Rhythm and Melodies || The Song that Reignites my Passion

Like everything in life, mastering a musical instrument isn't always a straight road. There are always these plateaus where one may just find themselves stuck and not really making any progress. It is even more so when there isn't a mentor figure around to guide one through these times. However, it can happen that something—some idea, concept, or person—may help reignite that passion. For me, it's a song I found during the pandemic.

You must remember how it felt during the pandemic, having our lives dramatically disrupted by this virus as it sent us all, introverts and extroverts, home and locked us down for months. Some of us had way more time to do than we could have ever imagined. That's how it was for me anyway, but I obviously didn't see it coming and didn't have it well planned out.

I didn't get to spend much time with my guitar as school did eat up a lot of the time I could spend. But then, there was no school and nowhere to go. My only companions were movies and my guitar, and so I spent more time with them.

It was a time to get better with music, learn new things, practice more, explore more amazing musicians, and all that. I yearned for all that, but I had no direction or mentor; I was just picking things up left and right. It got really challenging to keep going. But the narrative changed sometime after I found a song by a certain band that I have come to love.

G.O.A.T. is a phenomenal song, and virtually every musician that has listened to it attests to that because of everything about it. Basically, it's an instrumental song with no lyrics—just two electric guitars, one bass guitar, and a drummer. But what they created in this song was fascinatingly spectacular and went on to become a song that somehow provides motivation to go on, especially when I became more familiar with the band members, especially the lead guitarist, Tim Henson.

When I first listened to it, I wondered, "How many techniques can one put in one song?" I was stunned at the composition of the song, the intricacies of the techniques I heard, the individual mastery of each member of the band, and the brilliance of the entire song.

The song, with all the juice it carries, manages to inspire me to want to go deeper in learning and practicing because of the many things in it that I look forward to emulating. Heck, I learned to play the song.

Recently, I listened to the song, and all the same feelings I have with the song came rushing back; I longed to play the guitar, as it had been so long since I had done so, considering how occupied I had been with my graduation from my university. And even now, as I write this post, I have the song on repeat.

It's not exactly a song most people would enjoy, considering its nature, but it's always going to be one I would enjoy. Of course, there are others I do enjoy, especially from the same band, but one this gives me a whole different energy.