I love this video so much. To record it, I wore my favorite shirt and made sure the lights kept changing color so they reflected off it. It sounds good, and I took some pictures with what seems to be my best friend: The Cuatro, a traditional four-stringed Venezuelan instrument that my dad gave me. Yes, it seems to be my best friend, but today I'm writing these lines to confess that our relationship is really more one of hate than love. In general, all musical instruments make me feel like a fraud and constantly remind me that I was born to be a singer 😒
Some will say that I already know how to play this instrument, that's what it seems, I record videos and even in my Hive avatar I appear with my Cuatro, but the truth is that I only master a few chords and some rhythms, in fact creating content was what motivated me to learn, and that was a few years ago when I started in the blockchain, but I wasted my entire childhood and adolescence learning to play it well with the two best teachers that life could offer me: my dad and my mom. The truth is that it didn't catch my attention at all, and not just this musical instrument, that feeling happened to me with all of them, and now as a professional in music I regret it.
I accept that what I've learned so far has helped me a lot. I've recorded many videos, and it helps me with my musical studies. I know and master all the basics, but I can't say that I know how to play this instrument or any other. Something that affects me a little is seeing people like my wife pick up a musical instrument and soon play it well. In fact, at my music school, in guitar classes, I've seen how people who don't have a musical ear find it easy to learn to play the instrument. Even if they don't connect with the music, they find the technique easy. For many years, I said that my fingers were rough, but that's in the past. I'm not so hard on myself anymore, and now I've changed that to motivating myself to do things well.
I'd love to learn a musical instrument faster, especially the Cuatro. This instrument adapts to any style, and I like its sound; in fact, it's very useful for the musical style I've chosen as a profession. I know I need to practice more; that's what everyone tells me, but many don't know that we're talking about almost eight years now; that's easily how long it takes to complete a degree in a music conservatory. I remember that at the beginning, my knuckles even bled, trying to figure out the correct way to strum, and nothing. Even today, I can't get it right. Details like these make me stop practicing for weeks, and sometimes for months. In fact, this year, I haven't shared a single video on Hive where I play this musical instrument that I love so much.
This last avatar next to my cuatro on my shoulders I have it on Hive, Discord, WhatsApp and many social networks. It really makes me happy to know that I master it a little, and I have been using the same photo for more than a year, but it has been like this because I have not had time to upload a new photo that I like and because of the promise that one day I will play this musical instrument well, but I stopped taking photos with the cuatro in December when the director of my choir urgently needed a cuatrista to accompany the singing children in a Christmas concert, since the man who would do it had an accident and would not arrive. With great sadness I told him that I was not ready to play live, and it is not a lie, but his face of disappointment still resonates in my mind, and it is evident that he asked me first to have this instrument in all my profile photos 😵💫
All the cards are on the table, I have the instrument, a good musical ear, people to guide me through the process, and to a certain extent I also have the necessary confidence, because otherwise I wouldn't dare to share my videos. I think the only thing I need is time to sit down and focus well on this goal; as I said before, I lost my childhood and adolescence where there were no more worries than just studying, but now I'm married, I have to maintain my house, take care of my mother, do my job well, and so on. This is possibly the real reason that has made my process slow; it requires more time, but I take advantage of almost every hour of the day to generate money. The economy in Venezuela has us very suffocated, but I have faith in myself, now more than ever. I will use these same words that I have written today as a promise to improve myself, and it is one of my frustrated dreams until now... It's time to make it come true 🙏
