Back home, Mudpedal felt like he was carrying treasure.
The guitar was zipped safely into its padded case, nestled like a jewel. The amplifier was small enough for him to carry without help, but just barely. His dad gave him a thumbs-up from the living room before disappearing behind a book.
“Don’t forget to read the instructions,” his dad called out. “And don’t melt your brain with loud noises.”
Mudpedal set everything up in the corner of his room next to his desk. His bedroom walls were plastered with posters – one of Jet Drako leaping into battle with laser swords, one of a velociraptor in sunglasses playing drums, and one homemade sign that read MUDPEDAL’S UNSTOPPABLE SPACE BAND.
He carefully unpacked the Ibanez guitar and placed it across his knees like a sleeping cat. He ran his fingers along the strings, just to hear them whisper. They mumbled a twang, a ping, and a little zzzzzt when he tapped too hard.
He picked up the thick black cable with the shiny silver tips and plugged one end into the output jack on the guitar. It clicked into place. The other end went into the amplifier. It felt mechanical. Important. Like he was waking something up.
He flipped the switch on the amp and BZZZMMMMMM, the speaker hummed to life.
This was it.
This was serious business.
He cracked open the guitar book. It had a bold, cheerful cover that said Getting Started on Electric Guitar. The first page had a diagram of a guitar with arrows pointing to all the important parts: neck, bridge, headstock, pickups, frets, nut. It was like learning the anatomy of a new creature. Like if someone said, “This is a dragon. Here are its wings, its claws, and the place where it shoots fire.”
Mudpedal read all the part names out loud like a scientist in a lab: “Bridge…nut…pickups…volume knob…truss rod?” He didn’t know what all of them did yet, but that didn’t matter. He figured he’d learn them in time.
Right now, there was only one thing on his mind.
Play a song.
The next page showed him how to make a sound that actually had a name: Em.
“E minor,” Mudpedal said aloud. “What’s a minor chord?” He scanned the paragraph.
The book explained that chords were made up of multiple notes played at once and that each chord had a name, usually a letter. A through G. Then it started over again. Like musical alphabet soup. The little “m” next to the E meant minor, but the book didn’t really say what that meant. It just said minor chords sound “more serious” than major chords.
“Okay,” he said, nodding to no one. “Serious it is.”
There was a picture showing where to put your fingers for Em. It looked simple – just two fingers pressing down on two strings, with all the others left open.
Simple.
Right?
He tried it.
He pressed his index finger on the fifth string, second fret. Then his middle finger on the fourth string, second fret.
He strummed.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZT.
It sounded like a playpus sneezing into a tin can. Yikes.
He adjusted his fingers and tried again.
BZZZ-BLANK-CLANG-THWIP.
Nope.
He frowned, scrunched up his face, and gave it a serious go.
He pressed harder. The strings dug into the pads of his fingers. It felt like tiny wires biting into his skin.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “Try again.”
He flipped back to the book and read the strumming directions. It showed arrows going up and down and had numbers underneath:
“One and two and three and four and…”
“Strum down on the numbers,” the book explained. “Strum up on the ‘ands’.”
He began chanting it under his breath. “One and two and three and four and—”
He missed half the strings.
His arm was swinging like a wild wiper blade. Sometimes he hit the top of the guitar. Sometimes he hit air.
He tried again.
And again.
And again.
It still sounded like a jar of bees playing hide-and-seek inside a microwave.
Frustrated, he decided to check each string one by one. He plucked the sixth string. Good. Fifth string. Okay. Fourth—buzz. Third—ughhh. He leaned in. The book had warned him: “If your finger touches another string, the sound won’t ring clearly.”
And sure enough, his middle finger was barely brushing the third string.
That little mistake ruined the whole thing.
One finger!
He tried to move his fingers so they curled more, like claws. He pushed his thumb hard against the back of the neck and stretched his other fingers forward. The middle of his palm started to ache. A deep, sore burn.
But this time, the chord sounded clean.
BOOOONGGG.
Em. Real Em.
His first chord.
