Learning to play.... tell your story

Mailman1971

Mailman1971

Moderator
Was watching a ace Frehley interview.
He was talking bout first picking up the guitar. Trying to learn a song. Playing it over and over slow at first. Then progressed little faster to tempo.
I honestly remember that moment. 13 years old. Copy of guitar for the practicing musician.
Detroit rock city. Started reading the tab. Little by little the song came to life!!!
Best memory ever for me starting playing.

Discuss....
 
Started off playing drums to Bon Jovi. Then I heard GnR and saw Slash. Fuck drums! I wanna play guitar.

Dad bought me a $300 Yamaha acoustic and I taught myself to play by learning the chords from tabs in Guitar World mags.

I kept at it and got better. Begged my dad for months to buy me a Gibson LP Standard. He saw that I was really serious about guitar and he finally caved. The rest as they say, is history.
 
Was watching the Glen Campbell show and was inspired. My Dad had a gut string somewhere so I went upstairs and found it and there was a Mel Bay beginners book and a tuning harp with it. Learned a D chord and I was hooked.
 
Started playing a old acoustic. Worked cleaning a machine shop one summer. Rode my bicycle 6am every Saturday. First real electric was a squire bullet. MIJ
Must been 82? 83?
Peavey 15 watt combo. But bought it myself. Super proud. 😂
 
I’m left handed and my brother and step brother are right handed. They each got guitars for Christmas and I didn’t (in my small town a left handed guitar was definitely unobtainable), but they played video games and didn’t really care.

I didn’t bother wanting to learn until I saw one of my best friends playing in a garage band in high school and killing it on EVH, skynyrd, 3 doors down, all the hot songs back then. I was hooked - the loud 5150 sound and all.

His bassist was left handed but played right handed and my friend had experience teaching him how to play bass right handed. He took me under his wing to teach me how to play right handed and general theory.

I picked up the acoustic and in a mirror taught myself to hold a guitar pick from that point on and. I took lessons from the friend for about a month. After that I picked up music by ear playing to CDs (YouTube was just starting). He charged me originally as a student but after a while that’s actually how we became friends.

The rest is history.
 
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my first "guitar" was a tennis racket, with a chain attached as a strap, that was used for many solo, bed room, rock and roll shows, featuring metallica, ac/dc, and guns n roses covers. :D

my dad gave my sister and i some pawn shop, german made, nylon string guitar, right before he was out of our lives pretty much forever (opiates...). I used to sit and listen to music and try and mimic the melodies on just the high e string.

Age 11, i worked at the family business for a christmas season to get the money for a washburn lyon strat and peavey rage 158 combo, and that was it for a good long time. i played that shit for like 8 - 10 years before i finally got the "Gear head" bug, and started obsessing over equipment.
 
Friends of my parents gave me an acoustic guitar. Had it strung for a lefty. The store said I should play righty. No long after my friends family was selling an Antares electric guitar. My mom let me get it. Then I got a crate CR112 amp and a few pedals. This was in 5-6ths grade. From there I just kept learning songs…mostly blues and Black Sabbath. Right out of high school I got a 71 Super lead and 4x12. A monitor two later I picked up a 67 Plexi and another 4x12. Then got an echoplex, space echo, tons of MXR pedals, etc, and built my own parts guitars. For a decade that’s all I played. Then around 1999 I found Harmony Central, Les Paul forum, etc and was introduced to different amps and guitars. When it comes down too it, I like simple stuff so I can just play.
 
Love it!
I took that fender squire (3 single coils )
Sold a broken motorcycle. Bought me a Duncan Jb. (That’s what all the mags said rockstars were playing). Think this was the ratt invasion era was going on. Took the guitar to my uncles place. He knew nothing bout guitars but could do it all. We routed out the body. He soldered in that jb. Took it home. Plugged in my Peavey backstage plus thru DOD American metal. It was Jaw dropping. Haha
 
I was 13 when I heard a neighbor kid playing some old Priest. Probably 1980..he showed me how to fret a bar chord and that was it…I’d go over to his house every day to play his guitar. Soon I had an Arbor LP clone out of a Sears catalog, and a small practice amp. By 83 I had a cherry sunburst Ibanez Destroyer and a 70s Bassman head/cab + a few pedals. Played to old AC/DC and Priest.
 
