Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Apart from health scares (there's been a couple of these in the last couple of weeks and I'm due for a CT scan next week), an interesting end of this week. I got a call (several calls and a voice-mail message) by this lady who needs a ’Spanish style guitarist’ for a function (her 80th birthday). I said I was not exactly that; I do not play flamenco, etc. She said she was aware that I was a classical guitarist, Would I be free to play (unamplified) at that garden do? How much would I charge? I said £250 and she jumped straight back ‘yes!’ Which made me think I should have said £400, but there you go. I’ll have to prepare a few biz cards to give out at that thing, see whether I can get more custom of that sort. Summer is normally very very slow and I very often just scrape through September, so this is quite welcome.

Been a bit quiet here (again).

The end of summer and the coming of autumn has hit me a bit this year. It feels like my world is getting narrower and a little more difficult to navigate with each day. Partly it is the precariousness of my way of earning a living, which may be beginning to catch up with me -I am of pensionable age by now (how did that happen) but apparently many of my qualifying years didn't have all the NI contributions paid (no idea how that happened) and therefore don't count, so I only get a paltry one that is probably less than I spend in coffee in the month. Can I carry on doing private music teaching? Of course, while I have health but -odd things are happening: there are a few times im the year when I normally get a number of enquiries and some of those become pupils -which makes up for the ones that move away or the more casual ones that give up for whatever reason. The main of those times of the year is when the new school year starts, in September. Well, this year I didn't get one single enquiry. Not one phone call. This had never happened in the many years I've lived in the UK. It may be due to the cost of living crisis or maybe the patterns of how people look for an instrumental teacher have changed... no idea.

Social life still ok, although I have already missed quite a few gigs I would have like to have attended. Lack of energy, sometimes lack of money or just not having been aware they were happening. I still go to the little alternative club nights at Aces and the Albany but I can only take a couple of hours of that now. Still good to see people and catch up and dance a bit.

A pupil who is a lecturer at UCL has suggested the possibility of doing a recital (probably a lunch time one) there. It has to be some sort of lecture-recital, I am tempted to do one themed on Spanish and English Renaissance lute (and vihuela) music, tracing the parallel lines between the two styles of music between two nations perennially at war in those times. Probably would play the 'Canción del Emperador' by Luys de Narváez (link to a performance of mine of this work, below) and the ever popular (in a very narrow segment of the population, alas) 'Lachrimae Pavan' by John Dowland. I wish I was a little better at promoting my 'product'! but, still...

Canción del Emperador:
https://flaviomatani.dreamwidth.org/1547157.html

Lachrimae Pavan:
https://youtu.be/IEeL2e9y3b0

Ah, a Tuesday I don't have to get up at 5:20 am. My Tuesday school has an 'enrichment' week so no lessons (and no income; if you're an instrumental music teacher you essentially and rroughly get paid for lesson given, if the lesson doesn't happen you don't get paid). Today will be a slow day, which I think I needed.Taking my old Yamaha GC15D guitar to a luthier as the tuning machines broke and although this is a simple job, happens that whilst every other classical guitar in the world has a distance within axles of 35 mm, this one's 39 mm. But I'm not prepared to give up on a guitar that I've had for nigh on half a century and on which I played my graduation exam and concert, etc. Oops, this came out rather longer than I thought. Good morning!

This is unusual - posted to YouTube a video of me playing that fugue by Bach in a little concert in July. Normally I would get a dozen or so views. This is a long piece (six and a half minutes) and quite ... involved. Certainly not pop music. And yet it's getting, thus far, 345 views. I reckon maybe YT is changing how they measure these things? What constitutes a 'view'? if you put up with two minutes of my playing? One minute? Just run it for a few seconds and keep scrolling? (the latter seems to be what happens in TikTok, where the same video that gets a dozen views on YT gets nine hundred-plus views). Can I really believe my people are waking up to the wonder that is Bach's music, even if it's played by me, warts and all?

