Sunday, March 4, 2012

My Experience with the Guitar...



I started playing guitar when I was 19. On August 2011. Its been 7 months since I started playing. There’s a guy that taught me the basics, D A G. The very 1st song I played was Happy Birthday.I dedicated that for my mom. That time I’m still very new to guitar and my fingers is like WOOD.

After that, I wanna learn how to play “Kenangan Terindah”. However I gave up that song halfway because I don’t know how to play. Then I took up another song which is “Tinggal Kenangan”. That’s the very very 1st song I played using fingerstyle. Since then I starts to love fingerstyle very much because it made me feel so lively. 1st of all its because I cant sing pretty well and the guitar sing it for me.
I wanted to continue with this fingerstyle guitar but it is just so tough. No one is there to guide me for that style.

Then I found out another awesome song which is “Blackbird” by The Beetles. I tried playing it but then I cant finish it also. I almost gave up until a guy willing to teach me an easier version. He taught me how to play it and yup I managed to play the song. I did not use tabs or sheet music or anything. All I did was memorizing all the strings he used and the frets he used. After that I slowly play and remember everything.
I felt so proud of myself and I practiced day and night. I played quite a few number of songs which I have to sing. Its okay for me but I’m not sure what others think about it.

The very next fingerstyle guitar song is Spanish Romance. A guy told me about that song and said that its quite hard to master that song. I made a research about that song I find its okay and thus I took the challenge and started playing that song. It took me quite a while to memorise the whole song and play it properly. Once again I’m proud of myself.
Then I continue with my guitar.Practice with songs and more songs. After that learnt how to play scales. Though I don’t know much about it.

On December, there’s a girl name Esther made a youtube video. Immediately I asked her for a collab. We decided to make a cover of Adele’s song, Someone Like You. It took us about 2 months to complete it. The video officially out during Chinese New Year. I could say that it was the proudest video I ever made.
After that I took up a challenge to play a piece by Bach and Beethoven which is Air on the G String and Fur Elise respectively. I uploaded the Bach cover but not the Beethoven’s. Both of the piece is really challenging. I learnt new stuff from them. I learn about Pull Off technique in the Air on the G String piece.

After that, I saw Adele’s song, Someone Like You covered by Sungha Jung. I find it really awesome and I downloaded the tabs for it. I managed to play the verses only and I also learnt about Hammer on technique. Then I keep it aside first as I wanted to move on to other song.

I found out that theres a teacher that is teaching guitar in town so I decided to go and try it out. End up he cant give me exams and he cant teach me more new stuff because I learnt most of the basic already. After that I stopped his class.

I found a really cool website that give out guitar tabs, WWW.LICKBYNECK.COM. I downloaded the app for iPhone. There is lots and lots of songs in it.

There’s few songs that I already started to play and already managed to play some of it. Will be uploading the video into youtube soon.

For my future plan, I will be taking up guitar class or going into music course to get more knowledge about music. Many said its quite late for me to start taking up music now because mostly people started when they were very young. I take it as a challenge and its my passion. I believe if I want it, I can do it and thus I wont give up !.wheee =D GOOD LUCK VENDRICK !