Alain Perez instruction

[gimmeagig]

Alain Perez is an incredible player and he has a couple of bookMP3s/Videos out called "Beyond Salsa"
Does anyone here own them yet?

[stanknuckle]

I saw his books on the net. They look good. Though wondering like you if anyone else has bought them etc... I wish Carles Benavent would release a book on his works.

[gimmeagig]

I ended up spending the money to try it out and here is my impression so far.
The video download for vol 6 It's good in the way that you can really see what Alain is doing. Different camera angles slow and fast versions and good sound.
What I don't like is that both the piano and the bass parts are improvised and so complex and ever changing that the rhythm track they give you as a reference (a quarter note cowbell) just doesn't seem to be enough to keep me on track..For me, even though I'm an adavanced player and I'm in a band that plays latin jazz and salsa it's practically impossible to hear where those two guys are. I hear the 4 beat count off and as soon as they start playing I'm already lost.
A clave or some additional percussion would have been really helpful.
So I also downloaded the e book,but playing along with the recording without getting lost is still going to be very difficult.
Another big shortcoming of the e-book is the image quality. It's not a PDF format file and it's very blurry and you can't zoom in or out or bookmark anything.If those features are there I sure don't know how to find them.The software it's based on leaves a lot to be desired. I have a message out to their tech support. If they don't have a solution I will ask for a credit towards the book.
So if anyone here is interested in this series spend the extra money and get the hard copy of the book.The 15.- for e-book is absolutely not worth it.

[gimmeagig]

So here is an update:
I got help from the the owner of the company and he couldn't have been nicer. A set of music fonts were missing on my computer. He sent them to me and showed me a couple of other workarounds and the image of the e-book was fine after that.
So maybe the 15.- is worth it after all.
The problem I had with the percussion track and not being able to keepi up with the video clips is a thing of the past too. ( well sort of) The songs that the clips are based on are actual tunes that are available on CD and also on youtube. I just had to get familiar with the original tune, so now I'm not as confused.
The info and the playing is absolutely first rate and there is no other course that I know of that digs into Timba music this one. This is not easy stuff so my recommendation is: Get The Latin Bass Book (Oscar Stagnaro) and Funkifying the Clave (Lincoln Goines) first then, if you move on to the Alain Perez stuff you have enough of a foundation.
I'll be ordering the next book in the series once I get through this one but I will definitely spend the extra money for the hard copy. Maybe I'm just old school but I prefer and actual book in front of me.

[AN0INTD]

I just wanted to bump this thread in case it helps him sell more educational material.

I just finished listening to a live concert of Paco de Lucia on YT and the bassist just blew me away...I just had to find out who it was - turned out to be Alain Perez. Now I'm listening to his solo work "En el Aire." This guy is phenomenal in every sense of the word