Guitar-Playing

Cover Story

You see people carry guitars on the streets, play them in theaters but does anyone notice how attached a player is to his or her guitar?

I have loved music for as long as I can remember and in those songs that I have in my phone, there’s always some guitar in them. If not electric then it’s acoustic or bass. Before I got myself an actual guitar, I always see one as just a plain musical instrument without any depth of its own and every piece of music that I listen to, it’s the rhythm that matters, not how the instruments are played. I wanted to sing along those songs so I asked my mom for a guitar and practiced the chords myself. Then I realized, there’re a bunch of frets with 6 or 12 different strings, why only limit myself with just a few basic chords and not explore any further? I then had my first proper guitar lesson in a small class back in my home town at 15. It’s been 4 years and my passion for guitar has not reduced.

I started my proper learning with some musical theories, stretching fingers exercises and learn some classical music. It was boring and I didn’t even understand why there are people who are so passionate about these stuff. That’s why I became even more curious and believed that there’s got to be something so tempting, so appealing about the guitar and its music. I paid more attention on the music notes, the sound and all the complex theories that I learnt to later found out the magical charm of the instrument. The slow tempo and rhythm of a classic piece of music played with sound of a nylon guitar is just something so beautiful and somewhat romantic. I got addicted to it for a while until I found out something even better: A guitar is not only a guitar. A guitar can be a drum or create the high sound of a flute through something called “Percussive Fingerstyle”

Percussive Fingerstyle came to my notice after wandering a while on YouTube looking for the best guitar players. There are several people who played the guitar in ways that I have never seen before left me at awe. They created the bass, the flute and the sounds of seemingly two guitars in just one instrument. They even created the music without picking the strings, just pressed their fingers on the instrument neck and played it like a piano. I wanted to one day be able to play like them, to cover the songs as how I wanted with all the beats, all the magical things I saw on YouTube. My fondness grew day by day until I notice how my fingers feel so itchy after just a several day not touching the guitar.

That’s how I got attached to my guitar.