Doing this every day made my fantasies full with dreams of grandeur. I would daydream and imagine myself being up on stages all over the world melting faces with my sick guitar skills. The very thought would make my heart race with excitement. Even now as I reminisce, my heart is starting to pitter-patter.

With that exhilarating dream set in my heart, my next step was obvious; Beg my parents to get me a guitar! And beg I did. My mom and dad must of been sick of my constant egging, but my persistence prevailed! They scrapped what money they could together and went to target and bought me one of those cheap Fender Stratocaster starter sets. I was overjoyed! That guitar and amp were a hot mess, but that hot mess was an instrumental step in my guitar journey. (Pun intended lol)

For the next several years, I would invest my time more and more into learning the guitar. I learned many songs from YouTube tutorials, and ultimate-guitar.com became a close acquaintance of mine. My mom even asked my grandpa to help pay from some guitar lessons for me! I got pretty good with just that, I was the best guitarist I personally knew, and other's would say that I was the best guitarist that they knew. I could, with much mental focus improvise very simple solos. I could, in a general sense, write music. I could play pretty much any song I wanted to play, only after I spent loads of hours working on memorizing/figuring out how to play those songs.

I would look at the progress I made and asked myself, "I'm good at playing the guitar, but am I playing the guitar the way I want to play it?" The answer was a BIG. FAT. NO.

Sure, I could play the songs I wanted to play, and it was entertaining to me and the audience. The big thing was that I wasn't able to truly express the music in my heart, and that frustrated me. Greatly. When I was playing guitar, I always had to focus deeply, making sure that I'd played it right. That unfortunately made me unable to truly let go and express myself. That frustration brought forth a drive to find the answers I was looking for. I searched far and wide for an answer. Any answer!

I remember it like it was yesterday, it was so enlightening, empowering. I discovered that the fretboard was a pattern machine. And if your knew the pattern, you didn't have to think about what you were playing. And if you didn't have to think about what you were playing, you could let go and truly express yourself.

This epiphany electrified my entire being, and fueled a rabid, tenacious growth and development in my guitar playing. All the work that I had put into getting better over the 7 years before this epiphany was DAWRFED by just a mere 6 months after this spectacular revelation!

Now ever since, I've had the honor of empowering other guitarists with this new-found approach to help them play guitar like they've always wanted.