Ralford.net

  [Guitar]

Despite all of the computer crap I ramble about, I'm also a musician. I've been a guitar player since the later half of '97, so it's been roughly 8 years since I started. I don't mean dabbling for a month or two here and there. Guitar playing has been a pretty serious hobby of mine since I started. In fact, I can say that I'm obsessed with it.

Let me tell you about my musical background. I played piano for about a half year when I was a wee tot, but not enough to know what playing piano meant. Similarly, I tried out drums for a few months sometime back in middle school, but I never got past the smacking on a drum-pad stage. The musical transition period for me was the viola. I played viola from about fourth grade till my senior year - a whopping eight or nine years. I never was really excited about it, but could always handle what was thrown at me in orchestra. I guess this is where I learned when music works and when it doesn't. I owe more thanks to my viola than it'll ever know. It was certainly a big boost in my guitar playing, and gave me pretty quick up time. After all, guitars and violas don't differ much past the number of strings and the position that you hold the instrument.

Back during college I always said I want really want to get into guitar after graduation. I surely have. For the past few months I've been jumping around looking for where I fit. To be specific, I've been looking for the unique experience of spontaneous communication through music. There's a ton of factors in whether this will actually work with a group of individuals or not. A friend recently referred to it as a game of catch. Someone has the ball, and the others are waiting for it. When the ball is passed, someone catches it.

But what makes it fun? I don't know. I suppose that I couldn't have really felt the whole improv thing a few years ago. But now, it feels so natural. I'm hoping that this is a path that will always grow with me. I would really hate to reach the end of my life, look back, and only have lots of angry hours of engineering. It would be fun though to sit down and play a funky guitar groove over some drums, a bass, piano, and maybe some horns.

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