A Guitar Class in Cork City

A Guitar Class

While I was still attending the English school, I found a guitar class in Cork City. I had been interested in learning how to play guitar since I was in Japan. So, I decided to go to a music store to look at guitars. A female staff member kindly helped me chose the one that was the best for me. After I looked around another music store across the street, I went back to the first store and bought the guitar. It was an acoustic guitar with an orange surface. And I started going to the class.

The reason I became interested in playing the guitar was from my experience going into a music store in Yamagata City in Japan. It was in 1997. It was the day I went to pick up a keyboard from someone who had placed an ad to sell it. At that time, I was in touch with some musicians and was thinking of starting a music career. When I went into that music store, I saw many different kinds of musical instruments throughout the store. But what attracted me most were the many guitars displayed in a line all along the wall. They were all different from each other in colour, shape and design. And they shone as they reflected the light in the room. I liked the look of the guitars.

Besides art, I had been interested in music since I was a child. I started listening to music played by rock bands and that led me to like Bon Jovi and other metal bands like Guns’n Roses, Aerosmith, Europe etc. As a young schoolgirl, every time I passed a music instrument store, I stopped and looked in the shop windows, but I had never had the courage to go into the store as I felt it was intimidating and I felt like it was a different world.

I was excited about going to a guitar class and I was feeling that Ireland was like a paradise where anything was possible. The teacher in the guitar class was a slim older man with a mustache. It was held in one of the relatively small rooms in a building. There were usually three people who came to the class. A young chubby woman, a young boy and me. The woman always brought her keyboard to the class and she was always wearing a black T-shirt. I learned some basic chords and how to play rhythm. And the first song the teacher taught me was “Let it be” by the Beatles.

After I had attended some lessons, one day, I heard someone playing “Always” by Bon Jovi as I was walking up the stairs to the classroom. It sounded like a keyboard. And it was the woman with the keyboard who was playing. I asked her about the song and then she said she was a Bon Jovi fan. I was excited. And I said that I was too. She seemed like a dedicated Bon Jovi fan and even told me that Bon Jovi would be coming to Ireland in 2000.

In the next lesson, the teacher gave me the chords for “I will be there for you” by Bon Jovi. I practiced both “Let it Be” and “I will be there for you” regularly in my apartment on Watercourse Road. The teacher also gave me the chords of “Daniel” by Elton John. This song was a little more difficult than the first two songs, but I enjoyed playing it and I really liked the song. The woman kept playing “Always” by Bon Jovi before the class. She seemed to be practicing for some special occasion. One day, we all played “Always” and we sang along. That was such a memorable experience.

One day, after class, I told the young Irish boy that I was finding that Irish people spoke very fast and I often couldn’t understand what they were saying. But he mentioned that the teacher had an accent and he found it difficult to understand him well. Then, I was reassured that even Irish people couldn’t understand some Irish people. It was not only me.

After I moved into my new apartment on Green Street, I found a large health food store on the way home. There were homemade Irish scones there in a basket by the entrance. They reminded me of the Irish scones I had had in a café with my teacher Mary. I bought them and they were so delicious! They were freshly made daily and often still warm out of the oven. I stopped by the store and bought them regularly for a while.

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