I have been playing guitar for almost a year. I have fallen in love with it. There’s something about playing the guitar that’s so much different from playing the violin, or any other instrument. Once you know a few basic chords you can pretty much search up any song and master it with a simple strumming pattern in a matter of minutes. But learning guitar wasn’t easy. It took me a while to get to the stage of being able to play tons of music.

I picked up my little brother’s mini toy guitar one day thinking, ‘How hard could this be?’. Little did I know how many chords there are. I don’t think anyone could learn all of them in their life time. It took hours and hours of practicing, memorizing, and dedicating so much time to this instrument. I made flashcards to test my memory of how to place my fingers to correctly make a chord. It was so frustrating when I kept getting them wrong. But after weeks and months of practicing and reviewing constantly, I mastered the most common 20 or so chords.

After learning the basic chords, you can pretty much play anything. I played in a pub in Australia after only four months of playing guitar. I played without challenging myself for a few months, but after a while I wanted to learn more. I didn’t want to continue to play the same chords on and on forever. It was boring. So, I started finger picking, and playing challenging songs.

Ask anyone in my family. I play guitar A LOT. This and soccer are pretty much all I do. When I’m stressed, I’ll just sit in my room and play guitar for an hour or so and I’ll immediately feel relieved. “Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.”

(I would put videos in this post of me playing but it isn’t working so if you would like to hear me play email my parents or me and I’ll send some videos)