How and why I started my music journey and a little bit about it

When I first bought that B.C Rich, I had to reach above the fretboard to play the intro section of Metallica's One because I couldn't reach the lower frets. I kinda grew into her...

Over the years I've found that musicians can be mainly classified into two categories:

- Those who began playing their instrument at around age 5 because of their parents.

- Those who began playing their instrument at around age 12 to impress their friends and look cool. Or metalheads...

When I was around 12 years old, I remember I was on a road trip in the car going back to Medellín as we went to visit some family in Armenia and my mom asked me out of the blue if I'd like to take up an instrument (my sisters had been playing piano for roughly over a year.). I said "No, thanks. I'm fine like this." And we never really spoke about it again.

Fast forward some 6 months or so and I'm watching a Slipknot live video (surprisingly enough for a long haired prepubescent kid) and it seems like they're having the time of their lives on stage. I focused mainly on the two guitarists, Mick and Jim, partly because they're the biggest guys in the band but mostly cause it looked like they were killing it on the guitars with the heavy aggressive riffing and the face melting solos and I knew I wanted to give it a shot. However learning how to play guitar seemed daunting so I said that I'd just start off with bass cause it's less strings, looks easy, and you can't even hear it (Sorry, bassists). However, I was never really interested in the bass so I decided to challenge myself and learn guitar.

First few months

The very first thing I was taught in my first lesson were the parts of the guitar... (I still struggle to remember the word "Tuning Pegs" from time to time). And after that I was taught the Iron Man riff. If I'd have to pin-point the single factor that motivated me to continue guitar and music, it'd be that. The fact that I began immediately with actually playing something and not learning some fuck-ass theory. For the first few months I never cared for theory and focused simply on playing faster and more complicated things. I played in several school events and about 4 months into having started my musical journey I knew that I was gonna be a musician and that that would be my job.

The second half

I like to separate my musical life into two halves. First half was when I was living in Colombia, had two phenomenal guitar teachers, and would wake up at 5:30am nearly every day so I could jam for an hour before going to school. And the second half was when I moved to Abu Dhabi and, because moving to a different continent and different school calendars and what not, I spent a little over 6 months with no school in which I'd play guitar every single second of the day. After I entered school, I never really hung out with anyone for the first 2 years so... you guessed it, more guitar playing!

Competitions

I know that, as a musician, I should be against competition because no musicians is better than the next musician and we're all a family and as true as all that is, here's an idea: screw that. I've always loved taking part in musician competitions and battle of the bands type things and always trying to be better than my other guitar friends with friendly competitions amongst us. It forces you to really step your musicianship up quite a lot and it ensure that you're constantly evolving as a musician. That's why I personally think that musician competitions are great and have taken part in about 5 or 6 having won 4 which obviously is extremely rewarding and lets me see how I've matured as a musician over time.

My first competition. More importantly, the first time I was literally forced to wear fancy clothes. The sticking out of the tongue is a way of hiding the nerves.

The future

I'm assuming the next big step is moving to Boston to study composition for films, TV and video games at Berklee. Usually when I'm asked why I want to study music for films I explain that, the way I view it, film composition offers an extremely well rounded approach to music as I will learn the fuck-ass theory I used to run away from, audio engineering skills and will learn about the music business. So, as much as I'd love to study music for films, TV and video games at Berklee, only time will tell. At the moment I'm just focused on making some great music and sharing it!

So my story isn't filled with ups and downs and crazy life-changing events that numb every pleasure in my life to the point where music is my last resort for some sanity. However, music for me is, not only a creative outlet for all my artistic ideas, but a reflection of my will, determination, work ethic, and it's a way to grow intellectually and spiritually.

#Music #life #biography #guitar