Weekly Blog 10 - Learning to play an instrument

It's been 9 years as of my birthday this past Friday, that I received my first guitar. At this point in my life, I couldn't imagine not playing guitar. It isn't just the action of playing guitar anymore, it's become a part of me that I appreciate more and more with every passing year. So I'm writing about this for two reasons: 1 - To encourage anybody to take up learning an instrument, and 2 - I've been thinking of doing this as well.

Since I started learning about music theory, I always thought; how can I apply this to the guitar? It was this desire to further my understanding of my instrument that helped me get to where I am today. I think that anybody who is seriously considering taking up an instrument should have a somewhat similar mindset to this, because you can't skip right to writing masterpieces and playing live shows without any hard work. Not only will it make you appreciate the skill you obtain as you develop it, but in the end your music will benefit greatly from it, and you will be able to produce much more amazing works.

Now how does this all relate to me, since I already know how to play the guitar? Well that's because I want to learn how to play the piano. Whenever I used to learn about music theory, I wouldn't be able to relate it to guitar all that easily because I didn't read sheet music for guitar. My first experience with that was in grade 6, when I started playing the trumpet for my music class. I loved it so much, it was a completely new experience that I was good at! But with time the theory got harder, and eventually I started to resent it. By grade 11 I would try so hard to understand key signatures but I just couldn't wrap my head around everything. Then finally, in my last year of high school, I got it. I learned to use a reference to help myself understand it, that reference being a picture of a keyboard.

The more and more I understood all of this, the more and more I felt like the piano sounded like an awesome instrument. Today, I haven't had the opportunity to buy a piano or a keyboard, but I see myself looking into it strongly in the future. To me, this is a rewarding endeavour, and I believe that anyone who is willing to do the same will be just as happy with the end result.