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Miguel de Maria -> RE: What pulled you away? (Jul. 13 2013 17:06:48)
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I used to live and breathe the stuff, hung out with pretty much all flamenco musicians, went to Spain for a workshop, etc. It's hard to say what turned me away from it, but I took a few not-great lessons from a local player and pretty much quit after that. There just wasn't really anyone around here who could help me. Pedro Cortes told me "you're going to have to leave here, you know", when I took a lesson with him. Maybe he was right.
Another issue is that, as a full-time gigging guitarist, I began to feel flamenco wasn't very suitable for that. For background music, bossa is better than bulerias (I remember you telling some stories about things like that). Bossas, Howard Heitmeyer arrangements, classical for weddings,--these are much more useful in my line of work. Add a few rumbas and other arranged flamenco pieces, but not too many and not too scary.
Finally, I realized that probably the main thing that had attracted me to flamenco was the virtuosity. Paco's scales, really. And I kept running into barriers and roadblocks in getting there. As opposed to classical, which requires a different sort of skill and one perhaps not so dependent on max speed and strength. You can spend a lifetime learning and improving in CG and never have to play a 144 bpm picado scale.
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