My dad is a big fan of Nirvana. He likes to replay “The Man Who Sold the World” in the car. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember listening to it since I was a kid in elementary school. Because my dad was into Nirvana, I started listening to other songs. When I saw the music video of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I thought it was cool how the lead singer would do whatever he wanted in the video and not care, and how it was about the teen revolution. In the background, near the end of the song, everyone got hyped up, and I thought, “I want that to be me one day.” I want to be famous somehow: an artist, someone that inspires like that music inspires me.
I got into music during the summer, so I decided to pick up an old guitar that had been lying around in my room for God knows how long. My dad had bought it a long time ago. Another reason was that my sister was taking guitar classes, and she wasn’t learning anything, and I thought, “That’s a waste of money to learn and not even be paying attention to how to play.” I thought that if I learned how to play, it might motivate her to play, too. My brain works in different ways, but I started searching YouTube videos and learning about tabs (a tab is basically a more specific version of sheet music but for guitar). The only flaw with tabs is you need to at least have heard the song before to get a feel for the pace and the tempo, since all that tab does is tell you what fret notes to hit to learn how to play a song.
Music is important to me because it’s a stress reliever from school and from what’s happening in the world around me, since I can get lost in the beat or in the lyrics trying to find out the deeper meaning of them. When school gets stressful, I zone out. I think whatever I want and picture whatever the song says, and also wonder why those specific chords together sound so good. Playing music is like a place where I can think about whatever I want. I can see myself learning more songs on the guitar in hopes of getting my fifteen minutes of fame.
There’s not so much I can write about music, due to me not being as good as other guitarists, but I wanted to tell my story about my experience with the guitar. There’s more I can learn about the guitar, but that’s a story for another day.