| As a guitar player, his career had a poetic and simple beginning. At 12,
he was already a composer, but he had to whistle his songs to memorize
it with his lyrics. He was also percussionist of the Big Band, Rapazes
da Alvorada, at the night club, Boite Cuba in São Gonçalo- Rio State.
His contact with guitar started like a tender and sensitive love affair. He
bought the instrument but he didn’t looked for a teacher to give him
instructions, just like he did with percussion instruments, before. And
that love affair started when he was 3.
Since guitar is an instrument consisting of two distinct tasks, to play it
requires specific technique for each hand. For several years, Mayuto’s
relationship with his guitar was limited to his right hand only. The
guitar neck was never touched by the left hand, except to mute unwanted
sounds he created with his right hand.
That experience developed his right hand in such a way that he had to
find what to do with his left hand. At the time, one of his friends was the
great guitar player, Waltel Branco, who he asked for help. He booked
one single session with that guitar master and got a basic exercise that
included the action for left hand. The exercise consisted of fingering the
strings, from the firs to the last fret, in a sequence of two frets per string,
using fingers 1 and 2, starting on the first string. The other part of the
exercise was to do the same thing with four fingers.
That was enough for Mayuto to develop an interesting and unique style.
He modified the original exercise to accommodate what he had
developed, earlier, for his right hand and that resulted in an unusual
coordination between the two hands, independent from each other and
unrelated to any method.
His first song played on guitar was “Maribondo”, which in English
means wasp, he was 16. It was inspired by a persistent wasp that landed
on the third string of his guitar and didn’t let him play for a while.
At that stage, his affair with the guitar had become more intimate and
passionate, but also romantic and even, nostalgic until now. That first
guitar he bought was a Giannini and the reason for his unconditional
preference for this brand name. In 2003, he revisited his nostalgic past
by flying from Los Angeles to São Paulo to tell Georgio Giannini how
sentimental he was about their instruments. Giorgio’s class and
gentleness did the rest. Even before hearing the story he invited Mayuto
to spend a day at the factory and at the end, gave him their best guitar.
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See Mayuto playing his GWNCPPM
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