However, my path preordained by the universe was interrupted when I watched a professional flamenco tutorial and was put off by the teacher's long fingernails, which are apparently required to play, but which I found absolutely repulsive.

Technically, you paused and could restart this afternoon or next year or twenty years from now…

I've recently become interested

Unless you are guitar virtuosic, against adult standards non-beginner level Spanish guitar competence is years ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun (and you probably should). But doing things you don’t do well is the only way to learn. Good luck.

A lot of the books come with digital downloads of PDFs of the sheet music / tabs along with the author performing the pieces on MP3s.

Get set up with a footstool, and position yourself in front of a computer screen with the PDFs open to practice.

So if Brian May can’t do it.. it’s fine.

YT Video: https://youtu.be/X468z5AwefI?si=G929iSPdDwzr4QkK

Ps. Practice. There is no other way. What you are trying to do is hard. Takes practice and dedication.

Always remember: The notes are not necessarily the most important thing.

That said, there's a lot of overlap between flamenco and traditional classical guitar, so learning classical pieces (particularly by Spanish composers) will help build your fingerstyle technique. Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad was the book I used for classical practice when I was younger.

Also check out pseudo-flamenco pieces that have been recorded by rock and country guitarists, like "Mood for a Day" and "Malagueña", and smooth flamenco crossover artists like Ottmar Liebert and Jesse Cook. You might find these too diluted from "real" flamenco, but they can be another entry point for building up your playing.

Playing with your hand NOT resting on the strings or body, using TPIMRp (little p is pinky), master playing patterns. Travis picking is popular. Boogie woogie is too where you play three notes together with PIM and playing the bass line with T.

A pinching pattern or claw hammer is another method. Once you’ve mastered (I mean, can play Eric Clapton and Co) it then take it into the minor keys and learn the directional flamenco picking. Where you flick RMI downwards striking your fingernails, following it with your T in a downward pluck, then pulling IMR upwards. Some people reverse this but it’s always the same when it’s repeated. Eventually you’ll be able to picado like a pro. Malagueña watch out.

Your finger nails are now important. Learn about shaping them with a filer or getting gel tips. Your girlfriend can help in this department.

As others have said, there’s no short cut, only practice and patience. Eventually it will click.

*EDIT* https://youtube.com/shorts/IfOFLtf0h8c Paco De Lucia is a great one to study.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988256921/c-tangana-tiny-desk...

Music is (for most people) not like that. For getting proficient at instrumental music, the skill floor is high, progress is slow, and only comes through hard boring work which rewires your brain. Teachers tell you to do boring things, and say things that don't make sense, and you will be frustrated. Eventually you realize that you can do things you couldn't do before.

There are whiz kids who don't appear to experience this, but I think they do; they are just wired to not hate it as much as the rest of us, and are doing it when their brains are nicely plastic.

When I say "getting proficient at instrumental music" I mean to differentiate from learning how to play Wonderwall or Louie Louie and having a great time singing along. That's absolutely valid, it's a great place to be, and that love of the instrument forms the basis of further progress.

From "Noad" there's a Spanish Study that is on track with your goals: https://youtu.be/p_YHVf_pan4

Flamenco (traditional) uses a unique rhythm called a "compas", 12 beats, and "should" be practiced with dancers stomping the counterpoints.

Flamenco Guitar Basic Techniques (Juan Serrano)

Flamenco Guitar Method (Gerhard Graf-Martinez)

...it's a loooong road, and the climax of it has you buying a new (specifically for flamenco) guitar, as it resounds better in a crowded dance hall or theater.

You have to decide to learn to play by ear, by tab, or by notes, and as I mentioned in my blog post, you have to struggle through a long period of time "nobody thinks I sound like anything worth a damn".

As an adult student, you may end up in a recital going up against 11 year olds and thinking to yourself "Damn! Their twinkle twinkle little star is kicking my versions ass!"

It's a loooong road, I've been an off and on student for ~15 years, mostly self-taught, classical with Spanish/Latin influences.

Malagueña (Juan Serrano) - https://youtu.be/18rSqD5My40

Guardame las Vacas - https://youtu.be/O-LzDvRRxNU

Antonio Briebesca, Paco de Lucia, Johannes Linstead (Para La Habana), Gypsy Kings (of course), Rodrigo y Gabriela are all (non-flamenco), and some are slightly more modern flavor of the direction your question was probably in.

Shoot for the stars and you'll eventually be able to bang out a few decent tunes after a year or two. Good luck!

I used JamPlay more than 10 years ago, when I was about 15. I learned really fast. They teach you music theory too.

I always found really good resources to learn the things I wanted to learn back then, not sure how I did it!

I would suggest:

- Get a guitar that you think you will like picking up and playing. Whether it's electric, steel string acoustic, classical, or flamenco. Whatever rocks your boat and you like the sound. Have it somewhere where you can just grab it and play a little when you feel like it.

- Learn the basic open chord shapes and some simple songs. Don't worry about flamenco technique for starters.

- Once you have some very basic control of the instrument and you know a few shapes and forms (e.g. 3-6 months) you can pick up some easy tutorials of basic flamenco chord progressions and try those out. You don't need a ton of fancy chords or technique to get some flamenco like sounds out of your instrument.

- You will need to build what people call "facility". This is your ability to move your fingers quickly, put them in the right places, etc. this needs to happen with a combination of drilling and playing progressively harder pieces. I would still say you don't have to aim for super complicated flamenco techniques yet but you can learn something about spanish scales and chord progressions and start experimenting.

- Learning some simple fingerstyle songs/patterns will likely help if you do decide to specialize more in flamenco.

- A teacher will certainly help and may be necessary at some point. Probably a good idea to take some lessons early on just to get corrected on basic mistakes. Then you can go back to playing/practicing on your own and come back again when you feel you need more help.

- A book is really hard to learn from when you don't know anything. Videos are better. But you will need feedback from a person at some point.

- Record yourself playing. Challenge yourself to learn progressively harder pieces (in whatever style).

- Practice with a metronome to improve your sense of time.

- You will need to learn some theory, scales etc.

- You also need to develop your ear. Listen to music and try to figure out notes/chords etc. Sing a tune and try to play it by ear.

It's a journey but it's easy to get to a point where you can play some simple songs and have fun and build from there.

Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.

Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.

Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.

Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".

Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.

Hope this helps. Have fun!