I arrived in Toronto on November 12, 2018, by November the 30, I performed my first show with our keyboardist Flavio dos Santos. He was already an established musician at the time, in the Portuguese Community, so he invited me to play with him at a Portuguese Restaurant. I started to play with him from time to time until it became a permanent thing which led us to be together in two other projects aside from Mute Sounds.
In the meantime, a local bar close to my house offered me the opportunity of having an Open Mic every Tuesday, which I accepted. Now you might be asking, “If you lost your voice, how can you host an Open Mic?” – Easy! I created a setlist with all the songs that I knew at the time and promoted the Open Mic as some sort of karaoke but with a real musician playing the song you’d choose! I did that for about 3 months, and it was an incredible experience.
Playing with my buddy Flavio on Fridays and Saturdays, every single week was everything I needed to push my limits. I had to leave my comfort zone of strumming the acoustic guitar and start playing the electric with some leads, and that was not all. Our both projects were completely different (one is with Portuguese traditional music, the other one is focused on covers of the best rock classics), my chord progression knowledge tripled. I was completely in love with the guitar. Practicing for hours every single day, learning scale after scale after scale and learning different techniques to improve mine, I was completely obsessed with the process of learning more and more and step-by-step, my name started to be heard.
I had to reject a few invitations to play live because at the time, Flavio and I, we were playing gig after gig, after gig, every single weekend! We even had an article made by a small local TV talking about one of our projects! We were rockin’! Unfortunately, in 2019 and like everyone else, we had to stop due to the pandemic.
In the meantime, a local bar close to my house offered me the opportunity of having an Open Mic every Tuesday, which I accepted. Now you might be asking, “If you lost your voice, how can you host an Open Mic?” – Easy! I created a setlist with all the songs that I knew at the time and promoted the Open Mic as some sort of karaoke but with a real musician playing the song you’d choose! I did that for about 3 months, and it was an incredible experience.
Playing with my buddy Flavio on Fridays and Saturdays, every single week was everything I needed to push my limits. I had to leave my comfort zone of strumming the acoustic guitar and start playing the electric with some leads, and that was not all. Our both projects were completely different (one is with Portuguese traditional music, the other one is focused on covers of the best rock classics), my chord progression knowledge tripled. I was completely in love with the guitar. Practicing for hours every single day, learning scale after scale after scale and learning different techniques to improve mine, I was completely obsessed with the process of learning more and more and step-by-step, my name started to be heard.
I had to reject a few invitations to play live because at the time, Flavio and I, we were playing gig after gig, after gig, every single weekend! We even had an article made by a small local TV talking about one of our projects! We were rockin’! Unfortunately, in 2019 and like everyone else, we had to stop due to the pandemic.