For those who don't speak Spanish or aren't familiar with this band, let me explain briefly. Extremoduro was a Spanish rock band, founded by Roberto Iniesta, who was born in the Extremadura region of Spain; hence, the name pays homage to his homeland, but we can also see a play on words here. "Extremo" means something radical, something extreme, and "duro" means hard, like the music of this band.
I started to get more familiar with the band a while ago from the electric guitar teacher I worked with. He played that kind of music and from his classroom I could hear some loud, hard rock music while I was teaching classical in the next classroom 😂. He was explaining with a smile that there is a cool song he was teaching to his students and that it would hopefully be accepted in the school hahaha. So, I read a bit about them too and found out that their music mixes various similar genres like urban rock and progressive rock, but also hard rock and punk. Then... then a surprise arrived.
I was asked to play a song by this band for a wedding! How can it be suitable for a wedding? 😱
Well, we shouldn't judge choices and tastes. I also try to respect the wishes of the bride and groom if they have any favourite songs, so it happened a few years ago that we played Metallica in the church during the ceremony 😁, and recently we had some wedding wishes like songs from Dragon Ball or some Disney movies. No problem, I can learn almost anything. But when the violinist I am going to play with at the wedding at the end of August told me Extremoduro... I was in doubt about how it would sound. Until today, when I finally "forced" myself to take the time to practice. I have so many serious pieces to study, but I decided to start with the wedding and look for the song. I listened to it first, and I was hugely surprised. What a beautiful song is Si te vas!
The song is quite long, full of tenderness, love, hope... It lasts for more than 8 minutes, but when I study something, I listen to it several times, then I search for the scores and start to play along with the original. Oh, it has some more challenging parts I will still have to study, but I recorded a super short part of my learning process that I want to send to my colleague. Like a little reminder that summer is not just for holidays but for practising too. 😆
Although this is a very short excerpt, later I did spend a considerable part of my day with this song and researching other songs of Robe, the lead musician of this band who died last year. I found another song I want to learn, just for myself; it has a beautiful piano intro, so that's why. But first, let me study the song Si te vas, as the reminder also goes for me. time to study. a lot. 🎹
