Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
How old am I here on the foro?
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
   
Ron.M
Posts: 7051
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Scotland
|
 RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
|
|
|
Hi Gato,
Well I'm 59 now.
Although I have no ambition to play fantastic and impressive Flamenco guitar, I enjoy tinkering around with the odd falseta or bit of technique.
I really like the SOUND of the Flamenco guitar, whether it's brilliant or just basic stuff.
In order to fully appreciate a great player, you've got to be able to play the instrument a bit yourself IMO.
But I can't be bothered torturing myself with hours of scales etc etc, although I have much admiration and respect for the ones who do.
However, I'm a bit of a nitpicker, so the little bits of simple stuff I work on, I like to get right or it annoys me.
I enjoy the Forum and especially talking with people from all over the world from completely different cultural backgrounds who have the same interest in this music, since a lot of us are pretty isolated as far as a local Flamenco scene goes.
I also like the various characters and personalities here!  
cheers,
Ron
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 18 2009 1:20:07
 |
|
Ricardo
Posts: 14819
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
|
|
|
I am 34. When I was a teenager, about 15-17, i was a very serious kid, introverted, and then events at that time (father's death and other things) sort of made me grow up too fast I think, but remained very introverted. I had a hot girlfriend that invited me over to the parents house, they were not home....but I said "not now, I need to practice this new thing on guitar...".
I would have talked on the forum the same then as now, i mean about music and guitar not flamenco. And I try to be serious when I write on here on purpose....but as of late I have been doing some crazy things. Grow long hair, drink, party every other night, very extroverted in public, etc...remembering some feelings when I was a kid that I missed out on, or never got to express. My wife has noticed my "immature behavior" as of late that I think I must have stored up, and i would agree. When i was a kid, I never showed emotions, especially deep ones, but this year I was crying on the airplane at a stupid movie...twice....but oddly I was not embarrassed at all. I cry at like every freakin movie my kid watches now....
Perhaps it was having a kid that changed me I don't know, but I got another one on the way!
Anyway, that's that. So I try to be serious and helpful on here, but some folks that know me in person know i just want to go crazy all night long....everynight....just to warn some folks that think I am some super mature professional or something.
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 18 2009 7:36:58
|
|
srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
|
|
|
I’m closing in on 37, myself. It kinda feels like a “boring” age too me, stuck between milestones, and over the past year, whenever I’ve been asked how old I am, I’ve actually had to think for a second and add it up in my head, never quite remembering if I’m 36 or 37 (“Let’s see, I know it starts with an “S”…).
Regarding the diversity of the membership here and the varying approaches to communication that culture/language/age can sometimes bring into play: I think it’s all to the good to know where people are coming from, literally and figuratively. So I really enjoy learning a lot of these “personal” details. It’s also just plain interesting to me.
Overall thoughts/attitudes about age/aging: I’m into it. Aging, that is. Childhood was a drag; teens and twenties weren’t much of an improvement. I just find myself becoming a lot more balanced, relaxed and generally well adjusted as I get older. Whenever I encounter old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time things generally fall into two categories. There are the people with whom I only end up having those “Hey, remember the old days” interactions, and with whom I don’t really have anything new to talk about . This tends to be really boring and often depressing. Then there the people with whom I can find a comforting shared historical connection, but still find new and interesting things to share and discuss, building on the past, seeing where we’ve gone in our lives, etc. This is always a lot more interesting/inspiring/humbling/satisfying, etc. I encounter a lot of people around my age who feel a lot of stuck-in-between ambivalence about where they are in their lives, and I always like to remind them that, on the whole, I think we’re a lot more interesting than we were when we were 21 (apologies to the whippersnappers here  ) .
