The music in me

Approximately 21 years ago (ooer, giving my age away!), I was given the most incredible gift. It was so incredible that it changed the course of my life. The gift was a guitar. My father paid R5 for it. That translates to far less than a dollar! I wish I had taken a photo of this guitar because I'm not sure that people believe me when I describe it to them.

The body of the guitar was entirely split open and it transpired that the guitar had actually fallen out of the top of someone's cupboard and the impact had split open the guitar making it fairly worthless to the owner (R5 worthless) but invaluable to my folks and to me. Why? Because I had been begging them for any kind of musical instrument from a very young age and, being a financially challenged family, musical instruments were rather near the bottom of the list of priorities, despite the fact that my entire family is musical. In this gift, my folks had found an answer to my pleading, and I had found THE answer. (cue triumphant music, angel choirs etc etc)

Anyone who understands ANYTHING about the workings of a string instrument will know that there is a reason for the shape and size of the BODY of a guitar or, indeed, ANY string instrument. (violin, cello, you get the idea) It creates sound volume and depth. Alter the shape even slightly and you lose a lot of quality....ahem, quality is NOT the word that comes to mind when I remember the sound of my first guitar! Unless you are going specifically for the sound of a banjo with cotton for strings. Yes, my pride and joy sounded HORRIBLE. (Well, in its defense, the body was split WIDE open on the end!) I didn't care, so proud was I, of that guitar. I had no guitar case but this suited me well because it meant that, when I walked to school, absolutely NO-ONE could mistake that instrument for anything BUT a guitar. I carried it with pride. I wore it like a badge that said, "musician" and, twice a week, we walked to school together for our guitar club lesson.

Mrs Immelman, a woman that changed my life without even realising it, was a teacher who held guitar club once a week. If you attended this club, you were entitled to one free lesson a week. Wild horses wouldn't have kept me away. I lived for those lessons. They were my only path to musical freedom. (guitar lessons were too expensive) I ate, slept, breathed guitar. I locked myself in my room for hours struggling to get myself comfortably from D to G to A without taking ages to position my fingers. I cried with frustration that I couldn't just make the music come but nothing would make me give up. I had found my passion and an outlet for the teenage angst I was feeling.

I made it through the basic chords just in time for my folks to announce that I would be leaving my school and moving to a new school. I was devastated mostly because of my guitar lessons! No amount of begging and pleading sufficed though and, after a tearful goodbye to Mrs Immelman, we moved on.

Left with no choice, I began to teach myself as much as I could. Most of the time I had no idea what chords I was playing because I had never learnt the intricacies of musical theory and I still haven't. But I picked things up as I went along. To this day I can't tell you the chords for a large number of my own compositions but I am very lucky to be working with such talented musicians that they can pick up where I am going musically with a song. I hear it all in my head. The translation is just a bit tricky!

But I digress...

Sometime after moving suburbs and schools, I was offered a nylon string, almost new, guitar that was completely whole in every way! It was too good to pass up and I decided, since I was being given a guitar, it seemed fair to pass on my first guitar to a friend who was keen to learn. Paying it forward was never so hard. I still miss that guitar and I doubt it ever found an owner who loved it more than I did. I wish I had been able to keep it but it wasn't meant to be.

Once I had made friends with the "newbie" we got on just fine and the songs started to flow out of me. They were nowhere near SAMA award winning compositions but it was a very exciting time for me because I was finding myself as a musician and songwriter.

And then the day came when my parents came home with a casio keyboard!

They were given it by someone in their church. It was like manna from heaven for me! A guitar AND a keyboard?! Of course, we all fought over it but I managed to get my quota of time with it and I made the most of it. I tinkered around on it and composed little tunes that I can no longer remember. They were very simple and very melancholy! However, it was frustration at how limiting my lack of know-how was, that spurred me on to find out how to play chords.

There was a setting you could use that meant, if you pressed any of the keys in the lowest octave on the keyboard, it played the full chord. Each of the lower keys was labelled from A to G so I knew which one was which. Using that, and my guitar for help, I listened to the notes that sounded in each chord and then I would continue holding down the key while I found each of the notes I heard, in the higher octaves on the keyboard. I would hold down each key that sounded right until I found the three that I heard predominantly in the entire chord coming from the bottom octave.

Shew! It was a long process and I must have driven my family insane, but I worked my way through all the chords until I had learnt all of the majors, and then all of the minors and then I spent weeks getting comfortable with where they were on the keyboard so that I could play them with confidence. I really just wanted to get to a place where I was comfortable enough to write songs and I did get there eventually. That was when I started writing songs for my class to sing in the inter-class singing competition. Of course I didn't tell them it was my songs! However, the eventually guessed and we went on to win a few of them.

These are moments I remember with a little pride and a lot of happiness. There are few things that fulfill me more than music itself. Perhaps the only thing that fulfills me more, is seeing people get something out of my own music. I was such a terribly shy young girl, but my music compelled me to get on a stage. I made myself ill with stage fright but once I was up there, I felt so alive and so capable of anything. I felt invincible. I think that only a performer will really understand that feeling. However, all you have to do is replace music with your own passion, and maybe you'll get an idea.

Much time has passed since all of that and things have changed. I am still given guitars but now they are sponsored by Ovation! The keyboard has altered in size and stature but it is still a Casio and I am still being given those too! One could say I'm truly blessed and that would be accurate. To me, they are all signs that I am on the right track. The universe knew that I was meant to make music and it lead me along that path even though the odds seemed stacked against me in many ways. There are times when I feel that perhaps it's time to throw in the... guitar? It's hard making money off of something you love because it feels wrong. We have to compromise our principles in more than a few ways and that bothers me.

At the heart of it, I'm still just that young girl who loves to lock herself in her room for hours and write song after song after song... but being an adult with responsibilities doesn't allow you that luxury and I'm a guilty of forgetting how much it fulfills me when I get caught up in the stress of life and paying bills. Creativity takes a back seat. However, at times like this, when I force myself to remember, I can almost feel that passion and drive that had me sitting at that keyboard for hours, days, weeks...And then I realise the catch 22 that I am in.

I need my talent to survive, and that leaves it open to abuse from the one person that always treasured it most. However, if I honour my talent, there is no question of survival. It has honoured me from day one and I am still able to look to it for sustenance. And so, hard as it may be at times, I will continue to honour it the best way I know how.

That is why I WILL sit at that keyboard and spend time with my guitar and allow it to work it's way out of my heart and into the keys and strings and melodies and lyrics that form the songs that, in turn, honour the music in me.