In the future we'll be reserving this space for global news, so please get into the habit of checking our new BAY AREA REPORT for local NoCal news. You can always see when it's been recently updated by looking under NEW STUFF-LO NUEVO to your right. We've been adding a lot of local sections lately. Bill Tilford's REPORT FROM CHICAGO has been especially active and contains information of interest to those outside of the Windy City as well.

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¿Buscas una transcripción completa del piano y bajo para el cuerpo y coro del tema clásico "Seis Semanas"? ¿O como aprender a tocar como el creador de tus montunos favoritos de Los Van Van? O la mejor biografía de César "Pupy" Pedroso con su discografía completa? Te puede tomar más de seis semanas pero el Sincronizador Central de la Timba te lo pone en bandeja de plata con Volumen 10 de MÁS ALLÁ DEL PIANO SALSERO. Descraga una muestra gratis aquí. 

César Pupy Pedroso - Photo by Tom Ehrlich

The tenth volume in the Beyond Salsa Piano series focuses on César "Pupy" Pedroso, the founding pianist and one of the principal composers of Cuba's most popular band, Los Van Van, and now the leader of Los Que Son Son, the most successful new Cuban group of the 2000s. Doubling as a history and music appreciation course, the book contains extensive music notation examples of Pedroso's piano tumbaos, or "montunos", as well as transcriptions of solo and head arrangements. 

Illustrated in detail is Pupy Pedroso's trademark "contrary motion" montuno style, which, while very easy to execute produce much richer sounding harmonies than the standard salsa approach. The book also includes "sidebar" sections on the importance of rumba in salsa, rhythm section "gears", controlled improvisation and the evolution of bass tumbaos in Cuban music.

Bass tumbaos are included for each of the 54 piano transcriptions and some also include string section guajeos and second keyboard parts. Volume 10 also includes a detailed biography with rare photos from Pupy's private collection and information about his extensive musical family. The discgraphy section lists Pupy's work in two ways: by album, and by song, as many of his compositions were recorded by various artists.

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UPDATE: eBook and audio now available

Sorry for the delay but the first Pupy Pedroso book is finally done! Getting the research and photos for Pupy's amazing musical childhood turned into a bit of a  ... errr ... "labor of love", but it was worth the extra time and I'm very happy with Volume 10 of Beyond Salsa Piano.  It's the first of four books on Pupy. I'm organizing them by the order in which the songs were originally composed, so while Vol. 10 covers the Los Van Van albums from 1979-1983, some of the songs were re-recorded by Van Van or Los Que Son Son later - for example, Seis semanas  is part of LQSS's live show and the version transcribed (which includes the cuerpo) is the current version. Another example is Con el bate de aluminio, where we compare the changes in Pupy's style from 1979 to 1998.

Finally, this is the first volume to include a fully transcribed solo - in this case La rumba no está completa. You can get the hard-copy book here, and the audio files and eBooks will be available soon and will be announced here, in Pa' ponerte en talla. NOTE: The eBook is only for PC - not for Mac.

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Por ahí viene la bomba. New from Europe comes LA HABANA TIENE SU MENEO ... Thank you Yanesito for this "in development version" (the finished official version will include the mambos) of the next big hit for Cuban dancers! On vocals we have El Indio (from Manolito y su Trabuco), Sinsonte (from Elio Revé), Pepitín (from Manolito y Su Trabuco) and Enriquito on coros. Also credited are Calixto Oviedo on percussion, Yanesito himself on bass and tres, and Oldrich Gonsález on piano. Tremendo meneo acere!

Also on RADIO TIMBA is a new song by Alexander Abreau and Habana D Primera. called Carita de Pasaporte . While a few versions of the song have been floating around on YouTube, like the clip here from our HDP resident expert Gabriell Wilder, the official studio version is different and more powerful (and don't include the spoilers, those are ours). Enjoy! 

Foto: Lázaro Jesús Piña Portuondo

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