Only two guitar lessons today -need to get a little busier..- but interesting ones. The first one, an Indian lecturer in classical languages (latin, greek, etc) wanting to learn rock, classical and flamenco (the latter not my specialism but I have started him on Soleares and I'm learning a fair bit about this along the way). The second one, an eleven year old girl doing a Trinity Rock & Pop electric guitar Grade 5 exam. Very different lessons, both stimulating in different ways.

Haven't posted much of late because... largely because not a lot has happened. Have been to a handfasting of friends (that was a lovely ceremony), to a couple of little local goth club nights, the Hampstead Alternative Picnic (which perhaps I enjoyed more than the clubs; I'm getting old after all). Discovering the 'fediverse', of which Mastodon seems to be the central piece. Have opened an account on one instance of Pixelfed, which is a kind of de-centralised version of Instagram. Except it is different in several ways and also, as in many of those things, my friends are not there but in Instagram (the old issue with all the Twitter and Facebook killers -remember Discordia, anyone?- so one's reach is rather limited.

Enjoying the half-term week, not having to get up super-early to go to those schools where I teach guitar. But it already is flying past, alas. Apart from getting up late and going for walks, haven't done much or gone anywhere. Practising guitar an almost 'normal' amount, beginning to get Bach's 'Prelude, Fugue and Allegro' to take shape although it is a long way from perfect and when I do a recording take of the fugue, particularly, I could cry when I listen to it -and not for any good reasons. As I get older I'm developing problems in my right hand's ring finger so there are things that I cannot really play or have to find work-arounds for. Tremolo is out of the question now but then I never was much of a fan (except people like hearing 'Recuerdos de la Alhambra' being played for them).

FWIW:
me on Mastodon:
https://mastodon.social/@fflavio

me on Pixelfed:
https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/547531299153328020#
this one is a little less easy to remember...

Finished my last lesson for the day, a Zoom one. I suppose I have developed quite an elaborate set up for my remote lessons. I'm using a Mac Studio with two screens -on the left one I run the Zoom session, on the right one .pdfs of the music we are working on (this is easier on my eyes than keeping the music on the stand, which I also do in some cases). The webcam is an iPhone Xr which gives me a much better picture than the webcams I had been using. The microphone is a Blue Yeti USB cardioid/bidirectional mic -not anything top of the range but much better than what is built into the computers or the cams. I also keep the laptop on a stand -I use this to type a log of the lessons with the exercises and pieces and comments on what we are working on (and where we are in relation to payment), same as I used to do on pupils' notebooks but nowadays don't, and email a copy of the one for the current lesson to the pupil -this allows me to see a copy of those notes that I can review or refer back to.

I normally keep at hand a classical guitar, an Alhambra mid range that by now looks so battered, poor thing. And an Epiphone Les Paul running through a Marshall Valvestate amp.

Probably over the top. What you need for a guitar lesson really is two chars, two guitars, one music stand. But my setup works for me and, it would seem, for my remote pupils.

Ballad' by Timothy Bowers - Flavio Matani, guitar
A lovely and very accessible student piece (around Grade 1) recorded for a pupil; this is part of the collection 'Solo Now!' published by Chanterelle Np. 2101

Yes, it is the same thematic material he uses in 'Flight of the Lovers through the Valley of Echoes', second movement of 'Decamerón Negro'. More concise in this one

#guitar #classicalguitar #latinamericanguitarmusic #cubanguitarmusic #iMovie #yulongguoguitar

Leo Brouwer -'Estudio Sencillo XII' - Flavio Matani, guitar.
A first take at home of Leo Brouwer's 'Estudio Sencillo XII'
We do online guitar lessons!

flavio_matani@mac.com
https://www.flaviomataniguitar.com


#guitar, #classicalguitar, #latinamericanguitarmusic, #cubanguitarmusic#, #iMovie