Between Neon Faith and Electric Solitude: The Awakening of a Guitarist Finding Her Own Voice

YOUNG N’ LOUD MAGAZINE
 Feature Article

A Beginning Marked by Absence and Courage

For some artists, a career begins with applause, a first show, or a debut release. For others, it begins quietly, in the uncomfortable space where certainty dissolves and courage takes its place. This is where Gina stands today. Although she has played guitar and written music for years, this chapter represents her true beginning. It is the first time she has stepped forward alone, without the familiar presence of her sister, who sang and played keys beside her for most of their shared musical life.

Music was never a solo pursuit for them. It was a bond, something deeply intertwined with family and shared identity. But life, as it often does, shifted its weight. Marriage changed priorities, rhythms changed, and suddenly Gina found herself facing the unfamiliar reality of creating on her own. There is sadness in that separation, an undeniable loneliness, but there is also a quiet thrill. For the first time, she is discovering what her voice sounds like when no one else is filling the space beside it.

Geography, Memory, and the Slow Arrival of Obsession

Gina’s story is inseparable from place, not because one city defined her sound, but because movement did. Born in Arizona, raised for a time in a small town in Michigan, and later returning to Tucson, her relationship with music developed in fragments rather than a straight line.

Her parents were children of the 1980s, and classic rock filled the background of her early years. Yet despite growing up during the height of the grunge era, she somehow missed it entirely. In Michigan, rock music barely registered at all. What surrounded her instead was 1990s dance pop. Music existed, but it did not yet demand anything from her.

That changed when her family returned to Tucson. There, modern rock, especially hard rock, entered her life with force. What had once been passive listening turned into obsession. She wanted not only to hear music but to understand it, to participate in it, to create it with her own hands. Guitar became the object of that desire.

The Long Road to the First Chord

Romantic narratives often suggest that musicians pick up their instruments and feel instantly at home. Gina’s experience was the opposite. Her early relationship with the guitar was marked by frustration, delay, and physical pain.

She waited years for an electric guitar, longing for the sound she heard in her head. At fourteen, her mother gifted her a nylon string Spanish guitar, hoping she would play something gentler, something more traditional. Instead, Gina tried to force Metallica and The Offspring through nylon strings never meant for distortion. Without a pick, she played until her thumb blistered so badly it required a needle to relieve the swelling. When she finally did get a pick, it fell straight into the sound hole, trapping itself there while she stood alone, embarrassed, struggling for twenty minutes to retrieve it.

These moments might sound humorous in retrospect, but at the time they reinforced a deeper fear. Everyone told her guitar was easy. Everyone assumed her background in violin would make it natural. It was not. She struggled constantly and wondered if she simply was not cut out for it. What carried her through was not talent but determination. She practiced harder, longer, and more obsessively than she thought possible.

Identity Without a Name

Despite composing music on her own, Gina has not yet chosen a band name. The hesitation feels intentional, as though naming the project would prematurely define something still in motion. For now, she exists under the simple, practical moniker GinaGuitarist, chosen less for symbolism than necessity. It was available, uncomplicated, and free of numbers and symbols that often clutter online identities.

That simplicity mirrors where she stands artistically. She is not presenting a finished product. She is documenting a process.

Sound as Atmosphere, Not Category

Ask Gina to define her music and she avoids genre labels entirely. Instead, she speaks in images. Cyberpunk. Cybernoir. Neon lights reflected on wet pavement. Nighttime cities humming with tension and possibility.

She wants her sound to live where technology meets emotion, where digital textures carry human weight. She admits she is still learning, still experimenting, still navigating how to translate a visual world into something sonic. Rather than seeing this uncertainty as a weakness, she approaches it as an adventure, one she is allowed to explore without rushing toward conclusions.

Passion as the Core Frequency

What Gina responds to most deeply in music is not perfection, but feeling. Pain, anger, sadness, love, chaos, joy. She is drawn to music that bleeds honestly, music that feels necessary rather than polished. That is what she hopes to offer in return.

Her guitar playing is meant to communicate passion above all else. She considers herself an intensely emotional person, and her goal is not to hide that intensity behind technique but to let it drive every note.

