A Guitarist Journey

The desire for learning the guitar began when one of my best friends growing up learned how to play. The more I heard her play, the more I wanted to learn. One Christmas, I received a guitar from my parents and immediately asked my friend to show me a couple chords. Soon, I switched from taking piano lessons to beginner guitar lessons from my teacher. A couple months later, she told me she had taught me everything she knew on guitar. She gave me a good base to build off of, and I started teaching myself different songs and learning what I needed to know as I played.

A year or so later, the man who had been the guitarist at our church got deployed to Iraq for over a year. This opened up an opportunity for me to take his place, so before he left I started learning songs and the chords needed to play them. I’ve continued to play in church for five years now and I enjoy every second of it! Being able to praise God with my instrument is something I will continue to do for the rest of my life!   

I continued to teach myself, but then an opportunity came up to take lessons again from a friend of the family who is an excellent, experienced guitarist. I learned SO much from this man; he taught me many different techniques, chording patterns, different styles of playing, and introduced me to flat-picking and how to read it (which is just plucking one string at a time to make a melody instead of strumming all the strings at once).

I not only learned from teachers, but also learned a lot from YouTube videos. All I had to do is search for what specific thing I wanted to learn and I easily entered a world of personal lessons. This new found resource has been the main supply of material for me to learn all of my instruments. There are series of lessons that will take you from being a beginner all the way to an advanced player.

There is still a lot more that I would like to learn, but I’ve come a long way since that first day I strummed a chord. I would like to learn more scales, become better at flat-picking and build strength in my fingers to be able to play more bar chords. I will still continue watching videos of instrumentals and teach myself the chords and fingering until I can recreate it. This is more often than not what you will find me doing for fun in my free time!

If you have ever thought about learning the guitar give it a shot! Take a few lessons and soon you’ll be strumming your favorite song or writing your own music!