Joseph Grijalva

4/27/05

My Red Guitar End of Year CM

I have always loved music. When I was very little I would record myself singing some of my favorite songs on the tape recorder. I remember loving to sing, “In the Middle of the Night”, and “When the Lights go Down in the City” (I am not sure if this is the actual title. Later on in fifth and six grade I took keyboard lessons at school, but I never really learned anything. I really started getting into playing music when my grandpa gave me a cheap acoustic guitar when we were visiting him in New Mexico. When I came home my mom taught me some chords and later the song “blackbird”. The Christmas after I received the acoustic guitar, my parents bought me an electric guitar. Then I started taking lessons shortly before freshmen year. My red guitar is the first guitar that I have purchased with my own money and gotten to play and test before I bought it.

For me, music is the ultimate form of expression. Nothing can match music in terms of expressing emotion and meaning. The lyrics of a song allow the writer to express his or her feelings in words, while the music actually allows the listener to feel what the writer was feeling when he or she wrote the song. Where other forms of expression may leave only emotion or knowledge on the reader, listener or viewer, music provides “the whole package.”

The guitar is often the center of modern musical compositions. The instrument often takes the spotlight, expressing the most power of emotion. I love the guitar, not because it can allow me to be in the spotlight in a band context, but because my playing can reflect whatever emotion I am feeling at the moment. Effectively, the guitar allows me to escape from normal life for a few moments, to a place of peace and joy.