My guitar and its story

I believe that everything that I have and achieved in life has only got to me by extremely hard work, earning everything that I have and then, extremely important, my Christian faith. I grew up for the first nine years of my life in a small town, Cradock. Suddenly we moved to Queenstown in 2006 and joined a church community where almost everyone in the community where musically gifted.

At age 10, I saw this drum kit in the church. Seeing someone play this instrument was fascinating with two arms and two feet. It looked like each ligament of the drummer’s body had a mind of its own. After numerous YouTube videos of drummers and how to play drums, I fancied myself a drum kit out of my mom’s buckets and frying pans in the kitchen and made a humongous noise. Later that year, my dad joined the church sound team, my sister and mom the projecting team and I, well I gained access to the extra drum kit in the church hall on Thursdays when the church band practiced for Sunday.

The shortened version of this story is that drums are expensive, a lot more than any other instrument, my interest in playing drums where sorrowed. It was then that I decided to try the piano. We had a piano at home; there were many times that I have sat beside my mom while her fingers run across the black and white keys, playing the most beautiful music. My sister was just as gifted and even achieved Grade eight in Royal Schools. I started out with some inexpensive piano lessons, with every lesson I had, my hands were sore. Not because of playing piano, but the piano instructor kept on hitting me on my hands with a ruler every time I made a mistake, and believe me, I made many mistakes. Two months later with purple and blue hands (hehe no, I am exaggerating right now), stopped with the piano lessons. Sometimes I took some of my sister’s sheet music and work them out for myself, it will always be part of my interest.

Later in grade 8 at age 13, I started out with the idea of making my own guitar because again it's not a relatively cheap instrument. Needless to say, I built the guitar with no plans what so ever, only the picture of a guitar in my mind… The guitar that I made with pressboard, nuts and bolts and even toothpicks for the fretboard did not turn out to be so magical, it did not even keep its tune properly. Later that year I received the most beautiful present from my peasants, my first guitar. I found myself in front of YouTube and a book full of guitar chords day and night I soon realized that playing this instrument came naturally to me.

I joined the church band and soon realized that there is a definite difference between guitars and the price range. The more expensive the guitar gets the better it plays and the better sound it produced depending on the design, wood, and action of the guitar.

I started out saving every bit of money I found for the ideal guitar. With my typical house tasks at home, washing my parent's car, mowing the lawn and doing the dishes. Growing up in our house, if you don’t do your part, then you’re in big trouble. My dad paid me R20 to R25 depending on how dirty the cars are for washing them. With this, I saw an opportunity and started out washing the neighborhood cars for the same amount. Since my talent for playing guitar evolved so fast, I decided to give some guitar lessons in the afternoons after school for a R20 a lesson. At some point, I had 5 students a week which attended my guitar lessons. As soon as I got 16 years of age in Grade 11, I worked at a storage facility for meats and Clover dairy products, Frozen Foods, Queenstown. I worked extremely hard every day by proving myself to my boss and fellow colleague, even thou I could not understand Xhosa.

After a total of 3 years, I bought my first proper guitar for a special price of only R6500. The Yamaha FSX730sc!

I started out with singing and even performing at weddings, restaurants and local pubs.

After winning our school talent show, the local Radio interviewed me on the air and I sang a few songs for the listeners. This allowed me to promote my music in town and to regain the amount I spend on the guitar.

Today it’s extremely sad to me, I’m an Architectural Technology student. I study day and night, sometimes you don’t even have time to do basic things such as getting a haircut, eating properly, doing your washing, cycling or jogging, catching up with loved ones and not even for playing guitar. It is as if the course has totally taken control of my life, meanwhile, my guitar sits in the corner collecting dust.

I just hope that one day if I look back at my life, that all these struggles to get where I am today was all worth it.