Becoming a real life guitar hero, one chord at a time

I got an acoustic guitar for my Birthday this year. Usually I get socks and underwear from my parents, but this year I encouraged myself to ask something bigger. I have wanted to learn how to play guitar since pretty much forever, but the faith never threw me one. I know this sounds weird, but I kinda expected to get a guitar without ever asking or buying one. I'm so lucky and usually things just go my way, sooner or later. I'm still quite confident that I would have gotten the guitar eventually, I just got tired of waiting. I wanted to start practicing when I still have time for it.

So, I asked for a guitar and to my surprise my parents actually got me one. Or to be more precise, they gave me money for it and asked me to buy one for myself. I had never held a guitar before, so it wasn't easy to start thinking about what kind of guitar would be good for me, but luckily my dad and my uncle had already done some Internet researching and encouraged me to buy one that was on sale at the time and according to some guitar forums sounded like a practical fit for someone who knows absolutely nothing about playing a guitar. That was enough to convince me.


Showing off the socks actually. They are knitted by J.R.

And now I have a guitar. I have had it for months and I love it. So far I have only practiced one song, Desert Garden by my favorite band, VAST. I already play it quite perfectly, but I'm having troubles with the vocals. I'm a really lousy singer, but I don't feel like I'm done with the song unless I'm also able to sing it while playing. Anyway. I think it was really easy to start learning how to play guitar, because I already knew the notes and chords and stuff. I may be a guitar noob, but I know my music theory. I just had to figure out how to work with the guitar. And then there's Youtube and all the how-to videos, hooray for that.

So, why I'm bringing this up now? Because this Christmas I got some nice guitar accessories! It was impossible for me to tune my guitar by ear, I always had to ask J.R. to do it, but now I got an electric tuner. I don't have to rely on J.R. anymore and I'm perfectly capable of tuning the guitar by myself. I call that a very good Christmas present.


The lights tell it all.

I also got a stand for my guitar. Before it was just lying against the wall and waiting all kinds of accidents to happen, but now it's standing securely on its own. I don't have to worry anymore. The stand also match my keyboard stand and chair, so together they look pretty professional. The guitar is also a lot more accessible now when it's not stuffed behind an arm chair!


Standing there.

I really appreciate people who can play one instrument or more. It's just an awesome skill and an awesome way to be creative. I started to play keyboard because my dad played a keyboard too, so I hope that my kids will have an equal chance to find their instruments too. Meanwhile I need to practice more to be able to express myself better through music.