String Theory

Anyone who knows me knows that I love music.  The type is almost irrelevant – save most country and all death metal.  I’ve absorbed a lot of music in my time, and I even played a few instruments a time or two.  I played the piano for about twelve years, and I even played the cello when I was in elementary school (this was back when music education actually meant something instead of teenagers going behind the drum set to bang out their own rhythm).  I can honestly say that I enjoyed every minute of that experience, and I can also say with 100% clarity that the string instruments are the second best musical instruments that we have – the first being the piano, naturally.

Of course, I’m saying all of this to lead to a point, and I’m getting there.  I just need to expound some more.  Thank you for your time.

On last Friday, my wife and I went to a church that had a coffehouse inside of it (I probably could’ve reworded that a little differently, but I really didn’t feel like it).  One of our friends invited us because his son was doing gospel hip-hop for the crowd.  I’m not a huge fan of hip-hop – well, TODAY’S hip-hop, but he was very good.  He flowed well, and he was able to speed it up and slow it down with ease.  Anyway, the next person to come up played the acoustic guitar, and let me just say I was impressed!  She sounded really nice, and the music told a story.  Listening to her play got me thinking about my own musical past, and reminded me about how much I enjoyed playing music.

So, as we were leaving, I told my wife that I wanted to learn to play the guitar.  I could’ve gone back to the piano, but I just didn’t feel like returning to something I felt was intrinsic.  In comparison, I haven’t played a string instrument in almost 23 years, and that instrument was taller than I was!  Armed with that knowledge, I decided to go find out what I needed to get started.  First things first, I need a guitar, and I knew right where to go to find one – Guitar Center.  Now, allow me a little bit of exposition here, but the last time I was in a Guitar Center, I was working at a mental hospital (although, some people might think that I need to be a patient, but that’s neither here nor there), and one of the kids who I was watching loved the guitar.  I’ve always been intrigued by it, but I was never really interested in it…until now.

When I walked into Guitar Center, I was amazed at exactly how little I knew about guitars.  I asked one of the the guys who worked there a few questions, and I had to have sounded completely flummoxed.  Thankfully, they didn’t laugh in my face (although, they probably laughed uproariously after I left), and they even recommended a guitar type for me.  I’m more of an acoustic guy – in fact, one of my favorite songs is “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, and they said that the Dreadnought type was good for beginners.  So, when I get my first guitar, it’ll be something like this:

For the record, I am completely serious about this, and it’s my full intention to do this and be really good at it.  I don’t know how good I’ll truly become, but I’ll definitely give it a shot.  Only time will tell how good I’ll become at it.

It’ll definitely be fun to try.