I've played the guitar since I was about 10 - I'm now in my early 60's. I played piano and guitar as a child, and on guitar I started out playing Folk and Bluegrass (my father played and that was his influence). Then in my early 20's I discovered fingerstyle - and it became my passion. I became a pretty proficient steel-string fingerstyle player. That led me to buy a classical guitar, because some of the songs I was learning were not really feasible on a steel string guitar. When I was about 30 and in graduate school, I started playing around with some classical pieces on my classical guitar, and took classical lessons for one summer (the only formal guitar lessons I've ever had) and I started to add to my classical repertoire. By around 40 I was pretty much only interested in playing classical - though friends and family still want to hear the fingerstyle stuff I played for years on the steel string, so I have to keep a minimum repertoire of that material fresh and available :-) My steel string guitar is an Irish guitar - a Lowden F32c. About 10 years ago I was playing "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring" for a wedding and I borrowed a friends Cervantes Hauser Concert guitar (Alejandro Cervantes is a Mexican luthier). I loved that guitar so much, that after the wedding I bought one for myself - I love that guitar! I also have a Gibson hollow-body electric that I occasionally play around with some Jazz pieces - I hope that doesn't get me banned :-)
And re: the "good question" in my intro title: I retired about two years ago, and my wife and I sold our house and most of our possessions (but NOT the guitars!), and we left on our motorcycles headed south. We have been nomads, traveling through Mexico, Central and South America. I took along a "Guitalele" - a six string hybrid instrument, a six stringed instrument, body size of a Tenor Ukulele, and tuned like a guitar but at a higher pitch. 1st/60th strings are supposed to be tuned to "A" - I play it tuned it at a "G" to get it closer to the pitch of a guitar. It kept me playing while we traveled, and it fits on the motorcycle! Due to COVID-19 we abruptly returned to the USA (we were in Buenos Aires) about two months ago and are currently in Northern California (Redding) where we will wait out the pandemic (realistically a year or more we think) before returning to Buenos Aires to recover our motorcycles and ride some more - we will eventually settle in the USA.
With the "spare time" afforded by the pandemic, I am enjoying the opportunity to practice and play the guitar, recovering some songs and technique that I lost over the past year and a half (the Guitalele has it's limitations). I found Elite Guitar soon after we returned, and signed up. I have really enjoyed the video classes - there is so much you cannot get about a song just from the sheet music. I really appreciate the style and performance comments offered in the videos, and the attention to right hand fingering, with options and explanations given.
Wow, what a story and what adventurous path in life. I love reading it. Thanks for introducing yourself and it is so good to have as one of our students.
Jim, Welcome to Elite Guitarist! I am a fellow student; you can see my bio, written a few days ago. We both share interest in a variety of music, and I believe that brings a richness to our approach in learning mastery of the classical guitar in our own way. I also play banjo and fiddle but am taking a break from them to concentrate my efforts on the classical guitar during this pandemic. You mentioned the Guitalele you play for its portability. That sounds like a piccolo guitar. From my understanding it is like playing a standard guitar with the capo at the 5th fret. Sounds kind of fun and interesting.
What pieces are you working on? This month I am tackling "Girl with the Flaxen Hair," "Torija," and (starting today) "Caco del Lladre." Its harmonics will give me a workout and possible allow me to better approach those in "Girl w. Flaxen Hair" accurately. See you online! Dan E.
To give you a better idea about the guitalele, I attached a picture of me playing my guitalele, taken at "Moto Camp Pucon", in southern Chile, last December. Note the proper posture for playing the guitalele after a long day of riding the motorcycle, wine mandatory :-) The guitalele is hard to play - but that said, I handed it to a professional classical guitar player I met in Cusco, Peru, and he picked it up and played Recuerdos de la Alhambra like it was no problem, with flawlessly smooth tremlo! So yeah - the player is a big part of the equation :-) e all other distractions that might vie for that time! Nothing else to do but play the guitar :-) I am also working on adding a section to another song I already play - "The Sakura Variations", arranged by John Williams. I've played that for years, but there is a tremlo section in his arrangement that I just skipped and have never attempted - but now I feel I have a chance, and it is good to have a second song to practice my tremlo. Those songs may make it sound like I'm an advanced player - but really not I think. More of an advanced intermediate - those songs stretch me.
I have looked at and played a bit with some of the other songs here - I enjoyed learning Maleguena; I'd played bits of that before but never learned it as an entire piece, and that was fun. You said you learned "Be Thou My Vision" - I listened to that one and it is just lovely - I may have to learn that. I read music (started w/ the piano and I took music theory in college) but I lean on TAB when I am learning guitar pieces when it is available. I can learn a piece from standard notation, but with so many years of reading TAB it is so much faster for me. I do not like TAB by itself - I like to see the standard notation in parallel, ("What the heck is Bach doing here?" - can't figure that out from TAB, lol). I like that they offer the sheet music this way (TAB plus std. notation) for the songs I've looked at. I also own and play a bit of Banjo, Ukulele and Mandolin and can fill in on the Bass if need be.
To give you a better idea about the guitalele, I attached a picture of me playing my guitalele, taken at "Moto Camp Pucon", in southern Chile, last December. Note the proper posture for playing the guitalele after a long day of riding the motorcycle, wine manditory :-) The guitalele is hard to play - but that said, I handed it to a professional classical guitar player I met in Cusco, Peru, and he picked it up and played Recuerdos de la Alhambra like it was no problem, with flawlessly smooth tremlo! So yeah - the player is a big part of the equation :-)
PS: I have a CFox (Charles Fox) acoustic steel string dreadnaught guitar. Charles used to operate his luthier business around Redding, CA, I believe; however, a quick web-search shows that he now runs his shop in Portland, OR.