available.

In cases where tabs refer to a particular recording, please keep in mind that even these are arrangements—and also that they are distributed exclusively for educational (and private, not commercial) purposes. If you’re looking for exact, artist certified transcriptions, by all means, do go out and buy them. The arrangements I provide here are created with pedagogical goals in mind. Check out the tab notes for specific explanations of what those goals are.

Flamenco Metronomes

The Flammenco Metronomes on Ravenna Flamenco are—and will continue to be—freely available here. Use them as much as you want, but please don’t redistribute them.

About Andy

Andy is a flamenco guitarist based in Seattle, Washington (Ravenna is a neighborhood in Seattle, by the way). Andy has been playing guitar for years (many years) and “discovered” flamenco on a trip through southern Spain in 2001. Since then, he has played little else. Andy has played and studied with musicians in Spain and France while abroad and has studied with Marcos Carmona of the Pacific Northwest’s Carmona Flamenco since 2005.

Andy has been a guitarist with La Peña Flamenca de Seattle, directed by Rubina Carmona, and has played guitar for beginning and intermediate flamenco dance classes at the American Dance Institute in Seattle as well as for several smaller flamenco troupes in the area. Andy is by no means an expert of flamenco or flamenco guitar, but he is one of the most nit-picky writers he knows and, as such, is obstinately convinced that he has something worthwhile to contribute to the internet flamenco community.