questions about this life!

[jinx]

how long have you been playing? how did you start? how long did it take before you could actually play something and play it good? did you take lessons"?

[Black Mariah]

Re: questions about this life!

8 years. My cousin got a guitar and I thought it was cool. A couple of months. No.

[ August 11, 2003, 08:26 PM: Message edited by: Black Mariah ]

[Freehill]

Re: questions about this life!

14 years and counting. I started before I took driver's ed. I've wanted to play the guitar since I was 10 (didn't actually start until I was 14). Took about a month to play something recognizable. Had lessons for about a year and a half but didn't really improve until after I stopped.

[kremit]

Re: questions about this life!

Originally posted by Black Mariah:
8 years. My cousin got a guitar and I thought it was cool. A couple of months. No.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Weird, my answers are the same, except I've been playing for 10 years. My cousin was jammin some Megadeth on a Squier Bullet and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

[Black Mariah]

Re: questions about this life!

Mine was playing Sunshine of Your Love on an Aria. I thought it was a POS even then. [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[pagemalicious]

Re: questions about this life!

Ive been playing for about 6 years, i started because i just loved the look of guitars and found them really interesting. It took me a few months to play some thing that sounded good and that was black sabbaths paranoid,lol. I took lessons for about 5 and a bit years and now i teach myself. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Newc]

Re: questions about this life!

19 years. My uncle played guitar and lived across the street from us at one point, and he gave me a cheapo acoustic that I taped cassette covers onto (Van Halen 1, 2, Diver Down, Women and Children First, and Fair Warning, as well as Blizard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman and Number of the BEast [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ) Let a "friend" borrow it and never saw it again. [img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img] I'm sure it didn't make my uncle too happy, either.
Never learned anything on that (other than how to apply Scoth tape [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ), but a few years later I bought a Montoya Les Paul copy from a "real" friend for $50. I didn't know you could take lessons at a music store for anything other than piano and violin, so I didn't get any, and my friend (who was a damn good shredder - big Rhoads fan, too) wouldn't teach me anything, so I learned it all by ear. I was playing Rush's YYZ and some WASP, Sabbath, Priest, Maiden and Stryper stuff and didn't know WTF chords and scales and such I was playing. I tried to take a Jazz III class in High School to learn to play, but they thought I was joking when I told them I didn't know how, and the other guy who signed up for the class switched to another elective still thinking I could play! By the time I convinced him I knew exactly Jack Shiot about it, it was too late for him to switch back. Anyhoo, after I left school later that year I stayed in my room for a year with my albums and tapes going over stuff and picking it up.
One of my brother's girlfriends had a brother who could play, and I went over to his house and everyone's standing outside and he's throwing some magazines into a burn barrel (wintertime - it wasn't that cold but fire's neat [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ) I look at the last few books in the stack he's been tossing into the fire for an hour or more, and they're called "Guitar for the Practicing Musician" and they feature current Metal songs I liked and teach you how to play them through the interesting method of each line representing a string on a guitar, and each number showing you what fret on each string - simple. So I freak out - "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?! Is this a new book?" He says "Nah they been out a coupla years, I learned all the stuff in these already so I'm throwing them away". Anyhoo, he gave me what few he had left and after I figured out how to read tablature (didn't understand at first how they had written it, as I had come up with something similar on my own some months before, but the top string was the top line - so you would basically read it as if you were looking into a mirror).
I got a couple of the bigger store-bought books like The Blues Bible and learned what Pentatonic scales were and that was about the most I got out of it. I learned a few songs from tablature but then they started focusing on more shred stuff that I didn't care for and just bought it for the articles. Plus I got heavy into Sabbath and decided that instead of waiting for them to tab out some, I'd learn it by ear.
So I learned a buttload of Sabbath, then started learning some Motley Crue stuff from Too Fast for Love, Shout At The Devil, and Theater of Pain, when the bassist for the band my brother was in at the time (about two years after I left school) showed me that I was tuned too high - I was a full step above standard A-440 [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
Dropping to standard (and then Eb, D, and C# for some Sabbath) as well as switching from 10's to 9's (and 8's, and I swear I had one set of 7's but no one believes me), learning and playing became a helluva lot easier LOL

Newc

[ August 12, 2003, 07:25 AM: Message edited by: Newc ]

[Inazone]

Re: questions about this life!

