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Thread: Narrative Essay

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    Default Narrative Essay

    Code:
    	John Hamlett
    Hour 4
    More Than Music
    In the winter of 2008, I had just opened my Christmas present; it was a Fender Squire guitar. I loved the gift; the only problem was I had no idea how to play the guitar, other than randomly plucking strings to make an unharmonious array of notes that would make any musician shed tears. My dad had included some “How-To” books on the guitar; however that was not at all appealing to me. I’d rather just jump into the world of music and learn as I go. I started out  listening to Blink 182’s smash hit “Dammit” to see how complicated it sounded. After listening to the song a dozen times I figured I could learn it pretty easily, so I turned to the internet to see if anybody had figured out how to play it. I found an amazing website filled with the tabs for millions of songs that have been recorded and some that haven’t been recorded yet. 
    	The only issue I had with the tabs written were they were Latin to me. I had never seen anything like that before. Its six perfectly straight lines with varying numbers alternating between lines like a toddler climbing in the play place at McDonalds.  My eyes couldn’t compensate for the strange black magic looking symbols above the lines. Luckily I had come across a tutorial to read the Egyptian symbols and conceive the idea of the musical diagram and be able to make music from them.  The concept behind the lines is pretty simple; every line corresponds with a string on your guitar. The only difficult part is they are opposite then what a right-handed brain perceives as common sense. The bottom line matches up with the top string of a guitar and the top line is your bottom sting of the guitar. 
    	After decrypting the code written on the page it still sounded like ominous tone. I didn’t realize that I had to tune my guitar. After searching on the internet I discovered a way of tuning my guitar using only my ears. I was required to listen to the first note of Entering Sandman by Metallica, and you have to match the tone of your lowest string with that note. This step alone took me roughly fifteen minutes. After getting the pitch just right I placed my scrawny index finger on the fifth fret of the newly tuned string, and matched the note to the second lowest string.  I managed to repeat this step for all six of my guitar strings. After tuning my guitar to pitch perfect accuracy, Dammit started to sound like it was coming together. 
    I finally was able to play Dammit with the correct notes and with the right frequency to mimic Blink 182. Only problem was I was nowhere near as fast as they were at it, so I had to work on my speed. The only way I knew of increasing my speed was to practice. I hate to practice scales and chords, so how I practice is I listen to the radio until I hear an interesting sounding guitar solo or main riff. Then I turn to my trusty friend the internet and get a tab for it and see if I am fast enough, or close enough to it, to play that riff perfectly. I did that until I could play Dammit fast enough to where I sounded like Tom Delounge. 
    	After I had mastered Dammit, I began to widen my focus on guitar to not only Blink 182 but other popular bands: Metallica, Nirvana, and other famous riffs from all decades of music. Every song comes with a new challenge to overcome. Every challenge I face makes me a better guitarist as well as other advancements in my mentality. 
    	Playing guitar has taught me a lot of important life lessons; it has taught me patience, motivation, perseverance, and many others. I learned patience through having to keep on practicing over and over again, through the same concept of learning patience I also learned motivation to keep going. Motivation didn’t come as easily as the others did too me. There were a countless number of times when I just wanted to throw my guitar against the wall and just quit. However, I persevered and became motivated by listening to more Blink 182 or other similar artists.          ADD CONCLUSION!
    If its hard to read


    http://intramission.webs.com/Narative_Essay.doc

    Tell me what you think
    Last edited by JPHamlett; 10-07-2011 at 03:49 PM.

  2. #2
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    Anyone?

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    I read your essay, and I can relate to it on a personal level. I didn't want to be a rock star though, I was more into jazz. I learned the trumpet formally, a little piano from my mom, a bit of saxophone from my brother, and a little guitar on my own. It was a Yamaha acoustic guitar, I couldn't play cover or mimic chords, I had only one song and that was it ...lol

    I enjoyed reading it. I read many texts yes even books.

    Might I suggest that when you are writing anything for class to not use contractions of any kind. I say this simply because you may one day be going to college and formal writing is a skill that is hard to master, but well worth the effort.

    The use of "then" should be "than". Look at it like a comparison of "rather than" to "if ...then".

    The use of a vs. an. Say out loud, "A elephant" "An elephant" The easiest way to remember this is "A in front of consonants", just a rule of thumb.

    I am no English teacher, nor am I a grammar "n--i". Just giving an honest review.

    Lima Bean

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    Just to make sure you actually read my edits and don't just click accept changes, its in PDF format ;P. I only spent around 3 minutes reading it, so don't expect all the mistakes to be fixed.

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