Hi Friends - we are starting up the first Pan-American Free Hands Friday! Yay! Here is the link to the hangout.

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/hoae ... HaKObgUdmA

Happy Free Hands Friday on a Sunday!

This was a hit. Francisco Rafart hosted a great session with Guillermo Cides, our first Pan-American FHF. While most of it was in Spanish, Guillermo and Francisco were quite fluent in English so they were able to share in much of what was being said. Also big thanks to Gustavo, Mattias and Tomas for participating

What I did not know was that Russell Keating was fluent in Spanish. Bravo Russell.

Also, Guillermo raised the bar of FHF guests. He had a wide range of topics prepared as well as images that detailed his rack setup as well as his pedalboard. He nailed the live audio which has long eluded me on FHF sessions - I am hoping to follow up with him on that.

We'll have this ready for next Friday. We'll be recording Mauricio Sotelo next Sunday at 11am west coast / 1pm Mexico & Columbia / 3pm Chile, Argentina and EST / 8pm Spain next Sunday, May 3. Cheers.

Gene, you always know just want to say.

I don't know about "fluent", but I was able to participate and have a good time.

As Gene mentioned, the audio was very good. Instead of playing live Guillermo showed videos and played pre-recorded music. The sound was better than a "live on-line performance" and didn't suffer any quality issues beyond the normal voice quality issues of any on line chat/call.

There is a whole Hispanic world of Stick music out there and although it is all unique, it has a flavor that is different than a lot of what many of us usually listen to. For a free taste of some of that, check out
http://www.stickistas.com/?lang=en/

Part of Guillermo's sound quality may have been that he set his Hangout audio to "Studio" rather than "Voice." I did not know that setting existed until he mentioned it on Friday, after we wrapped.

Great video!!! Sorry I missed it live...