Guitars and Social Media

I've been playing guitar since I was about 12 years old. I've jammed with people and started about 5 bands since that time (the key word there is started; I never could light a fire under my ass to actually make something out of them), but for the most part, guitar has just been a personal passion/hobby. Beyond simply playing, I also enjoy reading up on different types of guitars and accessories and also reading what other people have done to customize their instruments. The internet has great resources for feeding this interest with forums.

Forums/message boards, such as this website, are a great way to connect instrument/music enthusiasts that want to share their knowledge or simply argue with each other. The forum is divided into specific boards that can range from basic guitar talk to building and customizing. I am not a member on this board, but I will look at it occasionally when I feel like browsing specific topics. Lately, I've decided that I want to start customizing my guitar (painting, changing electronics, etc.), so I searched Google for "how to paint a guitar". The web can be a marvelous thing. The search results brought me to this extremely helpful website, which gives a detailed step-by-step guide to custom painting a guitar. The format is a posting on a message board, which displays a very solid example of how easy it is to connect and share knowledge with others.
In order to paint a guitar, I will have to remove every accessory from the guitar including the electronics. I've never removed the electronics (e.g. pickups) from a guitar, so that required more research. For help in this situation, I turned to the web's institution of learning: YouTube.

I searched YouTube for instructions on how to change guitar pickups and it brought me to this tutorial. This tutorial is great because it gave easy to understand instructions while presenting a close-up video of the entire process. The video also led me to realize that there is yet another point that I needed guidance on; this job will require a soldering iron...I've never used a soldering iron...YouTube! I typed in "how to solder" and sure enough it gave me this tutorial on basic soldering. Once again, the tutorial is easy to understand and presents a great close-up video of the procedure. I have a feeling that YouTube is going to replace school some day.

The point of all this: social media, such as internet forums and YouTube, are great resources to for those interested in learning more about specific topics; in this case, guitar. I have enough information to at least start my project, and I hope to get it moving as quickly as possible.

The picture above shows my brother (plaid shirt) and myself recording a song at a studio in Minneapolis a couple years ago. A friend of mine was going to school for music production and we got to help him record his final project.

This picture is just me sitting at the mixing board in the studio. It looks like I'm doing something, but in reality I was just zoning out on the monitor.