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Yasmin Williams Transcends All Guitar Norms In Her Tiny Desk Contest Entry

Tiny Desk Contest standout Yasmin Williams from Woodbridge, Va., lays a guitar face up, taps on the frets and plays percussion in the NPR studio.
Eslah Attar
/
NPR
Tiny Desk Contest standout Yasmin Williams from Woodbridge, Va., lays a guitar face up, taps on the frets and plays percussion in the NPR studio.

Yasmin Williams only started playing the guitar after beating all the songs on expert-level on Guitar Hero II. "I figured, well, I beat that game, I can probably play a real guitar now," she says.

Nine years later, Williams is one of the stand-out entrants of this year's Tiny Desk Contest. Williams bills herself as an acoustic finger-style guitarist with the cheeky tagline "Music at your fingertips." Williams's music transcends the standard idea of what a guitarist should do. She uses a cello bow to make low droning sounds, an idea she got from the band Sigur Rós. At the same time, she finger picks melodies with the guitar on her lap and adds a beat with tap shoes.

"A lot of the stuff on the radio right now is very aggressive and kind of sounds the same and kind of in your face," she says. "I like my music to be more melodic, more calming. Just something easy to listen to but has substance." Her debut album is appropriately named Unwind.

She started with that aggressive sound, though, learning electric guitar by first mastering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and yearning to emulate Jimi Hendrix. "Once I learned 'Voodoo Child,' I thought I was the best thing ever," she says.

She recently graduated from New York University with majors in music theory and composition. Her advice for others: avoid getting into a rut. "And, also, just to be patient. Don't expect things to just fall into your lap. Take opportunities, make opportunities for yourself," she says. "Be patient, things will come eventually."

Web intern Emily Abshire contributed to this story.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.
Ned Wharton is a senior producer and music director for Weekend Edition.