I could remember the first date when I touched a guitar. It was back in 1989 when I was studying at grade six. I wanted to learn the fantastic instrument and searched for guitar classes. Then I found out a place in slave island, colombo 02 and attended to weekend classes. I was the youngest student in that class. Ashoka Kovilage was our teacher. He is a great musician and composer of some popular sinahla songs such as "senehasa illa by Malani Bulathsinhala", "paaru palamen by Sunil Edirisinghe".
Since I was a school kid, I could not practice hard like the other guys in our guitar class. But I was able to learn some of the basic chords. In 1991, I was a member of the eastern music ochestra of D.S.S.C (my school). I still remember the first date I performed public at the science day of Anula Vidyalaya, Nugegoda. I hardly played rhythm guitar for 2 songs. :)
I could not continue learning guitar with my studies and almost quit it when I was doing advanced level exams. Then I did one of the worst mistakes in my life. I sold my guitar.
There were a lot of occasions I badly needed to reform the guitarist inside me while I was studying at the university of Colombo. But I never did it.
So, after almost 15 years, I decided to start playing guitar when I joined WSO2. I practiced the rhythm guitar after work, for around two hours on average, nearly every day. First, I borrowed a guitar from my very good friend Raveen and then I bought a nice Adonis acoustic guitar.
Now I'm capable of playing almost all chord patterns. I usually play by looking at the original chords of songs hence I always assured that the original rhythm is maintained.
