Guitars and the biggest lesson of my life

The world of guitars changed my life!

It is interesting how my life changed since the day I decided seriously to play the guitar.

I started to play it long ago, but something happened on my way to becoming a good guitar player. I remember I went with my guitar teacher Michael to a shop for musical instruments in the city of Cologne, where I lived, and I bought a nice Ibanez in wood, a great guitar for the price.

After 4 years of “I just want to play some songs”-attitude a keyboarder I met told me I was not talented enough to play the guitar. He also added that as a singer with a full accompanying band it was not necessary to be able to play the guitar.

I will always regret the day  I stopped playing my nice acoustic Ibañez because I believed in what he told me. I was young and with low self-confidence, so I stopped playing the guitar from one day to another. After that I decided to play the violin and a little bit of piano, trying to downsize the fact that I could really be not talented enough to play any instrument. I stopped after almost 5 years for other reasons.

After almost 15 years I decided to retake that guitar-challenge.

Now I know what the real problem was: singing and playing at the same time was the issue, I still now struggle sometimes with the timing when I start singing on difficult rhythmical patterns and I know the metronome is my best friend (or sometimes even my worst enemy).

Now: why did my life change? Because I play and exercise every day, I start the day with some finger exercises on my guitar, learn to read notes with it, I go to guitar class every week, and do my homework like a good pupil at school, I am eager to learn something new every day! My guitar playing is part of my daily agenda, as well as my singing practicing.

I start to look at guitars in another way now, not so sad as I did before. They look sexy to me, I read books and magazines about them, and I started to study music theory for guitar players and have fun with it. I clean my guitars every other Sunday and change the strings regularly, take care of them and I even give them a name!

Now I want to have fun playing and singing, and with my vision to play it right, I avoid judging me playing or practicing.

I don’t need to show anyone I am good at playing an instrument, as I am doing it for me, for my music, for my life.

I have missed years of playing, sure, but I learnt the biggest lesson of my life, and I apply it now to other situations in my life. I always go for something when I believe in it, I don’t care what other people say, I learnt to listen to myself genuinely, and I love it. Now I want to believe in it, in my ability to learn something really challenging.

I parked my first guitar at my mom’s house, so when I go and see her, I have my old nice guitar there to play.

Now I don’t only have an Ibanez, now I go also for Fender, Lag, Taylor, Dean…

This is the beginning of my story, stay tuned for more posts!

Life has changed and I like it.