In my head, out of my hands

by Mike Ripley
(Franklin, Ma, USA)

When I was in about fourth grade, my aunt died, and left me her acoustic guitar. The only musical experience I had at that point was a year of violin.

The guitar was a 1968 Hohner Contessa Classical. It was missing a couple of strings, so I never played it, nor did I know how to play it. So I went on playing violin for two more years.

Eventually I wanted to just play guitar. I got a piece of junk electric for Christmas. One humbucker, no tone knob, very basic, but it came with a book. I looked in the book and learned the chords. And that's when I stopped the book and started to teach myself.

Through out the years, I got some guitars, sold some, but I kept my Hohner. I never played it...it sat there, with steel strings on it.

I have always liked classical music, but never thought I would ever be able to play anything like it. I played my Jackson KV, shredding, and realized that I could learn classical.

The next day, I strung the Hohner with nylon strings. I got the tab, sheet music, and recordings of "Dee," a piece by Randy Rhoads. I sat with that for almost six hours, and made a bit of progress. Once I got that down, in about a week or so, I moved on to Flamenco.

I watched videos, listend to people, and learned it. Since then, I've been playing Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Pachelbell even. Just about anything I could get into my head and out of my hands. It's been a few years now. I still play electric, but I love my Hohner.