Students at the U can get a free guitar lesson from the Classical Guitar Club.
The club began in 2003 when InSuk Joung, who played classical guitar in Korea for 10 years, found that there was no guitar club in Utah and decided to start one with his friend, Jae Kim.
“I play the piano, and I saw my friend InSuk Joung play the classical guitar, and it was amazing,” Kim explained. “The sounds are really pretty, and the way the sounds are made affects the quality of the music.”
The classical guitar follows the melody of the written music. The focus of the club is helping people improve.
“When I first started, InSuk was really picky about trimming my nails to get the right sound,” said Bora Jang, a club member and a junior in biology.
Joung and Kim, both graduate students in bioengineering, teach the group of about five other students how to play, hoping to someday bring everyone to a certain skill level so they can organize a concert.
“In the beginning, people usually don’t know how posture and how your nails are trimmed affect the sound, but once they get through that beginning stage they learn to create quality music,” Joung said.
The guitar club is open to everyone interested in learning a new, impressive skill, he said. All a student needs is a guitar. Joung said he is even happy to help give advice in purchasing an instrument.
“As we study at the U, we want to learn more than what our majors are teaching us,” Kim said. “The classical guitar is portable and easy to start, since it is a lot cheaper than piano or other instruments.”
Finding a place to practice is easy with guitars, and learning classical guitar teaches one more about music than just the guitar, he said.
“When I’m really tired with school, I go to the club and it’s like a concert,” said Jang.
“The club is a motivation to practice and get together to teach each other,” Kim said.
The music the club plays usually comes from Spain because that is where the classical guitar originated.
“(But) if we have the music for it, like Bach, we will play it,” Joung said.
To get in touch with Joung, the club president, students can e-mail him at [email protected].
