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RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Pimientito)
im 25, 26 on the 3rd of april if anyone wants to send a card
my teenage years were built around an obsessive fascination with martial arts, getting fit and being able to kick ass. i suppose this is due to the fact i broke my leg when i was 10 in a car accident,was one crutches for 9 months as it was a multiple break and as a result my weight ballooned and i became the "fat kid" of my school. doing all that stuff was about putting power and confidence back into my body.
i took up guitar when i was eighteen, learnt stuff by the foo fighters, smashing pumpkins, nirvana etc. my first experience of flamenco was at 21 by seeing tomatito on the bbc, and i said wow thats the next level of guitar playing if you can do that with your hands and not a pick. the pick was then discarded and i spent a couple of months fumbling with some of this stuff.
when i moved to work in france, i met my friend erwan le brenn who had spent alot of time learning flamenco in jerez de la frontera and i learnt about the basic palos and techniques.
ive since been to sanlucar for gerardo nunez's coure and other parts of spain and met quite a few members of our little online community.
Posts: 528
Joined: Nov. 10 2008
From: Helsinki, Finland
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Ailsa)
Hello guys and gals. It has been very nice to read all these personal posts. I have been playing flamenco now 2 years. Before that I had nylonstring guitar but didnt really have any idea what could I do with it. I wasnt really a guy who wanted to play sing along songs at the fireplace. Long time I was searching something worthy to play. Then I heard some flamenco and thought; wow, I want to do that also! Im 29 now, in june I will be 30. I have always liked music and it has been always with me one way or another. I've bobbed my head with many different styles of music and felt the rhytm from them. I have held in my hands many different instruments but havent had time to play any of them properly until two years back. I was passionately involved in skate and snowboarding all my childhood and teens. I quitted snowboarding when I was 21 and been recovering from that lifestyle basicly the whole of my twenties, but Im starting to be back in business. Now Im a familyman with passion for flamenco. Im glad that I've found so good hobby that I can sunk my self into.
Posts: 1956
Joined: Dec. 2 2006
From: Budapest, now in Southampton
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to aleksi)
we're in the same boat, Aleksi, i'm 29, 30 in august...my 20s are almost gone...
my love with flamenco came too late...in fact, my love with guitar came too late, i would've loved to have started earlier, but i only picked the guitar up when i was about 17...i had been listening to guns n' roses before, but it was jimi hendrix's hey joe that convinced me i want to do this...i got a classical guitar and took lessons for half a year, i didn't find it very useful so i stopped, had my mom buy me a red strat then i started playing jimi's stuff, led zeppelin, pink floyd...i played 8 hours a day then!...then in my early 20s i stopped completely, i very rarely picked the guitar up...i was aware of the guitar trio then and loved that stuff, but one day i got some extra cash and wanting to explore this kind of music more, i bought some cds of paco de lucía and al di meola...i really wanted to get into jazz, but all the theory behind it made me shy away...then i stopped again and it had to be a trip to granada and losing my life's love there to pick the guitar up again and start to get into flamenco...that was about 2005, i bought my first flamenco guitar for my birthday in 2006, that's when i started to take it really seriously...i went to accompany dancers and have been doing that since...recently i was invited to join in to the only serious flamenco "band" here and will have our first gig next friday...i'm going to open with a solo bulería, i'm nervous! but being recognised feels good, i love flamenco, it's given me so much and want to give something back to it... hopefully next year i'll get the chance to visit jerez, a friend of mine (dancer) lives there and it'd be a great opportunity to learn some more...
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to michel)
I am 53. I love older. hate all this young worship nonesense which has become a sickness for many with the plastic nip and cuts etc
I took LSD when I was 15 and its given me sense of the eternal....Age does and doesn't mean anything. hard to explain what I mean but I will try
I have met some older people who seem dead to me--stuck in a rut, but I know they have suffered. I have met young people SO full of wisdom, yet I know from my vantage point the stretchyness of life. the 10 year blocks of time haha
it is all a Mystery and has a real tricksterish edge to it
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Guest)
hey nice tread and hello Shroomy :-) and congratulations Henrik
I am 33..i cant play anything else other then flamenco i never did any other style..i think the first flamenco recording i had was Paco pena...
before i playd guitar i knew i wanted to play spanish guitar...but i didnt know exactly what that meant or the diff between classical or spanish sounding and flamenco..but always liked the sound of nylon strings..
EDIT
Oh and i never ever ever turned any girls away for any reason infact i think the girls mark turned away because he was practicing came over to my house after...it hurt my feelings a litlle that i was second choice..but i got over it a few seconds later..I am not in a habbit of looking a gift horse in the mouth... its not a figure of speach..they really did bring me a horse for a gift, i barbecued it
Posts: 2008
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Ailsa)
Well Flo your smarter than me. I was young and dumb. I wish I could say that was the stupidist thing I ever did at that age, but that wouldn't be true. Oh, since your 33 you'd have been about 4 years old when the girls came by..................you stud!
