It
was a warm summer evening, not minding what time it was
or if we already ate, me with Aya—my electric guitar—and my
father with Aico—his acoustic guitar—were jamming, exchanging
pentatonic scale based leads, singing, trying to play all the songs
in his music book, in our living room.
“Gregory
House, M.D.” (played by Hugh Laurie) a recently famous series that
we watch together. In one of the episodes, Dr. James Wilson (played
by Robert Sean Leonard)–House's best friend, kidnapped his guitar,
my father always jokes and says the dialogue of the two in every
jamming sessions we had.
The
joke went like this:
House:
“Where is she?”
Wilson:
“So, IT is a she?”
House:
“Of course it's a she. Would you caress a neck of a dude?”
Because
of this, I named my guitar “Aya” my favorite girl anime
character.
Eversince
I was little, I could remember hearing different songs with different
genres every day and still even today. From Ludwig Van Beethoven's
“Fur Elise” to Jimi Hendrix's “Bold as love.” I was able to
adapt to my father's ear in music. Being open-minded not just in the
different genres of music but also in real-life applications.
It
was a cold night with a faint rain when I first held a musical
instrument, a black coated Lumanog guitar that my tito
owned. I did not know how to play it at that time but somewhere
inside me kept on making melodic tunes that only I knew. At this
moment, I realized that music was calling me.
From
then on, I was determined to learn more about music and playing
guitar.
My
father used to be a folk singer. He got a lot of gigs, from
performing in bars to singing at weddings. He was one of the best
folk singers here in CdeO. Knowing this, I did not hesitated to take
the opportunity and asked him if he could teach me.
He
asked me “unsa imung gusto El, makabalo lang ka ug gitar o gusto
ka na makabalo jud ka ug ayo?” I answered him that “pa,
gusto ko na pareha sa imu ka maayo.” He smiled and told me to
get his guitar. I was very excited to learn how to play guitar
because I wanted to be as good as him.
“Before
anything else, we must start with the basics.” he said.
The
instrumental guitar piece “Forbidden games” by Eva Vivar and a
chromatic scale from F until my fingers reached the higher octave
note of it and then do it backwards were the first lessons that he
taught me. The piece was for developing my timing and for maintaining
a concise inner metronome and the scale was for my fingers to be
calloused enough for me to make sweet and clear notes with less
tension on my fingers.
Practicing
every morning before I prepare for school and every night before I
sleep, my fingers ached for weeks. “Before you taste sweetness, you
must suffer in bitterness,” he said.
Convinced
that I perfected his training, I asked him for futher lessons but he
would just watch me do what he taught me and then say “kulang pa
na el, balik-balika lang na hangtud mahasa na ka ana, pa tan-awa
dayun ko pagkuha na kaayo nimu, haya pa dayun taka tudlu-an ug chords
ug uban pa.”
I
was very excited and I admit that I got bored by doing the lessons
over and over again that I did not follow his instructions and jumped
into learning through songhits with illustrated basic chords in the
last page.
I
never knew at that time why he wanted me to practice those boring
lessons but after he discovered that I disobeyed him, he said that he
was just trying to test my patience.
Patience,
other than musical lessons, is one of the virtues that I gained from
his teachings.
After
that, he stopped giving me lessons and let me explore music on my
own.
Music,
eversince I began to develop my sense of hearing, has been the
greatest thing that ever happened to me.
My
father, Cong B. Corrales, taught me how to play and further
encouraged me to dig deeper into my inner music. It is in every
moment that when I jam with him, I really hear music.
I
know it will take years or even impossible for me to surpass your
level of playing music Pa but from now on, every note that is
coming out of my guitar is for you and I just want to tell you that I
consider you as my hero for giving me this oppurtunity to know, learn
and love the “bridge between heaven and earth”—music.
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