What It Is:Picking up guitar for the first time as an adult
Who Tried It:Rachel DeSantis, Music Staff Writer
One night, in the spring of 2020, as the world was sourdough starter-ing and gardening its way through the pandemic, I jolted awake with a rather lucid thought: “I’m going to die without ever having learned how to play guitar.”
I don’t know what exactly inspired the melodramatic timing, but it was something that had bothered me for a while. I’m a music journalist who can’t play an instrument — I was starting to feel like a car salesman who didn’t have a license, or a dentist with no teeth. Subjects would often ask me if I was a musician myself during interviews and I’d always just joke, “Well, no, but I’m an excellent shower singer.”
I put the thought aside for a rainy day — until that rainy day arrived in the form ofGuitar Center, offering me the chance to take a few in-person lessons at their Union Square location in New York City. Okay!
The author, Rachel DeSantis, with her guitar.Courtesy of Rachel DeSantis
I started with an acoustic guitar, and 30-minute lessons once a week for four weeks. Thursdays became “Guitar Thursdays,” where I’d lug my instrument to the office and colleagues would jokingly ask for a concert.
I liked my instructor, Hiro, instantly, as his unwavering confidence in me and my abilities was almost certainly faked, but welcome nonetheless. “I’ll bet I’m your oldest student,” I told him on the first day.
“Not even close,” he responded. “Before COVID, I had a student who was 77 years old and had two goals: one, he wanted to learn to play the guitar as good as me. And two, he wanted to become fluent in French so that he could get a French girlfriend.” (I have no clue what became of this man and his goals, but I sincerely hope he has achieved both.)
When I told Hiro that I wish I’d started lessons at an earlier age, he groaned and commiserated with me, saying he wished the same. When I asked him how old he was when he started playing, his answer made me laugh: he started when he was 10.
Guitar Center.Guitar Center
That’s not to say it hasn’t been hard. After one particularly tough practice session, I even took to my private Twitter account to vent my frustrations: “How has anyone in the history of the world ever learned how to play the guitar?” I wrote. A longtime friend chimed in with some sage advice: “Be a boy in middle school wanting to impress girls,” he replied. Though I do think the ship has sailed on that, I’ll keep it in mind!
Of course I’ll always wish I’d picked up an instrument years ago, in the same way I still wish I’d started learning a foreign language as a kid. But there’s no time like the present — if not now, when?
The author pretending to play for the camera.Courtesy of Rachel DeSantis
source: people.com