I started playing when I was 14 or 15...half a lifetime ago! My dad gave me a choice: I could go to see INXS (yes, my favorite band at the time), or I could get a guitar. The budget was tight, so it came down to a used Harmony POS and a tiny BC Rich "Pit Puppy" practice amp. A friend of mine had been taking lessons for years and still couldn't play worth a damn, so I didn't bother with lessons. It was a few months before I learned anything, and I think it was "Paint It Black" by the Stones. Not too much later, I got into my first band with some guys from school. We were pretty awful, but I learned a few Metallica and Guns n' Roses tunes.

After that, I switched to bass for several years, playing in garage bands. It wasn't until after college that I picked up a guitar again.

[Alexi7]

Re: questions about this life!

about 4 years. A couple of my friends who were in my music class started playing guitar, thought i might give it a go to learn nothing else matters, and viola. No lessons, but i wish i had taken them, i would have been as good as i am now in half the time.
Cheers

[Galaxyssb]

Re: questions about this life!

30+ years under my belt. Started when I was 14.. Actually started earlier, Piano Lessons at 8 yuck, and still play the keyboard in our band. Yea, I'm still playin out. [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] One day tho my wrist is gonna make me quit.. Some times the pain gets pretty bad, but ya gotta go on.. Not ready to quit just yet.. Probably took 6 months before I could play an entire song all the way through before someone could figure out what it was. And nope never had guitar lessons..

web page

Karl.

[prsk87]

Re: questions about this life!

i played for about 7 months before i could play creed's one last breath perfectly

[lerxstcat]

Re: questions about this life!

31 years as of this past July 8; it's my second birthday! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

My bud who taught me was mad because I was supposed to get a bass (Mom was too cheap to get the bass; thanks Mom!). He decided to throw more at me than he figured I could handle, so after the first month I had all the open position major and minor chords, the E and A-form barre chords, and the pentatonic scale that's in the bar chord box. Didn't know any of the theory behind 'em though, just
knew how to play 'em. First full somg was Four Day Creep by Humble Pie, then I Don't Need No Doctor also by HP, then Iron Man by Sabbath! Not the leads though, not in one month anyway. That took about 3 months, and by then was teaching my buddy who'd taught me! I had a better ear, it turned out. For him the investment really paid off, and without him I may have never started.

Thanks Ricky Bryant! [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

[DJROBA]

Re: questions about this life!

27 years and still going strong. In 1974, I was riding my tricycle around, and heard some music up the street. So I crused over to check it out. When I found the music, there were real Hippies jamming in the driveway, just outside the garage. They were playing smoke on the water, and some Led Zepplin. For years after that, I thought Deep Purple lived down the road from me(Carpentersville,IL). I also remember hearing Little Whillie(Sweet)playing on the radio as my mom was taking me to Kiddie College.But, when I heard Eddie Van Halen play Eruption, and saw Kiss, I was hooked like you wouldn't believe. Then came Randy Rhoads!! [img]graemlins/brow.gif[/img] Playing guitar for me is a passion I can't even explain. When I was teaching guitar, alot of my students would complain about having to practice. It was never a chore for me. It's as natural as breathing for me. Can any of you understand what I'm trying to say.

[shape shift]

Re: questions about this life!

I've played for 13 years. I started playing because I wanted to learn Metallica and Megadeth riffs. Those were my favourite bands, and they still are to this day.

[makovai]

Re: questions about this life!

22 years here. Still cant ply anything reconizable. My wife says my tunes sound like a car running over a cat. That must mean I'm getting better. [img]graemlins/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
My first guitar was also a Teisco, a righty that I strung lefty. Damn I should've learned to play right handed.

[ August 13, 2003, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: makovai ]