The earliest memory I have of wanting to learn a musical instrument was in the summer of 2002. I was 10 years old and like most children, I was aware of music and greatly enjoyed listening to the sounds coming out of the family stereo, but I didn’t understand how these songs were created. I had very little exposure to live music so my way of identifying a specific sound was either watching someone performing in a school assembly or watching television. My parents both didn’t play.
I remember first listening to the Rock band Queen. I heard Brian May playing his exquisite guitar solo on Bohemian Rhapsody and thought to myself, what instrument produced that incredible sound? I was intrigued. I needed to know more about that sound and in doing so it was the moment that fuelled the fascination I have for music today. My parents would go on to be my earliest source of musical inspiration, I would spend hours of listening to their cassette tapes. I became obsessed with the groups Queen, The Cure and Oasis.
It soon became clear that the guitar would be my instrument of choice; an instrument that could soar above other instruments or provide the bedrock of harmonic interest. An instrument that could be played sweetly one moment and obnoxiously the next. I loved the versatility of this instrument and from an early age I knew there were a plethora of songs and sounds inside my head, just waiting to be withdrawn from it. I would go on to enroll in peripatetic guitar lessons at school and to this day, my obsession of the guitar is still going strong.
