10 Years of Guitaring

This July marks the 10th year I've been guitaring. 

It's such a big number that I admit I've never imagined about. The younger me thought that at this age I'd probably have a boyfriend and act girly enough to stop playing guitar. Of course, 10 years ago I haven't known Taylor Swift yet. 

And of course, 10 years ago when my neighbour's kid who was 4 or 5 told me how guitars are only for boys and I shouldn't play guitar since I am a girl (Kids are audio recorders. Be careful, adults. Don't gossip about your neighbour's kid in front of your own kid), I felt like I wasn't a true girl. I am a disgrace for playing guitar that automatically makes me a tomboy. 

I no longer care about that now. In fact, my heart screams in your face!, look at Taytay and all the lady guitarists who are capable of being women and being guitarists at the same time lol.

Anyway I don't want to make this a negative post.

Tonight, I'd like to recall the timeline from when I first wanted a guitar, up until now where I find myself wanting more guitars because let's face it, guitars are cool objects.

I will now bring you to a 10 year journey all summarised into one lame post.

2004

Picture me at eleven years old. Hardcore fan of sappy Thai dramas with sappy OSTs. Wanted to play these OSTs so badly on the guitar. Some classmates were already guitarists. One boy named Jefferson can play guitar pretty well. My other neighbour plays the guitar. His two sons also often play acoustic guitars outside and I can always hear them playing and singing.

To summarise: 2004 - Wanted a guitar so badly.

2005

I still wanted a guitar. My dad made his usual promises, setting terms and conditions, saying I can get one after UPSR if I score straight As. I knew my dad would break his promise as usual.

In July my uncle, who is my mum's youngest brother, aged 23 years old at that time, a young navy back for the holidays, stayed at our home. Our daily activity: Ride my dad's motorcycle to the nearby shop to buy ice creams. He was young and impulsive with money. I was young and opportunistic, for lack of a better word. I showed him all of the guitars hanging above us in the shop. It was all gestures with very little words involved. He simply answered, "ambi lah". Choose one. Take one.

I sat at the back of the motorcycle with a black RM 80 Kapok guitar in my hands.

Yan, my neighbour's son, an adolescent at that time, helped me to tune it. My mum helped me to ask him. I was too shy to ask for help.

My sister borrowed a chord book from her friend. I asked my dad to buy one for myself. 

I had some sifus after that:

Uncle Bat, full name Robert, university student at that time. My mum's cousin. Played a lot of Malay songs. Taught me Man Bai's Kau Ilhamku, which would be my first official song to learn on the guitar. He also wrote chords in my book of lyrics. I learned C, Am, F, G. Nothing else. Uncle Bat stayed only for a few days. I didn't get to learn much from him.

Linda, my sister's friend who came from KL for the holidays. Probably stayed for a week or two, but taught me that girls can play guitar pretty well just like boys. Wrote some partial chords for partial songs. I was particularly amazed with her ability to play the intro of Wake Me Up When September Ends. She was the biggest earliest influence I had.

By the end of the year, I could strum and play some basic chords. I remember not having any real struggles with strumming--it was as if it came naturally to me, although I don't have any evidence to back up this statement. Part of it was because nobody corrected what I was doing. I was probably doing everything with the impression that I did it right. The hardest thing was pressing certain strings. I hated F, Dm, D the most. I learnt nothing else that year.

To summarise: 2005 - Got my first guitar. Got some sifus. Learnt basic chords.

2006

Nothing much happened. Played basic chords as usual. Played a lot while waiting for the school bus to fetch me. I remember vividly how I played while sitting at the front door before leaving home for school. I loved my guitar so much even after a year. I still wiped it with wet tissue every single day and when I got bullied in school I remember letting my tears drop on its body hahahha like the song Teardrops on My Guitar.

To summarise: 2006 - It was a whole year of nothingness, but all of those repetition became fundamental practices that I subconsciously did. Years later, I realised how important these earlier practices are.

2007

Still nothing much. Joined ISCF in school, which opened a new perspective about how guitars can be used in worship. Still didn't understand much about chords and stuffs. Heard more and more of my next door neighbour's jam sessions. 

To summarise: 2007 - Boring progress. 

2008

I photocopied a lyric and chord book of Indonesian worship songs from a classmate. This was one of the books that built my confidence to play better.

I finally had access to the internet at home in October. This opened my eyes to the various possibilities I could do with my guitar. I discovered tutorial videos that I never fully understood. I saw Sungha Jung's videos for the first time in my life. I learnt that there's this stuff called barre chords and they're not easy. I also learnt that the neck of a guitar is full of wonders. You can go up and down the frets and get different notes. It was a massive revelation that I never thought of before. No one spoke about music theory to me in relation to the guitar. YouTube, together with some helpful websites gave me so much wonderful discoveries.

I finally learnt how to tune my guitar. It was very shocking to see how out of tune it was. I wasn't supposed to feel shocked at all. The last time it was tuned properly was when Yan tuned it back in 2005. I felt stupid and smart at the same moment.

To summarise: 2008 - Learnt barre chords. Internet does wonders in your life. Realised my guitar had never been tuned for two years.

2009

The best year. The year that became my turning point in guitaring. My grades dwindled, but I was too happy discovering new things to learn on the guitar. I could do barre chords already. I printed out so many lyrics of Thai songs and searched for their chords, to the extent that in the end I had three full files of these sheets.

I discovered that I needed a new guitar to improve faster. Playing a Kapok had been a pleasant experience, but the string height made it almost impossible to further develop my techniques. Playing barre chords were never pleasant. In November, after waiting patiently for so long, I bought a better guitar. China-made but better. In fact, it was the best guitar I ever played at that age. 

