The Guitar Effect

Music is something magical. It has the power to change the world, can mark significant points in our lives, and bring us to new emotional place. I view music as not just something to listen to, but an experience. The greatest joy of music is creating and sharing it with the people I meet along my journey through life.

Learning to play the guitar has changed my life. This may seem like an exaggeration, but when I look back upon the period of life before I picked the guitar up, I was a different person. I suffered from a depression, had trouble in school, had difficulty making good friends, and any form authority repulsed me. I suffered from the typical teenage mentality, just developing independent thought and thinking that I knew everything, and if it weren't for those foolish adults, the world would be much better.

My dad played guitar for years, and I was always impressed with his ability. He'd gone to the Musicians Institute in L.A., and really knew his instrument. I had asked him to teach me several times, but he was always busy with work and trying to feed his 3 obnoxious children. I was the youngest of three, with two older sisters. Being youngest had its advantages, but it also meant that I was left behind by my two older siblings a lot. It also didn't help much that I was a boy, and most of their activites weren't all too boyish. My mother and father had been divorced since I can remember, and I didn't get to see my mom too often until I later moved with her at around 16. Ironically, it was my mother who actually got me started in playing guitar, completely unintentionally.