a_arnold -> RE: How old is "too old"? (Sep. 3 2006 23:02:27)
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I'm one of those people who started at 10 and had the good fortune to live near a great teacher, Carlos Ramos, who was a student of Ramon Montoya and played at El Bodegon in D.C. for many years. So I had all the advantages one could reasonably ask for. I'm 57 now, and went through several hiatuses (military service, career, etc) that interrupted my development in different ways, but I am still learning, still getting better. I believe the greatest impediment to my development as a guitarist has been the natural discouragement that happens when I hit a plateau and can't seem to get some technique down and feel like I'm beating my head against the wall. At that point, it's easy to think, "This is as good as I'm going to get." But that's not true. I don't think my limitations have been age related. Quite the opposite. I now have the maturity to figure out solutions. For example, I had always felt like a lightning-fast picado was one measure of a mature flamenco guitarist, but it wasn't until recently that I climbed to that plateau. You might think that if it takes that long, then you won't have the time if you didn't start early, but I can now see that it wasn't determination and time that did it for me. It was discovering a "trick" within myself that opened that door. Having a teacher who understood how to teach these tricks would have sped the process. My opinion? There are some 20-year-olds who are too old to learn. and some 60 year olds who are still growing, and it is the stimulation of learning new stuff and the maturity to know what to do with it that makes the difference, not the years. Flamenco is full of techniques -- more so than classical. Each new technique reinforces all the others. Even if your picado isn't coming along the way you would like, learning other techniques will strengthen it through cross-fertilization. Incidentally, I teach, and I find that my older beginners improve much more rapidly than my younger beginners. Anyway, that's my 57-year-old take on how old is too old. Tony A.
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