Just a girl and her guitar, Girl and Guitar is a music project meant to encourage people to share and play music (Including myself, Girl. :). The premise is simplicity, as I (Girl) often complicate things so much that I just find them overwhelming. So I thought, “What if I just have a very simple music project to encourage me to play and share music?” And then I thought, “I hope it encourages others too.” So, here we are.
The guitar is not my main instrument, so don’t expect much from that (Actually, maybe don’t expect much from my main instrument either. :). And singing? I’m no Adele. And I don’t have a cool indy voice either. I just have my simple voice and my cheap guitar. I do practice singing in the car and take advice from Sam the voice coach. Especially ever since my voice was hoarse for two weeks after singing along to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” in the car. But guitar doesn’t practice very much. And it’s kind of holding us back. 🙂
But all self-deprecation and kidding aside, the point of Girl and Guitar is to just love music and not worry about being “good enough”– as I firmly believe that simply having a heart for music makes you “good enough” to both play and share music. Music is not about perfection or complexity or technique as much as it is about heart and soul. It is about how it makes you feel, not how it makes you look. This is part of why, for our first project, Guitar and I decided to explore American Roots Music, as American Roots Music is so awesome and truly lends itself to simplicity and simply playing with heart and soul. It follows a legacy of soulful artists and it also allows me to explore my interest in music history, which I will also share on this site via my blog.
Another goal of Girl and Guitar is to support and promote other musicians and music lovers. As such, I want to share that shortly after we decided on this project, I came across this book which was absolutely perfect for our American Roots project and my aim of learning how to play the guitar better in general. That is not an affiliate or sponsored link, I just think the book is awesome and the author seems nice. The book has a great range of American Roots music in it, including blues and some murder ballads, gives some great listening recommendations and artists profiles, and comes with handy CDs to references (If you have that technology!). Guitar and I are currently recording our first EP to include 5 songs we learned from the book.
Stay tuned for when we release our American Roots EP (You can also check out a sample of our recording and learning process here.). But also, feel free to check out our music blog, including some of my music writing, exploration of music history, and musings about the creative process. Also, there will be t-shirts. Because everyone knows music is actually all about the merchandising. 🙂
P.S. We’ve also got a couple quirkier ideas in the works… but they are a surprise. Or something we hope you’ll forget I mentioned if we never get to them.
Anyhow, play music. Love music. Share music. 🙂
