Dropping the keyboard – Picking up the guitar (Operation: We are The Open Mic)

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Hi.

Today I'm going to talk about how I changed instrument from the keyboard to the guitar.

I'm not at all a religious person, but at the age of 14-15 it's quite common in Sweden to go through something called "confirmation" or "affirmation of baptism". I wasn't going to do it but one of my best friends talked me in to it.

It was also the same friend who sadly passed before we hadn't even finished the confirmation and the friend I'm writing about in my by far most personal and sentimental song, "Ode to a Friend".

Anyhow at this time I hadn't really played music for a couple of years and the keyboard was mostly collecting dust in my room. But then one of the activities during confirmation was learning to play guitar.

And so my parents bought me a simple acoustic guitar with nylon strings (a Yamaha that I kept and used for more than 10 years). And slowly I started transforming my former knowledge to the guitar and realized that this was so much more fun than the keyboard and also a good way to get some attention from girls (did I mention I was 14?)

And after the confirmation classes (10 occasions) I went on teaching myself thanks to chords I downloaded from the internet. My laziness and the fact I wanted to do everything myself meant the development went slowly and actually the last 1,5 year I have developed my skills as a guitarist more than I did the first 15 years, but that's another story.

Do you have a defining story from your teens? Or something else you want to share with me? Just leave a comment and let me know!

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Eclectic Indie Rock/Folk musician from Sweden