Crescent2k6
Member
Hello all
I know I'm relatively new here, but I'm two days from starting classes at my dream school doing what I love with an Ernie Ball JP7 DDII BFR on my lap and just thought I'd share a little story. Might be inspirational, might not be, but I don't have much else to do at the moment right now haha
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When I was 5 (this'll be brief) my parents signed me up for piano lessons, I did that until about 9th grade when I started getting tired of Chopin and Bach. It wasn't until around then that I was exposed to non-classical music, and one of the first bands I heard was the One Cold Night album by Seether. I instantly fell in love with the sound of guitar (which was completely alien to me) and bought a cheap acoustic and told my parents that I was tired of piano and wanted to learn guitar. They were supportive fortunately and I started taking guitar lessons. Having a musical background helped alot and then when I discovered Steve Vai my life was changed. I tried playing his songs (Die to Live in particular) on the acoustic and had no idea why the hell it didn't sound like his guitar (lol). Yadda yadda yadda discovered electric guitar, started practicing like mad, discovered John Petrucci, fell in love with Prog Rock. Okay enough backstory
Senior year in high school I was pretty apathetic about the whole college thing. I thought "whatever, I like computers and I can do math pretty well, might as well do computer engineering". Only applied to a certain state school in PA and got accepted and was like "whatever, everyone has to go to college and be successful and rich right?". I began classes there, got swine flu, due to this got a 57% on my first Chemistry exam, dropped the class, and things just were not good. I had never really hated doing something that much until I got there and had to do Chemistry, and Physics, and Chem Lab, and English, and Calculus, and Compsci. This just wasn't me. Plus the only thing anybody there did was get drunk at the frats every weekend to the point of throwing up. I tried it once and that wasn't for me either.
In my great dilemma, I found myself playing guitar more than anything (I had brought my les paul up and my roland cube 60), and I realized I was getting alot better. I had no friends, and did the absolute minimum amount of homework so all I did was sit in my dorm and play guitar. Got into Dave Weiner's riff of the week and started reading some notation and theory books and really developed a passion for it. That's when I remembered, I had always had this little nagging in the back of my head that it'd be amazing to be like Steve Vai or John Petrucci, but I had always thought that was just stupid dreaming. I might as well aim to be the next president. Once I got to the point of knowing I simply could not go on doing this, because it just wasn't me at all, I looked into applying to the Berklee school of music where most of my guitar idols had gone.
I always considered Berklee close to Harvard or Yale, some school that only the lucky ones get into and I wouldn't have a shot, but my true dream was to be a great guitarist, whether I ended up famous or living in a cardboard box, I knew that music had been where my passion was my whole life and that's what I needed to do. I applied late, and miraculously got an audition. I flew to Boston over a weekend between classes and fell in love with the city while at my audition event where i played Building the Church by Vai. I flew back, and on halloween got an e-mail saying I had been accepted. My life went from being completely hopeless and afraid of getting stuck doing something I despised for the rest of my life to having my biggest dream come true.
So just to help shorten this up, here I am, sitting in my dorm at the Berklee school of music in downtown boston typing this up waiting for my new classes to begin. My credits transferred over from the other school (of the courses i finished), and my dream is coming true as i speak. I know i may not be the next john petrucci, but I'm finally doing what I love for school, and hopefully will end up doing what I love for a living. I'm currently a Guitar Performance major and will be double majoring that with Music Production and Engineering as a fallback (because I love recording too).
I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I suppose if I hadn't got accepted to berklee I wouldn't have a clue what to do with myself because I hated what i was doing and was terrified of doing that for the rest of my life. I guess it's just kindof a story of follow your dreams and work your butt off to make them come true (I was practicing literally 8 hours a day for 3 weeks straight before the audition at berklee). So yeah. Happy guitar playing everyone. I hope all your dreams come true and you end up doing what truly makes you happy in life.
