The Rewards of Persistence | How I learned to play the guitar

I first heard The Beatles when I was a teenager. I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my grandmother and she was channel surfing when she overheard a Beatles concert with the camera zooming in on the guitarist's solo. I was completely mesmerized by what I was seeing and hearing and I knew immediately "that is what I want to do". Something sparked inside me that said "I want to know how to play music like that." I mean it hit me like a lightning bolt and I still remember that moment 10 years later.

I pleaded with my father to give me an electric guitar as the only Christmas gift I asked for my senior year of high school. But my family thought I was just a whim and wouldn't insist, and since guitars were relatively expensive at the time, they denied my request. So I picked up my uncle's old guitar, which had been lying around for years. It was an unbranded electric guitar. The rough feel and easy out-of-tune intonation announced its poor playability. This was a big challenge for me as a beginner.

However, this did not dampen my enthusiasm in any way. I asked my uncle to teach me and I figured he would be happy I took an interest in learning. Very soon I learned that family members are not reliable instructors. The lessons were never consistent and soon they were all but forgotten.

From then on, I started trying to learn on my own. But at first, it was as difficult as anything else. Like many of you, I spent almost all of my free time learning how to play, but to no avail. I used to have to tune my guitar every night because it was always out of tune for no reason. I also had the same problems that all beginners have, sore fingertips, wrist pain, underdeveloped pinky, chord changes, etc. A series of setbacks made this self-learning end in failure for me.

I eventually realized that the starting point for learning guitar was to get a guitar that was easy to play. And, a guitar that I could afford. It was very difficult to find the perfect guitar without spending too much money. Luckily, I found Glarry - an up and coming music brand offering very affordable but great quality guitars. I couldn't believe my eyes when I got this Glarry GST. That's when all my problems were over and I could finally sit down and learn to play guitar to my maximum potential.

With the help of my previous experience and Glarry's guitar, my self-learning went much smoother this time. I was no longer aimlessly learning random stuff with no real direction. Instead, I tried to develop some sort of organized plan. For example, start with open chord shapes, then learn the barre chords shapes for each, then start learning some beginning songs that contain those chords, then learn the pentatonic scale, and so on.

I gave myself a year to learn how to play some popular songs or come up with some basic chord progressions. The challenging part is trying to really master the guitar at a professional level, which goes far beyond learning songs or playing simple solos. In addition to the muscle memory and ear training built up over the years, it requires a fair amount of music theory, which is the hardest thing to learn without an instructor. The good thing is that there are amazing world-class instructors on YouTube, and I've learned a lot from following some of their free lessons.

This Glarry GST has carried me through over three years of hardship and joy, and has become a part of my life. It is the most effective way to get through frustration and high flying periods. There is something very satisfying and restorative about coming home after a bad day and exploding your frustrations out in sonic, distortion and ambience. My life would be very different and extremely boring if I had never played guitar. I'm 25 and I'm glad I stuck with it and will continue to do so until the day I die. I believe that persistence always pays off.