How Did I get Here......

Everyone has something that influenced them to start something. Whether it's riding a bike, learning to paint, or choosing to go to clown college, everyone's reason for starting something is different. Little kids want to be like their mom, dad, or big brother. Other people want to be appreciated for the things that they do, but sometime people just try new things for the heck of it. Well...... I started playing guitar because my older brother had tried it (yea.... I know.... I'm a stereotype...).

When I was younger, my older brother had a guitar that he tried to learn. I'd see him sitting on the porch with the guitar, randomly plucking at the string. He always told me that that was how you teach yourself. Eventually, he got tired of it and let the guitar sit in the corner of our room.

Then in 8th grade, my school offered a small guitar class. I thought that it would be fun to try, so I took my brothers guitar and took it to school with me. It didn't seem like there was too much structure to the class, but I had a friend in it with me and we both started together. Each student received a folder for us to keep any music that we got. Believe it or not, but I still have, and use, that folder. After learning some extremely basic things, my instructor gave me two songs to learn. Good Riddance by Green Day, and Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I slowly started to work on those songs and after a little while, I could finally start to make them sound like parts of the songs.

After that 3 month course, I still played the guitar, but I didn't play it very much. I tried taking lessons again in 10th grade, but the instructor didn't continue to teach after a while, so I was on my own again. So, I just played the guitar a little here or a little there. I wasn't that interested in learning more at that time. A couple years go by like this and before I know it, I am already in my 3rd year of college at Michigan Tech for Forestry. Time flew by like crazy and I still only knew basic things about the guitar and I sure didn't have the skills to sing and play at the same time.

So what got me back into learning guitar? Well, Thinking about it now, I guess the truthful word would be jealousy. My third year of college started off by taking classes 40 miles away from my main campus and living in the middle of the woods. We stayed in some run down dorm rooms where the water tasted like bad eggs and taking a shower wouldn't always make you cleaner. This was fall camp 2014 and it was a pretty wonderful time! What was surprising to me was that it seemed that every other guy there had a guitar, even my roommate! They all seemed to be able to play better than me too (or at least I thought so). I didn't have my guitar at the time, so I asked my roommate if I could borrow his every now and then. He had no problem with it, so I started playing again. I started playing his guitar more than he did. Eventually I made a trip home and got my guitar and I kept playing. I told myself that I was going to become better than everyone else at fall camp. I'm pretty sure that I annoyed some of my classmates, because our classroom was 50 feet away from my bedroom door.

Time went by and I took some classes on music so that I could understand things better, and boy did that open my eyes! I kept playing and learning more. One of my favorite comments that I got from one of my fall camp friends was that he was really impressed by how much i'd improved. Then I graduated and moved to western Michigan for work. By this point, I'd never had any one on one lessons with anyone. I'd always been taught with a group or just online, so I started thinking more about private lessons. Then I made the plunge and signed up for lessons. That was 8 months ago and I can easily say that it was the best move I could have made. Private lessons are the best and fastest way to improve!

That's pretty much it......... The End?..........