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A good time playing music
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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 A good time playing music
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I was very excited last week, I participated in an amateur string orchestra sponsored by the San Francisco Symphony. We played in Davies Symphony Hall where the SF Symphony gives concerts.
It was a blast, here is a picture of me sitting next to Barbra Bogatin who is one of the regular professional cellists in the SF Symphony. The assistant principal cellist Amos Yang and her sat in with our cello section and acted as coaches in rehearsals.
I've been pursuing flamenco on the cello as by studying improvisation and playing with my guitar knowledge of the structure of flamenco. Not sure what will happen with it, but it's been interesting, and even though I make guitars, I think sonically and temperamentally I'm more of a cello player.
What strikes me is in working this way on flamenco is instead of going through the guitar I'm finding so many ways of relating flamenco to classical music that I had not thought of before. One of the pieces we played was Mozart's Eine Kleinenacht Musik. The cello holds down the rhythmic anchor in much of it and there are accents, usually on the first beat, in the dat-dat-dat Mozart way of pushing the beat. Both mentor cellists from the symphony mentioned how the cello section amateurs got the accents really nicely. I know in my case it was from being prepared to accent at different places in the compas in flamenco, flamenco actually prepared me to play classical music better.
We also played a piece by Holst that had a lot of switching back and forth between 6/8 and 3/4. It was a groove similar to the Valse Buleria that Moraito recorded several years ago on one of his solo albums. So again the move back and forth and feeling the beat in sixes, threes and twos back to back was all quite natural for me..
I've never been one of those people that thought flamenco was inferior to classical music. I think that they are just different aspects of the same building blocks of music. It was nice to have some of those notions confirmed in the context of the symphony.
There is nothing like flamenco, but then again there is nothing like playing in a symphony either. Both are tremendously fun, and difficult.
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Date May 3 2012 22:58:38
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odinz
Posts: 407
Joined: May 26 2010
From: Sarpsborg,Norway
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RE: A good time playing music (in reply to estebanana)
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Seems like such an awesome experience, playing in orchestra is very cool and you learn alot about music.
I think if you learn many styles of music, you will almost instantly start to look at how they are different in construction, and also notice similarities, dynamics and all.
Broadening the musical landscape within yourself gives not only a bigger landscape but also a greater understanding of it.
All in all, music is music and a style is just a classification of one area in the universe of music.
When I went to school, I got to know first hand how awesome cello in flamenco can be, even if my toque is not the greatest I played together with a classically trained cellist who was the schools cello virtuosi, she started improvising a bit at first but then found a melodic theme to both a fandango and a solea.
And really, the most awesome part was when I stopped playing and she even kept compas and the melodic theme and the compas started to evolve when she experimented, then I came back into playing and it got boring again 
But both as I was surprized and in awe, I had learned so much from that.
Mainly is that if you live in a world of music, you can do music, and comparing styles of music to see what style is superior or inferior is just stupid.
Also that people who are classically trained in music since they were 4 years old is not to be taken lightly in any way!
Personally though, the thing that has taught me most about flamenco and music except for flamenco itself is playing alot of the music of Chopin on the piano.
It may sound really strange, but it is not about the flamenco compas or anything, it is about finding out new ways of using your isntrument to gain a different sound and new sound effects that can help you get the intended emotion into the piece of music.
As a guitarist I am very glad that I noticed this, even if it is outside the style of music I focus on, because it lets me unfold myself in new ways.
I think it is just like all those who say flamenco guitar versus classical guitar: the ones who say this is so focused on saying and showing that their style is better that they forget that both has good and bad sides, and that it is music and they would probably be better of learning both for an even greater competance and mastery.
Youre great Stephen, looks like you had a good time and it is awesome what you have learned! 
Sorry for being the one that adds a wall of text here full of boring stuff!
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Date May 4 2012 0:29:15
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