Pau Guillamet, 'Guillamino': "I was a pretty unbearable teenager"
Musician, music producer, professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, and father of Ángela and Gil, aged 15 and 12. He is the artistic director of El Desconcert de iCat and producer of the KLK competition for new Catalan urban music talent. He is releasing his seventh album, 'Erra & Bé', featuring upbeat and danceable songs inspired by 90s American R&B. One of the tracks was produced by his son. On March 14th, he will perform at the Barnasants Festival at the Paral·lel 62 venue.
BarcelonaMy son has been creating instrumental music on the computer for a year now. It's a quantum leap compared to when I started. At 12, he's doing things I was doing when I was almost 30. The evolution is incredible. He's already listened to a lot of groundbreaking music. He pays close attention to detail, works quickly and intuitively, and focuses on choosing the right sounds to make the song sound interesting. He doesn't consider mixing as a separate element; he does it all at once. He sees it as a whole.
How did you come up with the idea of suggesting he produce a song?
— I had the album finished, but I felt I wanted to do one last song. We talked and I asked him to make me a blessedHe started playing and showed me a really cool rhythm and bass line in the style of Pharrell Williams. And I saw it clearly: one Saturday night we sat down together and I played a guitar, a riff, and a first line, and after several attempts the more or less final structure emerged It can't go wrong.Without him, that song wouldn't exist. We signed it 50/50 and I've made him a member of SGAE; I don't know if he's the youngest member right now, but he's not far off.
What kind of teenager were you?
— I remember my parents being kind; perhaps I wasn't as kind. I remember not treating them very well when I was a teenager, and now I regret it. I was quite an unbearable teenager.
I'm asking because you now have a teenager and a pre-teen at home. How are you handling it?
— Letting them do their thing. Giving them as much autonomy as possible. Biting my tongue several times a day. Using irony, not so much sarcasm, very sparingly and with the best of intentions. Being very careful with communications and keeping the morale of the troops high. And when I say troops, I include my parents.
Do you like your children's teenage years?
— I see them so eager to do and learn things, and that's contagious. It's wonderful. When they're little, your children take you back to your own childhood. Now, their conversations, topics, and activities are increasingly related to what adults do and think. When I try to see things from their perspective, I rediscover that teenage passion for things that blow your mind.
Teenagers often need to be left alone, right?
— It's incredibly important, and often the hardest thing to do. Right now, I have a very expansive view of the freedom they need to be given. The activities they start to develop and the interests they have will also be defining. We'll see if what they do will cause me conflict and suffering as a parent. I suppose the values and tastes you instill in them have a lot to do with it. I don't see it as being as random as some people say... I would question the idea that "children turn out the way they do." It seems to me more like flowerpots resemble cooking pots.
Tell me about a specific situation.
— Look, two or three years ago it seemed unimaginable to me that they would travel by train alone to go to school or to Barcelona. Now it's happening, and I'm taking it in stride. I see that I can let them do their own thing and I don't need to keep track of them. Before, I was a perpetual taxi driver for children I had to take everywhere. Not anymore. You have to learn to let go of your children.
It's good to try not to be too focused on the children, don't you think?
— It's what we don't do that matters in many cases. As parents, we have a tendency to be helpful, to bring them a glass of milk in bed. They can pour it for themselves now, but they'll still ask for it because they like being looked after. We have to learn to read what's important to them. We can't apply a single rule to everything. Each situation will tell us what to do at any given moment.
What would the teenage Pablo you were say to your children?
— It's hard for me to imagine, to be honest. I remember going from being introverted to extroverted very suddenly. It all depends on whether we met before or after that change. But I like to think that once we overcame that initial distance, we'd definitely become friends.
What makes you laugh about children?
— My son is good at imitating accents, and lately he talks like an eighty-year-old woman all the time. My daughter and I make a lot of fart and broken jokes.