Hello, and welcome to my new guitar blog! This site, in combination with the Pellegrini Guitar YouTube channel, will be the home of my guitar-related digital content. Between these 2 platforms, you can expect to find gear demos and reviews, lots of stories, and eventually, free guitar lessons.
Since this is my first post on the site, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself, talk about my inspiration behind playing guitar and share some interesting little stories about my various connections to Jimi Hendrix.
Hello, nice to meet you
My name is Michael Pellegrini; I’m 42 years old at the time of this writing, and I’ve been playing guitar since I was 14, which was all the way back in 1994. I knew for years before then that I wanted to be a guitar player. Marty McFly playing “Johnny B. Goode” in “Back to the Future” was a big inspiration for me, so my parents put me in lessons at age 7. I still have the Silvertone guitar they bought me at that time, although it rarely comes out of the case these days.
I lasted a short time in lessons, mostly because I lacked the finger control, dexterity, and toughness. I think I was also less than enthusiastic about sight-reading pieces like “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” I knew I wanted to rock, even at that young age, but I didn’t know enough of what that meant. I didn’t have any guitar idols yet, so for the next 7 years, the Silvertone sat in the back of my closet.
My coming of age
By the time my freshman year in high school came around, which was in the Fall of 1994, I was really into music. It didn’t take long after I started attending Lindbergh High School in Renton, Washington, before I knew I needed a guitar. The cool group of guys that I kinda looked up to in those early days had several guitar players, and they frequently used to carry their guitars around the school in cases.
Something about these guys’ silhouettes with their acoustic guitar cases seemed so cool to me. I wanted to walk around school with a guitar case, even though I didn’t yet know how to play one. It wasn’t long before I was digging through the closet for that old Silvertone. I got my hands on a guitar chords book and started trying to figure things out.
It wouldn’t be for another couple of years before I started taking regular guitar lessons from a teacher, but the bug bit me right away. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come home from school and practice guitar for 2 or 3 hours per night. Living in the Seattle suburbs in the 90s, I was definitely aware of the amazing music scene surrounding us, and much of that music is still very important to me today, but there’s no question that it was Jimi Hendrix who first really inspired me to play.
Exploring various connections to Jimi Hendrix
Like so many other guitar players before and after me, it was Jimi Hendrix who inspired me to pick up the guitar and see what kind of noise I could wrangle out of it. Unlike most people, though, I was able to draw several connections to Jimi, each of which solidified my love for the guitar even more.
First, I grew up in Renton, Washington, the same town Jimi Hendrix grew up in. Since we were both a product of the Renton public school system, I decided to ask an old P.E. teacher who had worked for the Renton school district since the early 60s if he ever had Jimi in any of his classes. It turns out he did! He told us several stories about Jimi as a kid; apparently, he frequently skipped out on school activities so that he could play guitar.
My Godfather, Pete Barbas, used to own a popular Jazz club in Seattle called Poopdeck Pete’s. It was a popular place where lots of known musicians used to sit in. Jimi was just a kid, but he used to show up at the club and sit in whenever he could. Years later, when Hendrix was a big star, my Mom saw him perform live at a hometown show in Seattle.
Not to get too personal here, but my Dad, unfortunately, passed away from cancer during my freshman year in high school. My Mom had to pick a cemetery, and based on what a big Jimi Hendrix fan I had already become, she chose the Greenwood Cemetery in the Renton Highlands as his final resting place. She chose this cemetery because it was where Jimi Hendrix was buried.
If you go to Greenwood now, you’ll find a large display dedicated to Jimi, and it’s beautifully done, but back in the 90s, none of that stuff was there. Jimi’s grave was very modest, although I do remember it having a Fender Stratocaster engraved on the headstone. There were so many visitors that the grass over Jimi’s grave was permanently dead, even though everything else around it was lush green.
At that time, the office at the Greenwood Cemetery had several large books for Jimi’s visitors to sign in. Each book probably had at least a thousand pages, and there must have been a half dozen of them. Each one was filled with notes and signatures from visitors from every corner of the world. I, too, was able to sign one of these books, but I have no idea what ever happened to them or if they still do this sort of thing.
As you can see, my connection to Jimi runs pretty deep, and it was always a driving source of inspiration to keep playing guitar. There were times when I would take breaks from it, but I always came back, and these days I play as much as ever.
Growing into the guitar
During my later high school years, I spent a ton of my free time hanging out at American Music in Tukwila, Washington. It’s not there anymore, although their main store in Seattle is still running. During these years, I was exposed to so much; I learned about EVH and Randy Rhoads. I fell in love with Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Metallica, and Pantera. I started challenging myself to write my own songs, then learn how to play and sing them at the same time.
I was forming a musical foundation that would carry me through the years. I didn’t understand music theory very much then, but my love for the instrument never faltered. I spent a couple of years in my 20s playing in bands in Seattle but never went as far with it as I probably could have.
Getting serious about learning the guitar
Even though I played guitar for many years, it wasn’t until my early 30s that I decided to really learn the instrument. That may sound strange, but up until then, it was mostly about writing rock songs with power chords and teaching myself how to play and sing at the same time, which is a skill of its own. It was more about being able to perform a song than it was about proficiency on the instrument.
As I got older, I got married, had 3 kids, and established a career in the tech industry. I knew my days playing in rock bands were behind me, so it made sense to dive head-first into truly learning the instrument. Once again, I was a sponge and started absorbing things again as I did in my teens. I learned the CAGED system and all 5 pentatonic boxes. I learned the 7 diatonic scales, connected them, then learned the modes and how each mode imparted its own feel to a song.
I learned things like the circle of fifths and how to harmonize a chord sequence. I started practicing specific techniques like alternate picking, sweep picking, and tapping. I learned a bunch of really cool blues licks inspired by guys like Hendrix, Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. My guitar collection grew considerably now that I had a solid career going.
I started getting into instrumental music and worshipping guys like Joe Satriani. Eventually, I started writing and recording my own instrumental music, which can be found on my SoundCloud page.
I say all this stuff, not because I think I’m some extra special guitar player. I look around at the guitar community online and am blown away by the talent out there. Frankly, there’s a level of intimidation that has, until now, prohibited me from trying to build my own guitar presence online. I’m saying all this because what I realize today is that, for me and probably so many others, the guitar is a journey. It’s like this consistent prop in the musical that is my life. It’s pretty much always been there in one form or another, but my relationship with it is so different today than it was 25 years ago. That’s the beauty of it and why I wanted to create this site and channel.
I know I can’t compare skill-wise to most of the players I see online, but that shouldn’t stop me (or anyone else) from finding their own way to exercise and showcase their passion for the instrument. I want to give back to the guitar community, and these platforms will be my vehicle for doing so.
I’ve got all kinds of cool gear to demo, and interesting stories go along with so many of these pieces. I also think that, even though I may not be a virtuoso guitar player, that I’m quite capable of teaching a beginner and getting someone ramped up on the guitar relatively quickly. I think about my own progress on the instrument and think about how much further I could have gotten in my early years if I had a good teacher. I’ve built up a lot of knowledge about the instrument, especially over the past 10 years, and I’m excited to now have a forum where I can share everything I’ve learned in an easy-to-follow manner.
I’ve got a lot of plans for this site and YouTube channel, but just like my experience as a guitar player, it’s going to be a journey. These articles, videos, and lessons aren’t going to generate themselves. They’re going to take time, but it’s going to be a labor of love, and I invite you to come along for the ride. I know I’m going to learn a lot from this process, and hopefully, it will help me take my guitar journey to new places I never even dreamed of. Let’s rock!
