By Shelby Wright
Let me tell you what happened to Brian. He’s a really hot lead guitar player in a local rock band. They are really making an impact in the night scene around town, and there is serious talk of a big city tour and an album soon. The guys are going so well I’d say the chances are high some great things will happen for them over the next year. But it wasn’t always so positive for Brian. He did a degree. It was an Arts degree. Now an Arts degree is not generally a great choice from a career point of view. Worse, Brian’s grades were a close scrape through at best. From an employer’s point of view, maybe some A grades in an Arts degree would suggest there was something up top to offset the lack of directly relevant job training. But there was no such consolation prize for Brian. He could not find a job. The thing was, he had spent most of his three years at university following what was going on in the music world. His studies took second place, after listening to tracks and chatting or reading about music most of the day, and being out around the clubs most of the night.
Now you would think that Brian should pursue his passion for music, and make a career out of it. You are quite right, of course, and that’s what all his friends and family said too. But there was a catch. Brian knew quite a lot about the music scene, but he had nothing to contribute on the stage. He had never learned to play. Not even basic piano lessons at school. And he was certainly no singer. He couldn’t even read music, so teaching it was out of the question. There was a job going teaching English in Korea. It was a contract for a year. Somebody gave Brian an old guitar and some “how to learn to play the guitar” book to take with him, and he plucked away in his spare time while he was away. When he came back he knew enough to join in with some band mates in jamming sessions. He wasn’t very good, but the guys were happy to have him along because they liked hearing what he had to say about artists and their music. He is like a music encyclopaedia, you see. Sometimes from his knowledge he could suggest fresh ideas for new songs they were working on. But he simply was not a real guitar player. He had to face up to the harsh truth. He was no more than a likeable hanger-on around the bands. Nobody took him seriously.
I’m not sure how it happened, but he then found a guitar-training course on the internet, and started to really focus on using it to learn how to play the guitar.
To be fair, he had made a start while in Korea, but had achieved little. It seemed like just a few weeks after he started with this new course that the results started to come. Somehow he was able to take all that music he had been listening to and play it himself, nearly as well as the real thing. It was as if a connection had been made and everything came together. The secret seemed to be the jamming tracks in the course, music he could play along with as well as following the main written and video lessons. The multimedia and interactive participation approach turned out to be far better for Brian than just learning from a book. Nearly as good as personal tuition, in fact. At last he was becoming a real musician, a real guitar player. Next thing he moved on from the jamming sessions with the band to a few filling-in gigs on the stage, then a permanent place in a band. It was the internet guitar-playing course that made the difference for Brian, and transformed his life. Now he really can live out his passion for music and make a living through playing his guitar. And the rest, as they say, is history. Or maybe we should wait a few years, and history could well have more to say about Brian.
Shelby Wright is in awe of the power of the information available on the internet to change people's lives. You can read a review here of the multimedia guitar lessons referred to in the article above.
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