I remember it like it was yesterday. I was knocked off my feet when I heard ”Crossroads”, a Robert Johnson traditional blues, by the Cream for the very first time. Until then, I never thought of picking up an instrument and try to learn how to play.
A had a good friend and he had taught himself playing the guitar a while back ago. So there was ”Crossroads” blasting out of his tape recorder and he smoothly played along to the song. I was so impressed by that and it motivated me to go out and buy a guitar for myself.
Everybody advised me to get a simple and cheap acoustic guitar, but I refused to listen to them. I wanted to be like my friend. And he was playing a cool electric guitar, which was a Fender Stratocaster re-build. Plus he had a nice Marshall amp and this is exactly what I wanted for me, too.
The next day I went to the music store and I bought my first electric guitar. I had never heard of the brand ”Rockson” before, but the fact that this guitar looked exactly like the one I had seen in a Jimi Hendrix video, convinced me enough to just buy it. Further to that, with a $50,- price tag it fit perfectly into my budget.
But that was some lousy guitar, I tell you. Uneven frets and a slightly twisted neck! But all that really didn’t mean anything to me. It was after all my first guitar and I started to play right away. Or to be more precise: I attempted to play.
I quickly realized that I wasn’t talented. It took me forever to learn even the simple open chords. And I even struggled with getting it tuned. I must have broken hundreds of strings in the beginning. And since I didn’t want to listen, I now had to pay the price. My finger tips hurt a lot, since I was playing on an electric guitar with metal strings and not an acoustic guitar with nylon strings.
Against all odds, I still made slow but good progress. It probably took me way longer than it should have, but at least I didn’t give up. And now, 20 years later, I’m not as technically savvy as an Eddie VanHalen, but I can play quite well according to the feedback I get from others.
Sometimes I played extensively and other times just a little bit. But I never stopped completely. And even if there’s not enough time, I just try to get ten minutes in to practice a new scale or riff. That helps my fingers to stay flexible.
It’s a wonderful hobby and even nowadays that the era of Rock ’n’ Roll seems to have passed, even my kids like watch and listen when I play a Boogie or Blues.
The German author Ulrich Dietherr runs a German website called musik instrumente gitarren info and features articles about electric guitars, or E Gitarre info ”made in Germany”.
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