Roman -> Saludos desde Granada (American here) (Dec. 21 2013 21:46:27)
Hola
I'm a 23 year old Audio Engineering student currently living in Granada, Spain (finishing my degree in Spanish). Been here since July and i'm not leaving until early June. I've been a musician my whole life, runs in the family, and after playing guitar for about 12 years now I started picking up flamenco over the past year slowly.
I typically listen to a wide range of music, from bands like Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, etc, but flamenco has always had a place in my heart ever since I discovered Paco De Lucia from perusing guitar forums as a young teenager. It was actually the song Mediterranean Sundance where I discovered him and Al Dimeola (big surprise). I know it's not flamenco, but I remember watching the 3 of them play and thinking wow that one guy is way better than the other 2, he only uses his fingers to pick and it sounds like its coming straight from his soul. As a "shred head" i figured learning some of Paco's songs wouldn't be that hard compared to the 6 string sweeped arpeggio robotic crap I was trying to play. Haha, oh to be that ignorant again.
Fast forward to this year, I decided to study in Spain to finish my spanish degree, and picked Granada because I wanted to learn flamenco from it's origin (...and because of tapas). I practiced rasgueos all summer and made great progress but still nowhere close to being what I would say half decent. After arriving here it's crazy how many people you see just playing guitar on every street corner, every guitar players dream.
I taught myself everything I could during the first 2 months here, and grew my nails properly (or what I thought was proper) as I didn't want to look like a complete idiot once I started taking lessons. I found a teacher here about 2.5 months ago, Ramon Del Paso (http://www.laplateria.org.es/artistas/ramon_del_paso.htm).
The first lesson he basically told me everything I was doing was wrong, which I kind of figured. He showed me proper picado, rasgueo, and golpe technique, and being a decent guitar player already it was frustrating not being able to do basic ****. It's like I started all over again, but with nylon strings and no pick. Ah the love of Flamenco.
I started with Rumbas, then Soleá, then Fandangos de Huelva. Now im working on Tangos, i've been putting in some serious practice time, i've impressed the **** out of him especially with how incompetent I was when I started. I've already lapped several students in terms of progress despite only taking lessons for 1/5th of the time, it feels good when they complement you especially being a foreigner. Most days I put in about 4-5 solid hours, some days not at all due to finger/hand soreness from excersizes, and some days even 7-8 hours since you can't really do anything during siesta time anyways. The last lesson my teacher said wow you're really serious about learning flamenco, why? I couldn't give him an answer, other than I think it's the most beautiful style of music on the planet, and one of the most challenging styles of guitar to play in my opinion. It's awesome when I walk around with my guitar, which I play everywhere here, parks, streets, mi piso, and get so many compliments from spaniards giving me praise for learning their most prized cultural art form. Most have said they've never seen an American play flamenco before.
I'm looking forward to using this forum to help with all the questions I still need answering, and if anybody has any questions about anything Granada-Flamenco related, I can def help. I'm completely addicted to everything Flamenco, it's almost hurting my Spanish as I would rather speak with my guitar than with words. I start Bulerias next week :) (about damn time)
Also this is a video of my teacher, he has a very smooth playing style, this song is amazing.
Welcome to the Foro Ramon and g'day from Australia. What an amazing journey you are having. A few beers with fabulous tapas in the company of friends, great times - I remember them well! I didn't play back then but I do now and I'd love to be doing what you are. Enjoyed reading your detailed post. All the best.
