box of Jack

So I’ve been practicing my guitar in the company of a friend.

This friend is Chinese. Therefore, by birthright, he must have studied piano, violin, or both. In his case, piano. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what kind of music he is trained in nor how talented he is because I’ve never heard a complete song from him. All I know is that his tastes and mine have the very smallest of intersections. What he has shown me is that he’s got a solid grasp of music theory and colourful jargon that I don’t really care to remember. He strums on a low-end classical guitar. It’s a hollow wooden thing with a wide neck, and strings that are set high off the fretboard and far apart.

In contrast, I have never studied musical theory except for that short semester where I remembered Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit. One day, I surprised my parents and told them I wanted to learn the electric guitar. In turn, they surprised me by whole heartedly agreeing and buying me a black and white Stratocaster and a practice amp. My primary motivation behind this was the idea that I could become less of an outcast if I shared musical tastes with the rest of the world. So began my dabbling in the world of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Korn.

I hadn’t been studying the guitar for more than a eight months before I switched high schools. The new high school promised more classical training and grooming students for bands and recitals and whatnot. Gone were the days where I’d sit in a dark room with my burnt-out rocker of a guitar teacher. He would speak in his hushed smoker’s voice and quickly scribble down the tablature to some whatever song he fancied at the moment. This new high school promised me that music lessons would give me that extra shiny coat of nerdiness as if it wasn’t already enough that I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up.

I gave up my guitar lessons. Instead, using whatever knowledge I had gleaned from my lessons, I just played whatever I felt like. I’d keep picking out songs that I liked and seeing if they were easy enough to play. In time, I learnt to sing along whilst strumming. I believe that was Coldplay’s Yellow.

So, sitting around in my friend’s apartment, it’s easy to understand why we’re taking such different approaches to “practicing”. He sits there trying to transcribe some obscure a cappella song into a guitar accompaniment. He furrows his brow and searches for notes on his piano, he looks up chords in a big reference print-out. Meanwhile, I’m surfing the ULTIMATE GUITAR TABS ARCHIVE for songs that involve about three chords with strumming that never changes. He aims to play the chords properly, not missing a single string and observing correct technique; I just kinda bash away until it sounds something vaguely like what I hear on the radio.

For all the time spent thinking about how I’d love to go back to guitar lessons, I really don’t. Because I’m afraid I’ll stop having fun. I don’t want to practice fingering techniques (heh), scales or chord theory. I just want a quiet place where I can retreat and bust out an extra-staccato version of George Micheal’s Faith or get nice and broody with Damien Rice songs. My own private karaoke booth.