Guitar Geek Out

How I started playing guitar 

My mom dad have always been very musical people. My mom has sung in choirs since she was in high school. I cant even keep track of all the ones she’s been in since I was born! My dad played drums in a band with his school and friends. When he played in his band he had long hair and an ear piercing. I wish I could’ve seen that! Naturally I grew up listening to music, even before I was born! 

I started taking piano lessons and I really liked it but I didn’t really want to sit at a piano and play boring songs for an hour. I also wasn’t very good so that didn’t help. I stopped playing after a year or so. At that time I was also in a choir. A choir where we practiced 1-2 times a week, couldn’t eat dairy, chocolate, or drink pop before concerts, we even had a special practice uniform. For a seven year old that was a lot. I did that for a couple of years and then
my hockey got in the way and I chose hockey. There were no rules about what to eat before games and practices!

In grade 4 I joined the school choir and also the schools strings program. A little later I joined a band at deep cove music in the band factory program. I was the only girl but luckily I knew the guys I was with. I was the singer and drummer. During that I started to learn how to play the bass from books, videos, and my dad. I never thought of bass as my main instrument mainly because I never practiced and was not very good. I then realized, with a bit of help from my dad, that bass and guitar are fairly similar. I decided that I wanted to learn the guitar! My dad plays the guitar and said he would teach me how to play. I started taking “lessons” from him and  after a couple moths we realized he was too busy. We also realized it was probably better for me to learn from someone who’s job is to teach guitar. After we procrastinated a bit we went to long and McQuaude and I started taking lessons!

Later that year covid hit and I could no longer take in person lessons. Stupid pandemic!Even though it was different only seeing half of people on calls, I still continued the lessons and started to take virtual lessons. Now I am no longer taking lessons but I am still playing the guitar! I have had one gig preforming with my dad and his friends at a memorial service for their buddy, where this photo was taken. I hope to keep playing guitar and keep practicing!

 

 

Electric and Acoustic guitars. What’s the difference? 

Some people may see, or listen to an electric and an acoustic guitar, and say something like, “they sound the same” or, “they both look like guitars to me.” Well, they might both look like guitars, because they are! What a shocker! If someone says this to you, I can tell you right them that they are wrong! You can even tell them that. 

For me the main difference would have to be the strings. On an electric guitar the gauge (thickness) on the strings is a lot smaller than an acoustic guitar. For an average electric guitar you will most likely be using 9-10 gauge strings and for an acoustic the gauge will most likely be around 12. The acoustic needs to have thicker strings so it can be louder, whereas an electric will be plugged into an amplifier so, it doesn’t need to be as loud. Also, when the strings are thicker it can make it more challenging to bend, which is most commonly used in solos.  

 

Another difference is the actual guitar. An acoustic guitar is lighter,  This is mainly because of the fact that an acoustic guitar is mainly just the wood, bridge, strings, etc. But, with an electric guitar, there’s a lot more components to it. For example, an electric guitar contains pick ups, and really all the wiring to make it be an electric guitar.

Now, if you ever see or hear anyone say something like this you can tell them that its not true and you can even tell them why! I hope you know a little more about guitars now than you did when you woke up this morning! 

 

Reflection

I had a lot of fun writing this post and getting to write about something that I really enjoy doing. It was really fun to write about a topic that interested me and that I could Write a lot about. So far in plp we haven’t actually been able to write about something that I wanted to write about. I also felt like when I was writing the style was very different than what I would have written in an essay. When I was writing this blog I tried to keep it light, crack a few jokes, try to have a conversation with the reader.

At the beginning of the brainstorming proses, I didn’t really know what I wanted my topic to be, let alone what to say. Once I got my topic I had no idea how to start. This was the hardest part for me, figuring out how to start the post. I think the easiest part though would be writing after I had started. I think that once I get started i’m ok and I can think of what I want to say. I enjoyed doing this blog and I hope to keep doing blogs like this. 

Thanks for reading!