Age as it pertains to flamenco: I’ve heard a number of people here mention that they really wish that they could have started playing when they were kids and such. I can certainly relate to that, and I really would like to have a bit more of a head start than I do right now, but I’m actually kind of glad that I came to flamenco when I did (about two and a half years ago). I don’t know that I would have had the discipline to approach it with the seriousness, and the respect of the traditions of the form, that it requires if I had started when I was sixteen or whatever. I got a lot of catching up to do, but I really feel like I’m coming to this at the right time in my life…
Flamenco ambitions: I really want to learn to accompany. A couple of weeks ago I was working on an alegrias with a dancer, and another dancer sat down and started singing some standard stuff, “Tiri ti tran” and so forth. She’s not really a singer and it was all pretty rough and just a fooling around kind of deal. So, I was definitely not “officially” accompanying here, but it was still just the faintest hint of what it must be like to do so: trying to take in both the dancing and the singing, following the melody of the singing and changing the chords in relation to what I was hearing and anticipating in the song, instead of just playing what I’ve memorized on my own. It was all I could do to keep from leaping out of my seat and running around screaming from all the excitement, and it was an absolute lightbulb-moment for me: “Aaahhh. THIS is what I want to be doing!”
So, I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me. I know I don’t have any real hope of actually getting truly good at it, but I hope to someday be able to pull off some simple, basic accompaniment stuff that is dependable and works. I think I’m slowly crawling in that direction. The process thus far has been really humbling and hard, but ultimately I’m really enjoying it and it’s exactly what I want to be doing right now….
Oh, and I can relate to Ricardo's crying jags. I once cried watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow!
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 18 2009 12:37:15
|
|
andresito
Posts: 377
Joined: Feb. 20 2007
From: New Holland
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
I'm 38 (people usually think I'm 4-5 years younger) and started trying to learn spanish classical guitar about 5 years ago and flamenco about 2 years ago (have sort of plateau'd since then, until the beginner's challenge). I tend to pick things up with a fever, drop them for a while, contemplate it for a while then come back more serious about it, but these days I really don't have enough time to myself to practice.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
as of late I have been doing some crazy things. Grow long hair, drink, party every other night, very extroverted in public, etc...
me parece que estas volviendo gitano de verdad, Ricardo!
I remember reading PDL saying that the best thing for him was that his father behaved like a gypsy, arriving at all hours to drink and play music with his friends. So set an example for those little ones!
quote:
ORIGINAL: Anders Eliasson
I´m going to be 47 myself within 1 1/2 month.
Anders, I wouldn't have thought you were that old. Now I understand the beard-growing - trying to look more mature, eh?
_____________________________
¡este arbol tiene duende, cabron!
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 18 2009 15:08:53
|
|
gj Michelob
Posts: 1531
Joined: Nov. 7 2008
From: New York City/San Francisco
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
|
|
|
I read each post twice, each so pure and poignant. Like an intimate conversation across a table of empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays left behind by those who couldn’t stay. Now silence encourages a few to exchange their stories. Like soldiers joined by a common uniform and commission, but otherwise each so diverse, from country or city, wealth and modesty, mature and aspiring to be. I really enjoyed this thread and hesitate to speak for fear of interrupting such sincere flow.
I too was born in the year of our Lord 1962, or the year of the Tiger in the more astrologically enticing lunar fashion.
Here is my life through the lyrics of a song I wrote
I still haven’t found any answers at all/
To the things which surprise me and the questions I posed/
Was destiny written in the palm of my hands?/
However I learned it is all in my hands/
And I improvise my life/ over themes I was taught/
I don’t know who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s real or a ghost/
Who’s on my side and who’s not/
I have so many heroes, and idols and saints/
A beautiful crowd to inspire constraint/
But I mend my rules to excuse my life/
Tailor new values so to fit what I like/
Since 1962/ oh I am yet to come through/
Between dreams and pains and ambitious games/
Love is the one note I sustained/
And alone in the dark I like to hear the rhythm of a song/
Singing clear and sincere like a mother’s love, for her son/
And the prayers I pledged long time ago/
Day by day are still the same/ nothing’s changed in my heart/
Only I learned to accept it’s my life/
Sun still rises over the good and the bad/
Rain still falls over the happy and the sad/
I still haven’t found the part assigned to me/
The role I should play in the great scheme of things/
‘cause everyone needs a cause/ a reason to be/
I go by what my eyes can see, my soul perceive/
And ‘fear the knife up your sleeve/
I feel like returning to the places I love/
But where I belong by birth, by way of thinking I don’t/
Each day is like reading a page I misread/
Will I ever have a chance to read it again?/
For the little it counts/ I give my word/
I don’t know if I am right or wrong, real or a ghost/
If on my head there is a reward/
And then time goes by, and in the end one feels alone/
I pour myself some wine, some thoughts in rhymes/
Faithful to my books, my roots, the things I am hooked-on-to/
The beauty of a rare moment of truth.