P.S. I love my JP7 BFR tons. It's my main guitar up here at Berklee and I know it will serve me well
I know I'm relatively new here, but I'm two days from starting classes at my dream school doing what I love with an Ernie Ball JP7 DDII BFR on my lap and just thought I'd share a little story. Might be inspirational, might not be, but I don't have much else to do at the moment right now haha
.When I was 5 (this'll be brief) my parents signed me up for piano lessons, I did that until about 9th grade when I started getting tired of Chopin and Bach. It wasn't until around then that I was exposed to non-classical music, and one of the first bands I heard was the One Cold Night album by Seether. I instantly fell in love with the sound of guitar (which was completely alien to me) and bought a cheap acoustic and told my parents that I was tired of piano and wanted to learn guitar. They were supportive fortunately and I started taking guitar lessons. Having a musical background helped alot and then when I discovered Steve Vai my life was changed. I tried playing his songs (Die to Live in particular) on the acoustic and had no idea why the hell it didn't sound like his guitar (lol). Yadda yadda yadda discovered electric guitar, started practicing like mad, discovered John Petrucci, fell in love with Prog Rock. Okay enough backstory
Senior year in high school I was pretty apathetic about the whole college thing. I thought "whatever, I like computers and I can do math pretty well, might as well do computer engineering". Only applied to a certain state school in PA and got accepted and was like "whatever, everyone has to go to college and be successful and rich right?". I began classes there, got swine flu, due to this got a 57% on my first Chemistry exam, dropped the class, and things just were not good. I had never really hated doing something that much until I got there and had to do Chemistry, and Physics, and Chem Lab, and English, and Calculus, and Compsci. This just wasn't me. Plus the only thing anybody there did was get drunk at the frats every weekend to the point of throwing up. I tried it once and that wasn't for me either.
In my great dilemma, I found myself playing guitar more than anything (I had brought my les paul up and my roland cube 60), and I realized I was getting alot better. I had no friends, and did the absolute minimum amount of homework so all I did was sit in my dorm and play guitar. Got into Dave Weiner's riff of the week and started reading some notation and theory books and really developed a passion for it. That's when I remembered, I had always had this little nagging in the back of my head that it'd be amazing to be like Steve Vai or John Petrucci, but I had always thought that was just stupid dreaming. I might as well aim to be the next president. Once I got to the point of knowing I simply could not go on doing this, because it just wasn't me at all, I looked into applying to the Berklee school of music where most of my guitar idols had gone.
I always considered Berklee close to Harvard or Yale, some school that only the lucky ones get into and I wouldn't have a shot, but my true dream was to be a great guitarist, whether I ended up famous or living in a cardboard box, I knew that music had been where my passion was my whole life and that's what I needed to do. I applied late, and miraculously got an audition. I flew to Boston over a weekend between classes and fell in love with the city while at my audition event where i played Building the Church by Vai. I flew back, and on halloween got an e-mail saying I had been accepted. My life went from being completely hopeless and afraid of getting stuck doing something I despised for the rest of my life to having my biggest dream come true.
So just to help shorten this up, here I am, sitting in my dorm at the Berklee school of music in downtown boston typing this up waiting for my new classes to begin. My credits transferred over from the other school (of the courses i finished), and my dream is coming true as i speak. I know i may not be the next john petrucci, but I'm finally doing what I love for school, and hopefully will end up doing what I love for a living. I'm currently a Guitar Performance major and will be double majoring that with Music Production and Engineering as a fallback (because I love recording too).
I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I suppose if I hadn't got accepted to berklee I wouldn't have a clue what to do with myself because I hated what i was doing and was terrified of doing that for the rest of my life. I guess it's just kindof a story of follow your dreams and work your butt off to make them come true (I was practicing literally 8 hours a day for 3 weeks straight before the audition at berklee). So yeah. Happy guitar playing everyone. I hope all your dreams come true and you end up doing what truly makes you happy in life.
P.S. I love my JP7 BFR tons. It's my main guitar up here at Berklee and I know it will serve me well
