My New Obsession: Guitars
Let me begin this article by saying that I am not an expert guitarist, I do not know everything about guitars and what makes them good or what sounds the best. I just have an exceptional obsession with finding guitars I enjoy and playing them.
“When I was just a baby…”
When I was younger, I always knew that I wanted to play guitar, and my parents were generous enough at Christmas time, when I believe I was ten, to buy me my first guitar, an electric guitar. At the time, I didn’t know how much time and work went into learning how to play, I went to lessons, but I never did my homework. I just thought that I would be able to pick it up and just press down on the strings and play as if it were a real life guitar hero. Every 3 out of 5 people learning to play the guitar quit. It is a tough gig. I lasted probably a month and quit.
“My momma told me son…”
Needless to say my father wasn’t pleased. The guitar would be kept for quite a while but would eventually be sold. It didn’t effect me at the time, knowing that I wasn’t that interested and I wasn’t going to take the time to learn. But who would have thought that one day I would actually regret this. My parents were not happy I am sure. They never told me they weren’t happy they bought me the guitar and I quit, but I’m sure it had upset them a little.
“Always be a good boy…”
Summer of 2016, I worked every day, I was bored, we had just moved into our new house and we were really out in the middle of no where and when you have nothing around you, you look for other things to do. My big things I did this summer were walk 8 to 9 miles every day and drink beer around a fire. But one rainy day, I was stuck inside and I was trying to figure out a movie to watch. That’s when it hit me, “Walk The Line”, the film based on Johnny Cash’s life experiences. I watched the movie a long time ago with my grandmother whenever the movie first came out in 2005. I remembered loving the movie and I wanted to watch it again. It is easily one of my favorite movies of all time, maybe my favorite.
“Don’t ever play with guns…”
I remember laying in my bedroom watching the movie. The scene where Johnny Cash is in the military and is looking through a guitar store where he sees the guitar he would buy for the first time with his own money while in Germany. The guitar in the movie is a vintage Hofner, I am not sure how accurate this is, but they are very vintage guitars.
“Well I shot a man in Reno…”
Now, I have always been a Johnny Cash fan, but I didn’t realize how re-watching this movie would make me the super fan that I now am. I also didn’t realize how much of an inspiration it would be to learn how to play the guitar again. I got to the scene above and I went out in our living room and asked my dad where his old guitar was. A 1995 Washburn Acoustic. I immediately grabbed it and started to look up video lessons on YouTube, that is when I found an app called “Yousician”, it teaches you how to play for free. It taught me the basics, but eventually it gets tedious and repetitive, but it was a great app to start off with. My cousin Brock also plays guitar, and he helped me learn more and more. My ultimate beginner goal though was to play Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash, in full while singing. I met that goal in August right before I left for school. I was very excited to do this and it just triggered a reaction inside of me to keep learning, keep playing, and find guitars that I love and want. I also now have a burning obsession with Johnny Cash’s music, and I continue to search for more less known songs by him or that he was involved in creating. He will forever be a legend.
“Just to watch him die…”
Since then, I have realized that this obsession is costly. I will not disclose what I spent on my Martin DCXAE, you can find that out for yourself, but I will say it was more close to sticker price than what it is now, because I bought it closer to when it first came out. But I have a few guitars that I want in the near future, and I have been luckily promised one through my grandmother who said that when I graduate from Juniata she will purchase it for me, which obviously has me hyped. I will list the dream guitars below.
And finally the absolute dream guitar:
I decided to make a connection from my Social Media class by looking at the social media accounts of the guitar companies listed above and show examples of how they attract customers and retain their current audience. I have chosen to see the accounts of Martin, Epiphone, and Gibson.
To begin, Martin promotes their artist series guitars, such as their special edition Ed Sheeran guitars. They take cool pictures showing off the aesthetics of the guitars and profiling the look of the guitar. Also, a lot of their posts regard fans of their guitars and customers. They retweet pictures of customers playing their guitars and videos of artists playing and showing off the sound of the guitar.
Next, Epiphone does generally the same thing as above, except since they are owned by Gibson, their twitter also promotes the Gibson brand. But, as new guitars come out, the more tweets come out. Also, there are special deals that they let twitter followers know about first to get deals on guitars.
Finally, Gibson does a lot of promoting of their brand’s artistry. Gibson sponsors artists and provides them with guitars made specially for the artist. On social media they promote the artists who play their guitars rather than the guitar itself. They also provide history bits on Gibson guitars since they have been around since 1984.
