KEEP PLAYING YOUR GUITAR

Hello everyone, I just want to share a little bit of reflection about what's on my mind for the last few days. First of all, thank you regular readers who kept coming back to this simple blog, I hope you gained a lot from this blog although most of the contents here came from my subjective experience as a guitar player.

These few days, I kept thinking, why did I keep playing guitar until today, knowing that I don't plan to pursue  music-related career? I know some people who stop playing guitar after they start to get busier in their lives and I thought I was about to stop playing as well but apparently I don't. Here are some of the few reasons that I think caused me to still play guitar until today:

It's fun
Of course it is, so obvious. Learning how to play a guitar when you have never played one before is always a pain in the neck, but once you get past learning different shapes of chords and actually start to play a song, you'll feel like you've achieved something very significant and it's quite thrilling. Nowadays, I'm always learning new techniques from songs that I like to hear and I can still feel the thrill every time I tried something new.

We're just talking about playing guitar, but actually what's even more fun is the level of tweak-ability that you can find when you're adjusting your guitar especially on electric guitars. I play mostly electric guitars, so I always have to tweak the sound on my amp, I have to get some effect pedals going here and there to catch the vibes of some certain songs and the guitars themselves don't always sound the same everyday. Even with the guitars, you can still experiment in terms of tone by changing the pickups, strings, bridge, tuner, pots, and so on.

Tone
Every human has 5 senses and one of them is hearing. We can entertain our sight by watching movies or looking at some pictures, we can entertain our taste buds by eating good food, we can entertain our smelling by wearing perfumes, and we can entertain our touch sense by using pillow and comfortable chairs. On the same line, we entertain our hearing by listening to good music, which is basically a carefully arranged noise with some tonal qualities that had been prepared in a certain way. Listening to good tone and playing my guitar is an additional and significant way to alternatively entertain my hearing. I don't like listening to mainstream songs, so the tone that comes out from my guitar is sort of like an escape for my hearing.

It's been almost 8 years since I start playing guitar, it's kind of like my habit
I always sit down and play at least for a few moment everyday. It always feels weird when I spent a whole day without playing my guitar even for just like a couple of minutes. When you do something you like routinely for a long period of time, you start to feel like it's your nature and playing guitar routinely for a long time has that same effect on me.

Emotional investment

Obviously, after you play your guitar for so long, you will start to develop a connection between you and your guitar. My modded PGM-30 has bonded so well that playing it becomes absolutely effortless and I can easily get good tones every time I play that guitar. I started playing that PGM 7 years ago and the guitar had captured every moment of my musical journey as it has been my main guitar until today; it had seen my low moments when I'm still learning to play guitar but it also had seen some glorious gigs when I was in Seattle. It has keep me pretty sane during stressful days of work and it has been a tool for me to pour out my unexpressed emotion; it helped me to keep my perspective of the world and my sanity as well. To put it in another words, it has sort of become like my best friend.

My only advice for you my lovely readers is to keep playing no matter what. Developing this kind of relationship with your instrument will take a lot of time and sacrifice, but the end result is very rewarding. Whenever I play my guitar, I always feel trouble-free in my mind no matter how good or bad my playing is and no matter how happy or sad I am. I hope your instrument can free your mind as well.

I hope you enjoy this post, keep on playing guitar! Cheers and God Bless :)