My first guitar was bought for me when I was a sophomore in college. I always wanted to play guitar, but my family never had the money and when I got my first jobs I found I needed to spend money on all kinds of other things–music, movies, soccer camp, dinners for myself and a girlfriend. I could never seem to squeeze enough out of a paycheck to put together anything to save for one. I got to play my friend Andy’s on occasion. I learned how to play TAB, but I didn’t have my own and so I couldn’t practice in any regular way…
My younger brother bought me as black acoustic Alvarez as a “thank you”. It’s a long story, but my brother has been working as a DJ since he was 13 and I lent him the money to buy some of his first equipment. I also drove him to a number of his gigs and even rented a few vans along the way for him. That equipment is long gone now. Even the replacements have been bought and sold a few times, but I still have the guitar and every time I look at it I remember how happy he was to buy it for me.
I took it home and immediately started playing what I knew, which was very little. My ability to play guitar on that first day began and ended with the riff from Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”. Of course, my brother hoped for more and so I set myself to work. I wish had figured out a way to squirrel money away when I was younger. Trying to learn an instrument in college when I had papers to write and classes to attend and no real time to just hangout was difficult. All of the friends I had back home that played weren’t around and the one guy I knew that could play could really play and he didn’t have the time or patience for me; looking back now I don’t blame him. I just didn’t have enough time to learn the basics and too many things competing for my attention.
It took me years before I had enough coordination to really play a song. All the things that sounded easy on the radio were just not…my hand doesn’t contort into some of the crazier positions. I can’t reach across 4 frets. Some strumming patterns I can get a hold of depending on the way the wind is blowing. When I first tried to sing along to a song and play the guitar at the same time I thought my brain was going to leap out of my body things jammed up so hard. Every time I opened my mouth I couldn’t strum to save my life. It all just fell apart. (I still can’t sing to save my life.) And this says nothing about the callouses that formed on my finger tips…
But a guitar can’t just sit in a case in the corner of a room can it? So I kept picking it up and practicing whenever I could…
Photo credit: burgerfeet1 via Foter.com / CC BY-ND