_____________________________
gj Michelob
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 19 2009 7:07:46
|
|
edguerin
Posts: 1589
Joined: Dec. 24 2007
From: Siegburg, Alemania
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to gato)
|
|
|
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I’ve reached age 56.
My interest in flamenco goes back to when I was about twelve. We were living in Saudi Arabia and I would hear Arab music on the radio. The melismatic, dark singing, punctuated by cries of „Allah“ greatly impressed me. Near where we lived there was a Luthier, and I fell in love with a beautiful Lute (ud) that was on display in the window. But – sensibly – my parents didn’t think it was a good idea to spend lots of money on an instrument I probably wouldn’t play very long, and without formal training, which wasn’t available.
However my interest stayed alive, and a year or so later (now in Italy) I was given my first factory-built guitar. Autodidactically, with a poor Italian book (I didn’t speak any Italian), I tried to master chord-grips and the plectrum...
Somehow I came across Manitas de Plata, and was fascinated. Without any concept of flamenco, I tried to copy the rasgueos and rhythms, especially the (Manitas style) of "Tarantas" and "Seguiriyas".
Visiting Spain, we went to a few tablaos, and I started to realize that flamenco was more complex than I had imagined.
My first guitar’s neck broke, and my dad brought me a luthier-made Guitar from Germany (meanwhile we were in Cameroun), which I still have.
1971 I had the chance of going to a recital in a small German town. A „flamenco guitar concert“ with a young guitarist was on the programme. The concert was to take place in the town’s church in the afternoon. An hour went by, and the artist hadn't shown up. Another hour passed, and after three hours most of the audience had left in frustration. About twenty people were left, when the limo finally arrived.
We were presented with abolutely fantastic toque. I had never heard anything like it (not even Sabicas, that I had a couple of recordings of, matched that).
Oh, the performer was a young guy nobody had ever heard of: Paco de Lucia, accompanied by his brother Ramon de Algeciras...
I haven’t had much formal training: a few classes with Graf-Martinez, Paco Serrano and Phillipe Donnier, that’s it. So I’ve never really gotten past the intermediate beginners or beginners intermediate level (yet?!?).
Work load, the fact that a friend with whom I played and practiced for a couple of years, moved away etc. etc. caused me to neglect playing for about ten years or so.
My Bellido hardly ever got out of it’s case.
But since about a year or so, my interest has re-awakended, and since I am now the proud owner of a crisp new Eliasson blanca, I'm back in business 
(guitar story)
Unfortunately there’s absolutely no flamenco scene anywhere near where I live 
_____________________________
Ed
El aficionado solitario
Alemania
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 19 2009 13:06:35
|
|
Mark2
Posts: 1872
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
|
|
RE: How old am I here on the foro? (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
OK I'm gonna one up ya. When I was 21, two girls knocked on my door while I was practising for a rehearsal, said they had some wine and could they come up. I said no I was too busy. OK, truth be told they were not particularly hot, but that opportunity has never presented itself again. Oh, and since I'm 50, I doubt it ever will unless I'm paying a lot of money......
Oh and congrats on your second child Ricardo! My wife and I have a joke that when you only have one kid, you can pretend you still have a life, but after that, forget it! I'm the proud dad of two girls.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
I had a hot girlfriend that invited me over to the parents house, they were not home....but I said "not now, I need to practice this new thing on guitar...".
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 19 2009 13:09:47
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.09375 secs.
|
Printable Version