Writing as Survival and Self Examination

Creating alone has forced Gina to rethink how songs begin. Typically, everything starts with a riff, which slowly grows into a chord progression, then a verse and chorus. Recently, however, her approach has shifted. Inspired by songwriter Dan Sugarman, she has begun treating songwriting as a form of journaling.

Rather than documenting daily events, she focuses on singular emotional experiences. Painful memories, unresolved struggles, moments of internal conflict. She explores them musically in stages, allowing the song to reflect not just what happened, but how it felt as it unfolded. The process is deeply cathartic, even when the technical aspects feel overwhelming.

Influences That Extend Beyond Sound

Musically, Gina draws inspiration from bands like I Prevail, Motionless in White, and Bad Omens, while also allowing space for unexpected influences such as K pop. Dan Sugarman remains a guiding presence, both creatively and structurally, even when certain lyrical themes in his work conflict with her personal beliefs.

Visually and culturally, her inspirations stretch further. Cyberpunk art, especially imagery inspired by Tokyo at night, informs not only her aesthetic ambitions but even her instruments. One of her Ibanez guitars bears a Chinese character representing her last name, Tom, a connection to her grandfather who immigrated from China during World War II. That heritage, along with years of studying Mandarin, sits quietly beneath her current fascination with Japanese and Korean culture.

Tools, Limitations, and Accidental Signatures

Gina does not claim mastery over technology. In fact, she openly laughs at her reliance on digital amp presets in GarageBand and Logic. Yet these limitations have become part of her sound. Modern Metal presets, American Metal tones, and home recording constraints shape her music just as much as intention does.

Sometimes a signature emerges not from design, but from necessity.

Milestones That Matter

Certain moments stand out clearly in Gina’s journey. Receiving her first guitar. Upgrading to her first electric, a Fender Stratocaster. Eventually finding the Ibanez that truly matched the music she wanted to create. Studying music theory at a community college and finally understanding chord progressions and structure. Recording her first song professionally with her sister, an experience that still carries emotional weight.

Each step represents movement forward, even when the path itself feels uncertain.

Loss as a Catalyst

The most defining struggle Gina faces now is also the most personal. Creating without her sister has forced her into leadership she never expected. As the younger sibling, she was accustomed to following, sharing responsibility, leaning on someone else’s presence. Now she must navigate decisions alone.

The absence feels like a missing limb. Yet within that loss lies growth. She is learning skills many musicians develop early, learning to trust herself, to occupy space without apology.

Faith, Suffering, and the Search for Hope

Gina’s spirituality is inseparable from her art. As a deeply faithful person, she wrestles openly with the tension between secular music and belief. She has no interest in creating traditional worship music, yet her work is deeply informed by Catholic understandings of suffering, endurance, and hope.

She draws inspiration from the saints, figures who endured profound darkness yet clung to faith without denial. Living with extreme depression herself, Gina finds meaning in creating music that acknowledges pain without surrendering to it. Her goal is not to preach, but to offer solidarity. To remind listeners that suffering is shared, and that hope can exist even within it.

Color, Ritual, and Quiet Preparation

Before practicing or composing, Gina makes herself a sweet drink. Cold coffee or bubble tea in the summer, hot coffee, chocolate, or matcha in colder months. It is a small ritual, but one that signals transition. Work begins here.

She hopes to return to praying before creating, asking for guidance and alignment. Not for success, but for direction.

If her music had a color palette, it would glow in aqua, pink, purple, and neon blue. The colors of imagined cities and digital dreams.

Defining Success Without Illusion

For Gina, success is not measured in numbers or recognition. It is measured in alignment. Creating music that honestly expresses what she feels. Bringing it to life with care and professionalism. Sharing it, even if the audience is small.

Everything beyond that, she believes, is out of her control.

The Next Chapter Begins Quietly

At present, Gina is stepping back from covers to focus on composing and, courageously, learning to sing. She plans to return to covers eventually, but for now the priority is growth. Collaboration remains a dream, not for exposure, but for connection. Making music alone, she admits, is lonely.

Still, she moves forward.

What keeps her Young N Loud is curiosity? Staying current with music. Discovering new bands. Pushing herself to improve, whether through guitar, production, or voice. The fire remains alive not because the path is clear, but because the need to create has not faded.

Her story is not one of arrival, but of becoming. And sometimes, that is where the most honest music is born.