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Story of Guitar Therapy: From Diving to Audio

I started playing guitar at the age of 11. I'm mostly self-taught as I grew in my teen years not until I was 14 did I see a computer connect to the world wide web for the forts time ever. Unlike now we never had any sources of knowledge, then it was only what you can find in books; sometime in the early 90s' I bought a VHS tape of Marty Friedman about exotic scales, that taught me so much that I use what he taught on that tape even today. When you are obsessed with anything, you will eventually become good at it. Luckily for me, it all very easy. I absorbed everything I found on books, taught myself to read guitar tablature and started becoming good that I started leaving the friends I began to play behind, and join other older guys much who were much better. But it was a dull time to be teenagers as there almost no platform for local musicians to showcase their talents. There would be infrequent shows here and there, and unfortunately, if you were a local band covering Hindi music with Maldivian lyrics, you would be more successful even to get a chance. I never imagined myself working in this field professionally. But music became part of my life. And my guitar my constant companion through the rough and crazy times, always there.

At the age of 18 I became a PADI scuba instructor and worked in that field for the next few years. If you ask any PADI dive profesional they wil tel you that once you reachnthe instructor level, it's 10% diving and the other 90% about teaching and marketing. They use an excellent system referred to as positive enforcement teaching. Rather than criticizing a student when he/she struggles with skill, we instead resolve the issue with positive reinforcement so that the student is told a positive side of the mistake and then correct him/her positively. Another valuable thing I learned from PADI was their teaching system; they would state the required objectives of the lesson before the lesson starts. It allows the student to grasp the concepts of that particular lesson more effectively. At the end of each lesson, we repeat the objectives again, repetition being the other effective teaching method in their system. You might wonder what this got to do with Guitar Therapy and playing music.

Well, actually everything. When you get certified as a PADI instructor, you will have acquired you with very good teaching skills, even better than primary and secondary level teachers you will find today. A PADI instructor has his own prescribed content through PADI, which makes him A professional like a doctor or a lawyer. I use all those skills I learned during my diving days into Guitar Therapy sessions. I had the knack in me, and you got to love teaching to be good at it. I realized diving was secondary, and I enjoyed teaching than diving even more. 

In 2004 I went to Malaysia and joined the International College of Music [ICOM] and started studying for my Audio Engineering course. I left diving just like that and decided that I want to pursue my long time passion for music, not only of playing guitar but also songwriting; I loved that part the most. I felt I could always get back to diving if I don't make it right in music. In 2006 I graduated and started to work as an audio engineer freelance since then. I played in a band for many years, which we released the most recently their second album before I quit the band. [You can hear it on Baiskoafu under artist Kushehnooney, Lah]. I decided to dedicate my time to audio engineering. And Guitar Therapy is the new growing branch on this tree. 

I have designed the whole guitar therapy course myself. I will continue to develop the content through my blog and eventually, as my students progress. I'm not a Steve Vai type of guitar player, though I can teach any style you desire. But importantly, I believe before imagining yourself on a stage surrounded by tens of thousands of screaming fans, you should first build a solid foundation. A solid foundation is taking baby steps. Not only learning about the guitar but music as a whole. End of the day you play with other musicians playing other instruments, you need to know how to accompany them.

Join Guitar Therapy and unlock your potential today!



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