Alex Wilson's Find the Rhythm

[t0mt0m]

Originally Posted by KP-salsa

It's useful for musicians because it breaks down the various latin rhythms, but I found its attempts to apply these to exercises for dancers laughably simplistic. It also needed a competent copy-editor to go over it (it very much has the feel of a first or sedond draft rather than a finished piece) and a semi-professional typesetter rather than simply using Word and clipart.

Looks like part of the issue is quality of the images, and then printing those B&W - Some just don't carry over well (e.g. p39, or p117 - londonsalsascene's advert at the back). Makes the musical notation pictures seem less vector, than grainy bitmap (the "Dancer's take note" picture . Sucks, as they've used a decent printer, readable font.

Legible still, and for a first go at this, version 1 - it isn't too bad. Haven't read through yet, so not sure about copy-editing (is that purely the text, or does that include the flow, layout etc too?).

Haven't done the exercises yet - might be interesting to see how different people take them. I'd imagine some might appear facile or over simplistic, but they could be being aimed at intro exercises for those less learned/versed in music, song structure etc. Tough balance to get right between accessible and comprehensive.
I'd be interested to see if Rebeca Mauleon or similar have alternative breakdown material for latin rhythms - presumably drummers, piano players have instructional books on this? (would be interested to learn more about them/compare).

All in all though, what else is there to rival this? What is the competition?
EDIT - Will start a new thread here on that topic here

Listened to the CD a couple of times - like the production. Makes a hell of a difference to load it up into a playlist onto my iPhone.