To summarise: 2009 - Practised a lot. Got better. Bought new guitar. Knew how to solo a bit. Probably learnt to do hammer ons and pull offs.

2010

Still played a lot. Made a lot of Thai song covers on YouTube. I never deleted them, but kept them private after I left that hobby. I will try to publish one here later.

The new guitar helped me tremendously. Somewhere in the middle of the year, I wrote my first song called Thank You for the Day. I brought my guitar twice to school to serve in ISCF. Then...I realised I still had a lot to learn. I couldn't understand the function of a capo. I didn't know songs were transposed to suit the vocal range of a singer. I didn't know how to transpose at all.

I also wanted an electric guitar so badly at this age.

To summarise: 2010 - It was still a slow progress. Didn't understand about the use of capo and transposing.

2011

Almost convinced that I'll never play guitar again in my life. Thought that I'd probably get fed up of playing. Little did I know CA had its doors opened for me. Seniors had guitars. I was away from my own guitar, but I wasn't away from guitaring.

To summarise: 2011 - CA gave me a wonderful first time experience of playing in a worship team.

2012

Played more in CA through serving in the worship team. Another important point in my guitaring journey. Built more confidence. Fully understood transposing, thanks to Pastor Joash. Learnt so many things from him and the other team members, like other strumming techniques. At this point I knew that guitar was part of my identity and will continue to be in years to come. I then tried to play a fingerstyle arrangement of As the Deer during sem break. I did pretty okay, but never recorded it. However, please feel shocked that I could never do fingerpicking on my guitar at this stage. It was unbelievable that the only thing I was confident about was strumming.

To summarise: 2012 - Fully understood transposing. No longer shy of playing guitar in front of others. Understood chords like D/F#. Attempted fingerstyle again. Learnt various strumming techniques. Learnt palm muting perhaps.

2013

Interest started to incline towards fingerstyle guitar. 

2014

Discovered more budding fingerstyle guitarists on YouTube. Figured out that I should learn. Procrastinated a bit. Finally felt confident about fingerpicking after learning from Passenger and Simon and Garfunkel.

To summarise: 2014 - Focussed on fingerstyle and fingerpicking. Yayyy.

2015

Can call myself a guitarist with ten years of experience but I am still lousy in many things. I no longer have the desire to own an electric guitar. I want to become a better acoustic guitar player day by day, by mastering many techniques. I see Tommy Emmanuel as one of the guitar idols that I'd love to shake hands with (I had heard of Tommy Emmanuel for years, but never bothered to check him out). 

To summarise: 2015 - It's still a long long journey to travel along...

Things I still cannot do on the guitar:

• Scales. I don't understand the theory of scales. I can't play scales correctly. I wish I could. I'm still learning.
• Arrange my own fingerstyle arrangement. I understand how an arrangement is done, but I can't make my own arrangements yet.
• Play blues. Man, it would be awesome if I could play some blues on the guitar.
• Play jazz. Jazz guitar is super cool. But I don't understand a single thing about it.
• Play percussive fingerstyle. This technique is one of the things I really really want to learn with all my heart and all my soul but I just have too many hobbies and life responsibilities so I'm taking it slowly.
• Sight reading. Nope. 
• Wrist thump on the body of the guitar, nail attacks, various fancy fingerstyle techniques.
• Play harmonics properly. This is supposed to be something so easy. But I just can't seem to improve.
• Strum some songs properly. Cindy Chai, if you're reading this. Trust me just a few months ago I was left frustrated for not being able to strum and sing along to a song. I am not so teror after all. I hate you Jake Bugg for writing a very hard song to strum to while attempting to sing.
• Play fancy chords. Nope nope. I can play basic chords and barre chords but please don't give me dimished 9 or 5 or whatever chords you want to test me with.
• I cannot just play a song you mention. In other words if you ask me to play one of Taylor Swift's songs I could probably guess its going to have like 4 chords but I can't play it without referring to ultimate-guitar dot com. Pro tip: The Script's songs are always G D Em C with capo somewhere on the second third or fourth fret heuheuheu. Of course I'm partly kidding.
• I can't play classy classical music nope nope.
• I can't play tap guitar. 
• I can't do all those fancy loops like Ed Sheeran always does in his gigs. I love Ed for his strumming and rawness of acoustic guitar sounds as well. I can't play like Ed.
• I can't change my guitar strings without breaking any strings in the process. I am terrible with this thing.

Well there you have it. I have like 10000 things to be learnt on the acoustic guitar. And I can't imagine I've only learnt this little in 10 years. Most guitarists progress so well in such little time period but bear in mind that some only get to improve at a slower rate because the lack of resources and companionship in learning. 

Look at how long it took me to understand about transposing. And barre chords. In the end it doesn't matter how long it took you to understand or accomplish something. What matters most is that as you look back you're going to be impressed on how the difficult things turn easy after days, weeks, months and years.

I always wanted to learn guitar properly, like take proper classical guitar lessons to fully understand the theory of music, but I am the only one in my family who has this interest in guitar so it's hard to convince my dad that this is worth his money haha. For some reason, I'd like to think that it was my guitar that found its way to me, and not the other way round. I just hope that this passion will never die, and hopefully I'll get to see another 10 years of guitaring.

To those who have just started their journey, remember to have fun, because it's supposed to be fun lol. Anything fun is easy. My guitar taught me that any skills can be learnt. It's only the time that limits us from believing that we are capable of doing something. 

This is the Jake Bugg song that caused me to question my strumming skills hahahaha.

Here, have an awful video of me singing and playing guitar back then.

I messed up with the settings so the published date is wrong. This one was

recorded around 2009. NSFL. This is going to leave you laughing as I cringe in embarrassment.