Stringing and Wheeling

In the year that I graduated from secondary school, I had to wait a very long time until I gained admission to the university and even began there. I couldn't be idle, and so that was when I began trying out a few things.

A year prior, I returned home to find a piano during one of the school breaks I used to have between terms. My brother had started taking piano lessons then. Seeing how interested in music I quickly grew during that short time I was at home, my mother suggested something one evening.

"Tomorrow, we'll go out with Uncle Sanmi to find you an instrument you would like to learn." My mother said, I thought to pick the guitar to learn, and so we bought one.

Uncle Sanmi could only help me with music rudiments and not how to actually play a guitar since he only gave piano lessons, and so he linked me with a friend of his who could help me, Mr. Ona.

I only learned at Mr. Ona's studio for a month, and there were only eight classes, two each week. That was only enough to get me started, and then I was on my own afterwards. I had to look up music concepts myself and try to understand them, as well as finger placements and all on the guitar. It was a struggle to progress optimally, as I had to keep returning to school until I finally graduated a year later.

So when I finally graduated, I had more time in my hands and continued to learn to play the guitar. I was so in love with the guitar and music, so passionately, that I often fell asleep with my guitar. The beautiful blue acoustic guitar of mine.

However, because I was learning on my own, I had no bearing per se and stuck to the songs I was interested in and learning then, and whatever was feasible to learn on YouTube and a couple of apps on the Play Store.

Some of the challenges a beginner faces with learning how to play the guitar are dealing with the pressure from the strings against the fingers and getting your fingers to go where they are actually meant to be. In essence, learning the guitar, particularly acoustic guitars, usually comes with some physical pain.

Calluses develop at the fingertips eventually—with regular practice—making them very thick and hard, and then it gets easier to press your (usually left) fingers against the strings on the (fretboard) guitar. So while you are trying to learn music and guitar concepts, you are concurrently working your fingers out.

The thing about learning an instrument, not just the guitar, is that there are levels. The first few levels involve developing muscle memories and training your limbs or fingers for coordination. On the guitar, for example, the left fingers (for most people) do entirely different work from the right fingers, so you have to learn to coordinate them to work in sync.

Over time, the learning becomes more mental, although you have to keep the physical in shape to be able to implement what's up in the head. The levels increase with time, and you deal more with processing melodies, harmonies, and rhythm, as well as progressions. And then, too, there will come a time when you will need to train your ears to instantly interpret sounds. Then there is the necessity to master the art of practice for actual growth. It goes on and on like that.

Learning to play the guitar was an exciting experience for me. It still is, as learning never stops. But compared to other things I have learned in this life, it was a tad bit harder—compared to driving, at least.

Thankfully for me, my mother thought I should also use the free time I had before going on to the university to learn how to drive. And so, in that same year, I enrolled in a driving school. Surprisingly, I was informed at the driving school that I would only attend for two weeks and that would be all there. I thought I would need weeks and months to learn and master how to drive a car, but that wasn't the case.

They only had manual cars at the driving school, and so that was what I started with. Learning to move a manual car was way more complicated than I had expected, though. It was way different than what I saw my mother do with her automatic car.

In the first two or three days, I struggled with starting a manual car and getting it to move. I had to do this with the clutch first, then that with the gear, then something else on the brakes, and on and on again with the throttle and steering. Jeez! It felt like holding mathematics in my hands.

My teacher finally threatened to never teach me if I didn't get it right, and so I just did. Afterwards, it was a piece of cake. And that was how it was with the other lessons, particularly learning to move the car on actual roads and navigating amongst other cars.

After two weeks were complete, I realised that I had only learned how to move the car but not actually drive for real. Thankfully, my mother continued to give me world-class driving lessons from there, especially on how to drive in Lagos because it's crazy on the roads there.

Driving seemed complicated and scary at first, but it was way easier than I thought as I kept on learning every now and then. I have had a number of accidents, though, but only one was was severe and it wasn't my fault.

Inspired by the communtity's prompt, I would say learning the guitar wasn't exactly easy, and learning to drive was way easier. Both of them are part of my favourite hobbies, though, and I will always be glad that I learned.

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