A Spanish acoustic guitar is fantastic in many ways. It sounds great, is relatively easy to start playing (not easy to master it though), if you play chords well it can be a great accompaniment to a good singing voice, simple to carry around - most of all it can solve some problems for lonely musicians. Okay- most of my musician friends would raise their eyebrows in harmony if they hear that word being used in my context. (I confess, I am not one. lonely, sometimes, but "musician", not yet!). Lets, settle for Lonely Wannabe Musician.
So here is the thing - When I was in College, we started this light rock band called Dhwni and played together for more than 3 years. All of us still say that those were the best years of life. Yes, college had a part to play in it - but it was the music, the special bonding amongst band mates and the adrenalin rush of performing live was the real stuff - the kind of stuff that can come back to you when you are getting towards mid 30's in your fancy tie and stuck in that traffic jam in your fancy car !
Anyways, I was the drummer in this band and once we left college , while the guitarists and the singers and the piano guys continued to do what they were doing (musically speaking), I was stuck. Wanted to play, but there was no outlet. You cannot sit in your bedroom on a Saturday afternoon and bang away on the drums really, its not that kind of an instrument. At least that's the way it works for me, I need a band to play with and solo was not my deal was never good enough to do a solo.
The above state of affairs has continued for the last 12 years and all along I have thought of taking up the Spanish Guitar. My friend Neeraj Khanna ( A very accomplished Guitarist - Lead Guitarist of Sonic Flare) even gifted me a box guitar - a nice jumbo with a very good hum - which i played for several years. Over the last 3-4 years this guitar was getting very difficult to tune and I began to doubt my own ability - "If I cant even tune a guitar - then I cannot play it". Therefore I stopped when i had started picking up the guitar a bit.
But, last Friday, some thing happened that changed things - I was in conference organised by my organisation and like all our conferences, this one too ended with a session of singing late into the night with much alcohol and delirium. My friend Harsh had got a guitar for me to play and sing. A brand new F Cut beauty. I tuned the completely out of tune guitar in about 40 seconds in a reasonable inebriated state (no it was not the alcohol - i also checked with some sane parties, if the sound was OK) and played it for 3 hours after that. Confidence boost happened and this confirmed that my ear was not really out of tune but the problem was more with my old guitar that had warped and bent with age and cannot be tuned unless repaired.
So, last Sunday, I have acquired a beauty - A brand new YAMAHA Acoustic 310 Spanish Guitar. Cost me a bit - but every sound that it produces gives me a ROI and I am feeling great. Have been trying to play a lot of things and am trying to continue from where I left 4 years back. I just recalled that I was stuck last perfecting the F Major Chord properly. I can play most of the other Chords, their minors, their suspended versions and the works, but I just cannot master the F major Chord. Therefore, the only thing that stands between the lonely musician and his music today is the Major Chord F. What the F !
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