Shred guitar is nothing new. Flamenco guitarists have been doing it for many decades, since they got into "falsettas" (improvisational variations—a chance to show off a bit), not just laying down intricate rhythms for dancers.

Carlos Montoya, shredding the hell out of three flamenco forms:

Tarantas

Farruca

Malagueña.   (A Malagueñas is a dance form [as are the others], upon which Ernesto Lecuona based his well-known piano composition.)

I've seen Montoya in concert several times. When he first walked out on stage, I thought he was carrying the biggest guitar I had ever seen. After the concert, a friend and I went backstage with a batch of other fans to meet him. It turned out that the guitar was normal size. He was a little squirt!

I found that, as spectacular as Montoya's blazingly fast "falsettas" are, an hour and a half of that can get a bit tedious toward the end. Once again, "So many notes! So little music!"

One thing of special interest to me in watching those videos is that in 1960, Bill James, a member of the Seattle Classic Guitar Society came back from his annual trip to Spain with a brand new flamenco guitar, which he brought to one of the meetings. I had a chance to play it some. Incredible instrument! It had a real punch to it. Loud! And it definitely spoke Spanish. But you could mellow it out and it had a very warm, rich tone. Very responsive! For flamenco, it was a natural. It also sounded very good playing classical. And song accompaniment? Great!

I was smitten by an immediate and severe GAS attack (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome)! Bill told me that he'd had it made for him by a young luthier in Madrid named Arcangel Fernandez. Sure that the answer would hurl me into a pit of despair—such a guitar must have cost Bill his first-born son and the deed to his ranch—I asked him how much he had paid for it. After diddling with the exchange rate for pesetas, it worked out to—$100 American!!!

Bill helped me order one. And a year and a half later, it arrived from Madrid by air freight. When I first took it out of the case and tuned it up, it smelled of new varnish and sounded kind of puny and raw, but within a couple of weeks of playing it in, it found its voice and was as full and rich as Bill's was. Oh, yes. Shortly after Bill bought his, Fernandez had raised his price. Mine cost me a massive $116.16 (66666 ad infinitum). With import duty and air freight, the total cost of the guitar worked out to about $175.00.

I have other guitars, but the "Arcangel" is the flagship of the fleet and the one I've used the most for concerts and such.

It was not long after I got my Arcangel that I heard that Carlos Montoya and several other well-known flamenco guitarists had traded in their instruments on new Arcangel Fernandez-made guitars. I don't know if Fernandez is still alive, but last I heard, his guitars are in great demand and he was back-ordered for ten years.

(That's very nice, Firth, but what's this all about?)

When I pulled up Montoya on YouTube, I noticed that the guitar he's playing is a duplicate of mine. I recognized the shape of the headstock, which, among Spanish luthiers, is a sort of trademark (except that Montoya opted for one-to-one ratio wooden push-pegs—absolute bitch to tune—and I opted for modern geared tuners), and the white çejilla (capo) that Fernandez includes with his flamenco guitars. Turns out that the 1961 Arcangels are rare, much sought after, and worth a bloody fortune! I'm afraid to take it out of the house!!

On matters of speed and technique, it's nice to be able to make the strings smoke like that. But for musical reasons and reasons of taste, chose not to.

####

Well, whether my musical posts are more "dialed in" than my political is open to debate. But that's a matter for other threads.

Don Firth