Alma Flamenco | EQ Magazine

If you're looking to bring flamenco fire to your productions, Alma Flamenco can light the flame with authentic-sounding materials. The 2-CD set includes a CD-ROM with 601 Acid/WAV files and 342 REX2 format files, and an audio CD comprising 529 phrases.

The package takes a construction set approach broken down into bongo and cajon drums, casteneula (castanet), palmas (clapping), finger snaps, taconeo (tapping), and voces (female, male, and group voices).

The guitar accompaniment tracks offer the most articulations. There's arpeggios, muted strumming, quick picado single-string runs, rasqueo and rasguido strumming patterns, falseta phrases, and more.

It's a simple matter to put together a realistic flamenco track, complete with percussion, vocal interjections, guitar licks and fills, and using the various strumming patterns and articulations, to create good dynamics.

The acidization of the files varies; a few glitches here and there. And documentation is non-existent. But the tracks sound authentic. Flamenco performances, particularly guitars, aren't squeaky clean. It's part of the style to hear string buzzes, creaks, and scrapes. Having these in the tracks only increases the realism. At $55, Alma Flamenco offers a good source for adding flamenco flavor to your productions, or for quickly putting together decent backing tracks.