Musical Experience

Listening to music has always been the most enjoyable and uplifting experience for me since my youth. If you sing and accompany yourself with a musical instrument the musical experience reaches a higher level of enjoyment and spiritual uplift. The music I enjoy – rock and roll, pop, jazz and ballad – are mostly played with guitar music.

Play the Music

For me to sing and replicate the music I enjoy, I decided at an early age of about 7 years to learn to play the ukulele. Problem was that my fingers were too small at that age. The closest thing to a guitar that I could play with my small fingers was the ukulele. So, I started to learn to play the ukulele by imitating my friends and relatives who knew how to play it.
By the time I was 9 years old, my fingers were big enough to tackle the guitar.

Transition

Transitioning from ukulele to guitar is simple. The chord fingering for the four string ukulele is the same for the guitar except that you add more notes (or fingers) to utilize the 6 strings of the guitar.

Just like in my ukulele days, I learned to play the guitar by imitating guitar-playing people, buying guitar music literature (only guitar chord diagrams where available at that time)and by experimenting by myself how to form chords or play melodies until I could produce the same musical sound as the music I heard from radio or records.

Playing by Ear
This exercise in experimenting with guitar chords and melodies until one gets the right sound is actually the basis for learning to play guitar by ear.
Once you memorize these sounds and become skillful at playing about 12 guitar chords, you could easily accompany yourself or play with your group in singing most of your favorite songs. Most rock and roll, pop music or ballads can be played with just three to four chords. These same chords can be moved down or up the neck of the guitar with the same fingering to match key changes in the song.

Basic Chords

There lies the beauty and popularity of the guitar. By just learning three to four chords (easily done in an hour), you could already play a good number of popular songs like Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, Silent Night, La Bamba, Johnny B Goode, Jail House Rock, Blue Suede Shoes, Jail House Rock, Blowing in the Wind, Love Me Do, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Satisfaction, etc. Most rock and roll, blues, country and folk music can be played with just three to four guitar chords.

Imagine yourself being a rock star or country music star like Elvis Presley or John Denver by just playing songs with three to four guitar chords. I was playing guitar and singing like Elvis Presley when I got hooked on the guitar when I was about 9 years old.

Hooked on Guitar

Once you learn how to strum the chords of your favorite songs, you will be hooked with the guitar and be hooked for life.

(About the author: Frank plays pop, jazz and classical guitar. He is in demand for his guitar playing by music bands, friends, the church, for social functions in his community and other venues.  A mechanical engineer by profession, he is an entrepreneur, owns his trading company supplying refrigeration equipment for the food and fishing industries. He owns a vast collection of electric and acoustic guitars gathered from his extensive travels in Europe, the USA and Asia.)   

Why Play Guitar

Guitars, they say, are easy to start learning to play but the most difficult to master.  Among string instruments it is portable in most of its variations – from the smallest ukulele to the upright bass fiddle.  It is this portability that makes it handy and readily available to play whenever one feels like it anytime, anywhere.

Started With Ukuleles

With these advantages over another string instrument, the piano, my brothers, the guitar gurus of my life, developed a passion and a growing musical career with the guitar early in life.  This came about when our father brought home a ukulele from one of his out-of-town sales calls. They plucked and strummed the uke with the pop hit songs played on AM radio.  They moved on to playing steel-string acoustic guitars bought from a noted guitar maker from the province where my father’s ancestors came from in the Philippines.

Playing With A Band

Their talents were soon recognized as they played in our family’s parties as a small band.  I joined them, without a guitar, just singing back up.  I didn’t care if I was in or out of tune or if they even heard my voice at all. As long as I could catch a few of the coins the relatives threw us after an Elvis song or a Christmas carol, I was happy with money to spend for snacks and soda.

Moving on, my brothers in their teen years joined a band with our older uncles who had enough financial backing to buy electric guitars, amplifiers, and a drum set.

They became experienced guitar players with performances at parties, political rallies, and even once on TV. Soon I realized I wanted to play like them or at least learn the basics of playing the guitar.

My First Lessons

So I got my first guitar lessons from my brother.  He showed me how to play basic chords. The A, D and E keys were the easiest to play since the finger positions for pressing the strings between the frets were ergonomically simple.   The fingers on the other hand plucked and strummed the guitar strings, of course. I very quickly accumulated calluses on my fingertips from applying pressure on the steel strings, not to mention the pain this caused on the skin and flesh under my nails.  My brother insisted that the pain and calluses would work to my advantage because it forced me to position the fingers properly on each string with enough pressure to generate the right sound for each chord I strummed and picked.  The calluses were worth it since it eventually made it easy to play with nylon strings or any type of string instrument.

My Guitar Guru

In the previous blog my brother, my guitar guru or maestro, tells us how he got started playing the guitar.