New Taylor 114ce For My Daughter

Photo courtesy of www.taylorguitars.com

Last Wednesday, I photographed guitarist Doyle Dykes at Cream City Music in Brookfield, Wisconsin. But just before driving up to Wisconsin, I received a call from the owner of the music store asking if I would be interested in doing some photography for his store.

The store had ordered ten Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters and ten Telecasters which duplicated Fender Artist Greg Koch's guitars. To read more about Greg Koch, click here. Because they wanted to promote the sale of these custom guitars, they needed a nice photo of Greg with the guitars and also photos of the guitars themselves.

So, I agreed to drive back up to Wisconsin on Monday to shoot the photos of Greg and the guitars. I also created new photos of the store as well so that they can use it on their website in the future.

As part of the payment for my work, I brought home a new Taylor 114ce guitar. While I did not need another guitar, here's what happened to it...

My daughter is going to college in a month and so I told her that if she would learn to play the guitar, I'd give her the Taylor. Back in 2005, when she graduated 8th grade, I gave her a new Fender Stratocaster electric guitar as a graduation present. She had taken my Fender 5-string Jazz Bass and taught herself how to play it and joined the school's jazz band. She was so good at it that I thought I'd buy her a matching Stratocaster for a gift. She never learned to play it and it sat in its case for four years.

So now that she's going to college, she decided that she would like to take some kind of instrument with her. I told her that if she would teach herself how to play the guitar, I'd give her the Taylor.

Literally, since I gave it to her late on Monday, she hasn't put the guitar down and has already taught herself how to play! And she's playing "fingerstyle" already too! Amazing!

She had said she needed a teacher and that's why she did not play the Stratocaster... but obviously, she did not need that. She has played violin for years and also piano, so it's not like she didn't know music. She just needed the motivation to play.

I'm shocked that in just 2 days, she now plays better than many people who have had several months of guitar training. I'm anxious to see how well she plays by the time she goes off to school in a month. Wow! When I went off to college, my dad bought me my first acoustic guitar. It was a Takamine F-340s. Now, as my daughter goes off to college, she gets a Taylor 114ce. I told her that when she has a kid and he/she goes off to college, she will have to continue the tradition and get that kid an acoustic guitar as well.