Where are you in your guitar journey? I’m still stuck in the same place when i started at 13 when i got my first guitar.
- well I’ve recently started playing again I’ve been playing now for about 6 months.
- I like Rock, Metal, Classical, finger picking style.
- I want to try to learn as much as I can, well what my disability allows me to learn.
How have you gone about learning guitar so far?
- the little that i know I learned on my own, and from one Chord book that i bought off eBay.
- Have you spent much time on technique before finding our stuff?
- not at all, I honestly thought you had to be blessed to play the guitar
- I don’t know any scales, i can play a pentatonic scale but I can pick as fast as turtle walks.
- everything to be honest, but the thing i’m stuck the most, is my picking technique, i wish i could play fast when i wanted to.
Sorry i forgot to mention my name and talk a little about myself.
Well my name is Carlos but my friends call me JayC, I just turned 51 years old this past July. I am disabled and I’m really hoping that I can learn how to play this guitar that i have here. I suffer from a traumatic brain injury aka T.B.I. for short. I was gonna take a vacation to the Philippines and my father told me he would drive me to the airport, so on our way to the city, a semi truck was coming towards our town while we were headed to San Antonio Tx. Well when we passed each other up, a part of his equalizer beam bar that holds the suspension and leaf springs together, broke off and instead of hitting the radiator of my fathers truck it won’t over the hood right through the windshield striking me directly in the face and head at 96 mph, according to the police report and my lawyers. the piece of metal that hit me in the face weighed about 40 or 50 pounds. Well I died at the scene of the accident and was pronounced dead for 18 hours, I was in a comma for 3 months. I had 20 blood transfusions, had 30 + surgeries, and I live in 3 different rehab facilities from 2014 to Jan 3 2019.
5 years i struggled learning how to walk, talk, getting my hands to synchronize. I was messed up pretty bad. I lived there and finally i got the director of the facility to let my father bring my guitar. But I got frustrated because this dang head injury, gets in the way of my playing. I know what i want to do, but my brain can’t do more than 1 thing at a time, so it’s hard to get my picking hand and left hand to work together. Oh and if i repeat myself a lot and I apologize now, we people that have a TBI tend to repeat ourselves. I’m glad that I found this site, my neurologist recommended that i learn how to play an instrument, because it is a proven medical fact that learning a musical instrument can help with the healing process, well at least that’s what the neurologist told me. My neuro pathways were severed and the majority of the right side of my brain was damaged. So like I said I hope you guys can help keep me motivated to practice, because dealing with a TBI you get frustrated easily. Well that’s a little about me. And I’d like to say thank you the Crack the Code team for helping me with this scholarship program. Because living on disability totally sucks when you have to pay for medication and health insurance from your disability check. So hopefully with you all pushing me to practice, maybe when I learn and get good, maybe i can give guitar lessons here in my small town. And maybe make a little extra money the side and pay it forward, like the good book says to do. Well you all take care and good luck with learning this hard instrument. Take care and God bless you all. good night. 