My parents said I was to play the piano or nothing and me being the determined thing I always was said OK nothing! My mother actually suggested I play Classical Guitar and then later when I was older that I could try electric, but I was adamant I wanted electric. So nothing it was. About 2 years later a certain John Williams was invited to play in the Abbey in St Albans, and being as the school and church are closely linked he agreed to put on a performance for the boys. Of course I went and to my delight John played sat in the centre of the aisle amongst the boys who attended, I was just 3 feet away from him as he played. He was absolutely awesome!
I can not remember the name of the piece, but one sounded just like water tumbling down a waterfall with rising and falling cadences and I was taken. I tried to get my mother to help me persuade my father to buy me a guitar, but he was equally adamant piano or nothing. I did about this time buy an electric guitar from a friend whose father had made it, his father however was no match for Mr. May (Brian May of Queen’s father). I had to have an amplifier and I got another friend to make me one. This worked fine for a while and my then girlfriend wanted to be lead singer and another friend wanted to be the drummer and for me for a short time the world was fine.
Then disaster the amplifier blew and we could not get it to work properly again, my girlfriend ran off with the drummer and my aspirations were high and dry. I sold the guitar and it was not until 1992 over twenty years later that I finally began to really play.
Life had been up and down and I lost my job due to poor health, and was trying desperately to survive, and a work colleague suggested I try working in Saudi Arabia. I applied and got a job with the Saudi French Bank. Since there is not a lot to do there when not working I went to a music store and saw an advertisement for Classical Guitar lessons, so I rang the guy (Gregory Fisher) and he agreed to take me on as a pupil I was to take my lessons on Friday mornings at 10am and he told me how to find him and what to buy. He suggested I buy a Yamaha guitar from the store, a metronome, a pitch pipe and as many spare sets of Savarez high tension strings as I could afford (he said I would probably need to change them every month), I was later to find out that he intended me to play 3 or 4 hours every day!
On the morning of my second lesson I got quite a shock Gregory was not in, but since he had told me to push the door and walk in, I did this and went to where he took the lessons and sat down and started to tune up and practice some scales he had given me. Just then from the bedroom I could hear the sound of Classical Guitar music, it was so good and so perfect I assumed Gregory had put on a CD or the radio, however after about 5 minutes this slim tall and elegant man emerged guitar in hand and I asked if it was he who had been playing he answered yes and I asked how long it would take for me to be able to play that well. He had surely heard my bumbling attempts to play the scales. He replied, ”Let me think, I started with a ½ size when I was 5 and I am 28 now so roughly 23 years with 8 hours per day practise!” The player? Jorjos Panetsos of Greece the then and current guitar head of the Music Academy in Vienna. He was in town to play a series of concerts at the various embassies, which is where the expatriates that are lucky enough to get invited go for entertainment.
Hopefully you my readers will get a less daunting start. Gregory was a great tutor and was always very complimentary as strangely, to me at least, was Jorjos. With my delay in starting I do not have any aspirations to be as good as Jorjos but I do get great satisfaction from being able to play and read music. So my message to you and or your children is this if you have any aspirations to play start now and do not waste time mastery takes a long time, but sounding good really is not so hard.
There are many good Classical Guitar resources on the Internet and through my writings websites and blogs I will endeavour to help you along.
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