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Mark2)
quote:
Oh, since your 33 you'd have been about 4
yes but i was very mature for my age ..i was dating 6 year olds
that is crazy ..when you were practing flamenco i was braking open all my automatic toy cars cause i wanted to see whats inside..u should remind me that if i ever disagree with you
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
What an interesting thread and stories. I was lucky to find this, a little bit too late but we all have time. I am 51 years old. Two years ago I found flamenco and started to play guitar again. I have had couple of periods when I have played a lot and lived those periods very intensively, making own songs. And then left them behind me and haven't even touch my guitar for ten years. Now I started again, and seriously, left my job and started to concentrate just on playing flamenco and on music overall.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Maybe this time like somebody said. I don't want to make unrealistic plans or put hard objectives. But it was more important me to left job and that world at least for some time. To see that it is not the only way to live this unique life. I had interesting work, working with literature in a publishing company.
Posts: 528
Joined: Nov. 10 2008
From: Helsinki, Finland
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Ailsa)
Hi imij,
quote:
recently i was invited to join in to the only serious flamenco "band" here and will have our first gig next friday...i'm going to open with a solo bulería,
Posts: 1956
Joined: Dec. 2 2006
From: Budapest, now in Southampton
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to aleksi)
thanks for asking :) i played only two pieces, the bulería which i want to record to upload here and a tangos which is based on a piece accompanied by vicento amigo for el pele...as it was third ever performance for an audience i can honestly say the bulería i played like i had never played before, to my standards it was a catastrophy :)...but others said it was fine although i think everyone could hear it that i was nervous (which is strange because i normally am nervous before, not during)...the tangos was great, i said oh man i can play and i'm not going to let my nerves ruin the night, so i picked my act together and it felt great, although the dancers ran through the escobilla, it was so fast i couldn't believe it...overall it was a great experience as it showed i really need to get on stage more before i can start to approach the level i'm capable of without an audience...strange though as all the flamencos here have heard me play, accompanied/played with nearly all of them so why should i feel nervous in front of people who are just there for the music and know little about flamenco?
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to xirdneH_imiJ)
Nice thread!
I'll be 35 next week. Until about 30 I was quite a mess, depressed and scared of everything and everyone, thank goodness that is in the past!
The first time I heard flamenco (or -ish, dunno) was on the radio. I was 13/14 years old and I quickly wrote down the name of the artist and the name of the album. I was living in a rather small town then and the local recordshop had no idea what I was talking about when I asked them for Taye - El Gitano Punky. Not so many years ago I remembered this happening and started Googling: Teye, there he was!
At that time I had parents induced piano lessons, and later I took singing lessons because I wanted to become an opera diva. Too bad I hated my voice and it was no fun singing just constant warfare against myself.
About 3 years ago I suddenly decided to start with classical guitar, I thought it might be a good place to start, but soon I found it more of the same, I wanted to play more percussive and near ugly sounding harsh playing instead of lullaby-y stuff (this is put a bit extreme for, eh, clarity?)
Anyway I'm almost one year busy learning flamenco guitar and I find it very challening but also very rewarding and a lot of fun to play. I have a hard time practicing, I like to play the things I already "know" and tend to postpone the True Studying, not good, but my teacher is strict and serious so I feel pushed in a good way.
Back to the topic of age, it is a weird thing. What is this saying, youth is wasted on the young? I can't believe I'm getting more and more happy and excited about life/living with the same speed I'm going towards the end, it's hyper ironic.
_____________________________
"Excuse me madam, do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?"
Posts: 528
Joined: Nov. 10 2008
From: Helsinki, Finland
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to xirdneH_imiJ)
quote:
hanks for asking :) i played only two pieces, the bulería which i want to record to upload here and a tangos which is based on a piece accompanied by vicento amigo for el pele...as it was third ever performance for an audience i can honestly say the bulería i played like i had never played before, to my standards it was a catastrophy :)...but others said it was fine although i think everyone could hear it that i was nervous (which is strange because i normally am nervous before, not during)...the tangos was great, i said oh man i can play and i'm not going to let my nerves ruin the night, so i picked my act together and it felt great, although the dancers ran through the escobilla, it was so fast i couldn't believe it...overall it was a great experience as it showed i really need to get on stage more before i can start to approach the level i'm capable of without an audience...strange though as all the flamencos here have heard me play, accompanied/played with nearly all of them so why should i feel nervous in front of people who are just there for the music and know little about flamenco?
Nice to hear about your experience. The nervousness is a strange thing, its nasty, I also need to learn how to "pic my act to gether" on critical times. Hope you get more gigs. Today was the first time I didnt blush when I was accompanying dance. I was cool, and it felt good. I dont even know why I did blush the previous times, its just funny.
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..i was dating 6 year olds 
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