No Regrets. Just Rebirth.

This past Friday was an experience I'll truley never forget. Kazuhito Yamashita, arguably my favorite guitarist ever, was playing at the performance hall at SFCM and I got to see it for free. I also found out that I get to see the Beijing Duo which consists of Wang Yameng and Su Meng who are currently studying at Peabody. I've been listening/admiring them for their extreme talent since I was 16. Anyway. Sergio Assad(who I still freak out when I see him) introduced him out and right as he was getting to the "and now, here is Kazuhito..." I started to just freak out. I also started to laugh to myself at the fact that Mr. Hii would kill me if he knew I was getting this opportunity. Once the applause started I just looked to my friend and we were both just shaking our heads in disbelief on what we were about to witness. Kazuhito Yamashita is one of the best guitar players of all time. He breaks away from that typical asian stereotype of playing everything super fast and robotically. He is able to play at the fastest of speeds yet still maintain a world of drama. I have never heard and I don't think I ever will hear a guitar player match him in his prime. Such emotion. Such technical skill. His tone? Maybe not the tone of David Russell or Ricardo Cobo, but with his style of playing, it works. Plus, he plays Ramirez guitars. How many professionals use Ramirez these days? Anyway. Yamashita walked out and my breath was taken. I had never been so intimidated by a guitar player or really a human being in my life. He just had this presence that was overwhelming. He played an all Bach program and did it masterfully. He missed a few notes in the last fugue but it was still incredible none the less. A review was written and published about the concert just yesterday. I am 100% against it. The reviewer talked about how some of the things he did was unstylistic to Bach and this and that and this and that about how BACH SHOULD BE PLAYED. If you are heavily into classical music, you know that the argument of "how bach should be played" is a never ending one. Sure, you can't play it romantically and you have to show everything you need to do symbolize the Baroque era but if you do it so blatonly traditional and non original, then what the fuck are you play it for? There is absolutely no art in that. If you want that, then fuck, go to ANY student getting a PHD in Baroque music. Yamashita did everything I expected Yamashita to do. He used an amazing amount of colors, incredible technique and nothing but pure emotion. My only issue with his performance was that he was tuning through every piece during the piece. Every time he hit an open note he was tuning. But it's because of his playing so it's understandable. There was one point to where he between suites, he picked up his guitar while sitting in front of a dead silent crowd and he started just examining the bridge. I wish you could have seen my face. I was freaking out! Anything could have happened at that point! But anyway. While maybe he's not quite on the level he was when he was in his younger days, he is still one of the best in the world.

I've been going through some rough times with guitar. My brain and ability is being pushed harder than it ever has. The funny thing is that the person pushing me like this is the nicest, most positive, most relaxed guy on the planet. It almost freaks me out that he manages to blow my mind yet be so chill and happy about it all the time. You would think someone doing all this incredible damage and frustration to me would be someone with the attitude of Mr. Hii. But nope, just good ol' Larry being Larry. It's sickening how many mistakes and how many errors he points out to me that Mr. Hii never did. And all of Larry's ideas about Bach are just straight up BETTER than Mr. Hii's. Mr. Hii makes you play it like an amateur. Larry makes you play it like a professional. Playing the Generalife is quite possibly the hardest thing I've ever experienced. The attention to detail is incredible. Every note has a purpose. The hardest part is emphasizing the bass notes while keeping the hammer ons extremely light. I can not for the life of me do it. Every time I try, my brain just starts to hurt and I get super close to getting my guitar and smashing it up against the wall. I can honestly say every practice session this past week has ended with me kicking open my guitar case and roughly putting my guitar in it's case. Then I'm constantly dealing with tone. But at the end of the day I know that I'm so lucky to be bitching about such things. I've brought myself to where I'm at now by going through these struggles and eventually overcoming them. I never quit when something is too hard. Only time I've ever done that was 5th grade running club and I still regret that. This is 100% the greatest struggles I've gone through on the guitar but I know that once the semester is over, I'll look back and realize just how much I grew as a guitar player.

Aside from those frustrations, all my classes are going quite good. Only issue is my absences. Too many times I've been out during the week days and get home and don't exactly feel like going to class the next morning at 8am. Too many times being 3 times. But we only have 4 absences available so it's kind of an issue. Regardless if I go out at night, I still stay up till 2 watching Everybody Loves Ramon(wana fight about it?). So I really just don't get much sleep in general. But I find it weird that when I do actually get lots of sleep, I'm extremely tired through out the whole day. Probably more so than when I get my 3-4 hours of sleep. My Guitar Literature is really hard. He has us read 20-30 pages for homework and his lectures all over the place. He's a great guy and extremely smart, but just not a great teacher. His name is Richard Savino. He(along with David Tannenbaum. It's actually where they met and became friends. Now they're teaching at the same school. How bout that?) was on a nationally televised master class with Andres Segovia back in the day. Most famous because he was the guy that Segovia took away his guitar because he hated his playing. Now that doesn't mean he sucks. That's just how Segovia always was to people. It was really nothing out of the norm. And to even further express how much he doesn't suck, he was able to study with Segovia in Spain for 3 weeks in which they woke up early in the morning, played for Segovia at 5am, then practiced all day, then played for Segovia at 5pm. Intense! If you don't know who Andres Segovia is, basically all you need to know is that he is considered the "father" of the classical guitar. He played the classical guitar in such a revolutionary way that he put it back on the map and really made it popular again. Considered one of the all time greats. I don't agree as far as skill wise goes. He had bad tone and bad interpretations, and was an arrogant prick, but what he did for guitar is something no one can overlook. Anyway. I forgot to mention this actually. A couple weeks ago, I played on what is said to be the oldest existing guitar in the world. A Romantic guitar from the early 1800's. It was intense. Speaking of guitars, today I rented out a Smallman guitar. It's worth $24,500 and I only had to pay $4.88 for insurance for my month rent. The thing sounds like a canon and it's really what I needed for the whole mental issue of playing(I was feeling like I sucked).

Life here is still really great. I've experienced some great nights and just some straight up weird situations. Apparantely crime is on the rise in my area and we need to be extra catious which is kinda uncomforting. The weather is still just beautiful all day every day. High 50's low 60's with a cool breeze. Very rarely is there a ugly day. Next week is going to be quite the week. I'm going to see Heartsounds and A Wilhelm Scream on the 13th, Roland Dyens master class on the 15th and the Roland Dyens concert on the 16th. I've been listening to a lot of Thrice with their new record out. Usually we do the Thrice cover show every summer but me and Badih have been considering doing a winter show. Just 3 or 4 songs but this time, ALL from Identity Crisis. Maybe with a T&C encore? Nothing but fast songs! Sounds good, huh? And if it doesn't sound good, just watch this video of them playing it live.

Thrice-As The Ruin Falls

the pain you bring
far greater than all other gain