This guitar method is for everyone who is interested in the Flamenco guitar and its techniques. The logically structured method may serve as a guideline for everyone who has not found the right teacher or teaching materials yet, for everyone who plays Flamenco guitar, but still has questions about right hand techniques, and for everyone who teaches Flamenco guitar. At the same time, it is a reference book on questions about Flamenco in general. The two volumes contain all aspects I consider important to Flamenco guitar playing: instrumentology, the history of Flamenco, a description of the different styles and their complicated rhythms, and a comprehensive glossary. Notation and tablature are not explained in this book because I assume that everyone knows these facts, as well as the basic techniques of the classical guitar. The tablature includes note values because I think that even tablature readers use them to orient themselves, even if it´s not done consciously.

My many sojourns to Andalusia and my work in Madrid, as well as my friendship and acquaintance with greater and lesser Maestros, have influenced my knowledge and experience collected in this method - not forgetting my first inspiration by my long- standing friend and guitarist, Manolo Lohnes, who has contributed considerably to the development of Flamenco in Germany. During 15 years of teaching, I have repeatedly been challenged to think about and analyse what my fingers and, above all, the fingers of the great "Maestros" were doing, and how I could pass on my experience and the things I had learned. As everyone else who teaches Flamenco, whether guitar or dance, I was "made" a teacher by my students. Moreover, I learned a lot from countless per- formances which took place without rehearsals; in these cases, I was introduced to the dancers and singers in the dressing-room only shortly before the performance. As a man and musician, working together and being on the road, especially with "Gitanos," has given me, being a foreign flamenco, a lot. Thanks to all this and to working with my partner and bailaora graciosa Lela de Fuenteprado, Flamenco has become what it is for me now: la vida.

Flamenco is not only guitar music. Although Flamenco gained world-wide popula- rity because of the guitar or guitarists such as Carlos Montoya and Manitas del Plata in the 1960s and Paco de Lucía in the recent past, its cornerstones still consist of singing, dancing, the guitar, and the "jaleos."

Flamenco is a very emotional, yet rigid form of art and an attitude about life. Flamenco means spontaneity and improvisation in music and in life: to live now, not to give oneself up, despite desperate straits, to overcome mental and physical distress without aggression, by using music and dance as an outlet, to