He smiled so wide his cheeks hurt.
For the next ten minutes, he played that chord over and over again, practicing the up-down motion until his right arm felt like a metronome. He kept glancing at the picture in the book like it was a map to buried treasure.
Then, all at once, the muscles in his left hand gave out.
“Ow ow ow,” he whispered, shaking out his fingers. His fingertips felt like little balloons, tight and tingly.
Guitar, it turned out, was not a passive hobby.
It was an endurance sport.
He flipped ahead in the book to see what songs he might get to play if he stuck with it. He found a page with a list: “Easy Beginner Songs.” The first one was by The Rolling Stones. He didn’t recognize the name – You Can’t Always Get What You Want – but he liked the idea of playing a song with a real title by a real band.
It needed three chords: Em, Am, and C.
“Okay,” Mudpedal said, talking to the book now. “We’re gonna need some reinforcements.”
He read the instructions for A minor and C major. Both had more complicated finger positions than Em. The C chord required three fingers across three different strings. He felt like he was playing finger Twister.

Over the next few days, Mudpedal attacked the book like it was a secret code to crack.
After school, he dropped his backpack, kicked off his shoes, and made a beeline for the guitar. No video games. No hanging out with Lawrch and Sammy James. Not even his usual after-school bowl of cereal. Okay, maybe cereal sometimes.
It took two days to get Am to sound halfway decent. Three days for C major. His fingers still buzzed. His hand still cramped. His thumb had a permanent dent from pressing into the neck of the guitar.
But one thing was changing: the tips of his fingers.
They had started to peel.
At first, it looked like a sunburn. Then, it got flaky. And then it hardened.
He showed his mom, who winced. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“Guitar calluses,” Mudpedal explained proudly. “It means I’m becoming a guitarist.”
His mom made a face. “Just wash your hands before dinner.”
By the end of the weekend, he could play the song. All the way through. Slowly, yes. Clumsily, yes. But he sang along to the lyrics printed in the book, his voice cracking and wobbling like a goat on a trampoline.
He played it so many times, the words etched themselves into his brain:
“You can’t always get what you want…”
Except Mudpedal had gotten what he wanted: a guitar.
He was making progress.
At dinner one night, his dad handed him a stack of CDs in cracked jewel cases. “These are some classics. Start with The Beatles. Listen for the rhythm guitar. That’s your job.”
“The Beatles?” Mudpedal asked, flipping through them. “Weren’t they, like, from the 1800s?”
“Try the White Album,” his dad said. “Listen to how the guitar works with the other instruments.”
So he did. He sat on his bedroom floor, headphones on, flipping through chord charts while Paul McCartney sang about raccoons and revolutions. He learned that The Beatles had two guitar players, plus a guy on bass and a drummer who looked like a sleepy cartoon turtle.
He tried to play along, pausing the songs and matching the chords. It was tricky. The Beatles made it sound easy. It wasn’t.
After another week of daily practice, Mudpedal could now play ten songs from the book. Some used just two chords. Others used four. He’d memorized strumming patterns like “Down-down-up-up-down-up” and “Down—rest—down-up-down-up.”
He was on page 30 of the 68-page book.
It was starting to feel possible.
He started exploring bands his dad mentioned. Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. Some of the songs had strange time signatures and sounded like musical roller coasters. He couldn’t play them yet, but something about the challenge excited him.
He wanted to do more.
He wanted to play with other people.
A drummer. A bass player. A singer. Maybe even someone on piano, like in Bohemian Rhapsody.
He daydreamed about a garage full of instruments. Posters on the walls. Extension cords everywhere. A handwritten setlist taped to an amp.
He imagined himself standing center stage, hair spiked up like Jet Drako, playing the final note of a solo while fireworks exploded behind him.
Mudpedal Clark, guitarist.
Ten years old.
Leveling up every day.
And so, each afternoon, with his calloused fingers, sore shoulders, and buzzing amp, he strummed and sang and learned.
Because guitar, he now knew, was not just about sounding cool.
It was about not giving up.