Inspired by KISS I wanted to play their stuff. Parents only agreed to buy me an acoustic and for me to take lessons. I would have been in Grade 4 or 5. I got through 4 years of lessons in only 2, but it was very basic stuff with quite a bit of theory. Got bored and quit. Guitar sat in a closest for 5 years. I didn't even look at it. After witnessing a battle of the bands in Grade 9 I got the spark to start again, and it took a solid year of pleading with my parents to get me an electric. By then I was 100% rusty and pretty much started all over. So I got my first electric in Grade 10 at age 16 but I was almost 17 at the time. Then my lessons became playing along to Metallica and Slayer tapes lol. To be honest I think I progressed rather slowly.
 
I had the mag subscription to Guitar for Practicing Musician. Tab to me saved my life. Took guitar lessons at the local music store. Guy could play. But was teaching me to read notes playing ‘happy birthday’ and ‘Mary had a little lamb’ drove me insane!!
Dove into the guitar mags. Would learn little phrases and licks from the tab. Gradually I would create my own style from a mix of the guitar heros. Still how I play till these days. Haha
 
Heard eruption on a Walmart.
It changed my life !
I had to play then.
There was guitars around, but not much for amps. A crappy acoustic I used at first.
Then got a strat for Christmas at 16.
Someone put a Seymour Duncan invader in the bridge.
Eventually I got a single hamburger Pickard and an emg 81 from music emporium.
I played that guitar so much and palm muted that the top of the emg has wear marks from the strings hitting the pickup.
 
JimAnsell said:
my first "guitar" was a tennis racket, with a chain attached as a strap, that was used for many solo, bed room, rock and roll shows, featuring metallica, ac/dc, and guns n roses covers. :D
Click to expand...

The EXACT road I took too.. but my shows were pretty much all Randy Rhoads related. LOL This would have been late 70's-early 80's. I was about 10 years old when I discovered Ozzy and by default.. Randy. I didn't actually start playing until I was about 15-16 years old. Got an old Harmony solid body electric and was hooked.
 
I started classical piano training and 6 years old and hated it.

But it was part of the "deal" with my parents; if I took the lessons seriously and worked on it, in a few years they would let me get a guitar.

They finally made good on their word, found an ibanez acoustic electric when I turned 11, and sent me to a total jerk off for lessons, and I promptly quit after about a month.

The next summer, I was bored as hell, and on our new fangled Costco E-machines PC I discovered the internet - and more specifically, the misfits songbook page.

You mean these songs are that easy?!

I then learned every Danzig era misfits song in about a month, worked swamping cherries in an orchard the rest of the summer, and bought a Mexican strat, an Ibanez slam punk pedal, and a 60 watt SS peavey keyboard amp.

In a year I was doing local gigs, in two years I was going on tours with older musicians, and in three years I had a 77 Les Paul custom and a Marshall DSL50 half stack (back then, I started plugging straight in ala Sykes)

I basically repeated that process, changing gear in and out, until I got tired of touring and got a regular job.
 
Dad took me to see Floyd in ‘94 when I was 11, I had a guitar in my hands a few months later. Uncle (killer guitar player) showed me a couple little things that night, the intro to “Wish You Were Here” and I just flipped. I couldn’t believe I was (crappily) playing the same thing David Gilmour played! I got the tab book for The Division Bell and my uncle gave me a copy of EJ’s Total Electric Guitar VHS, those were my main learning resources during that time. Obviously, I wasn’t playing the shit EJ was, but that’s where I learned all about muting and the smaller things you generally don’t figure out til later; picking the string in different areas for different tones, different ways of bending and vibrato techniques.
 
I got lucky and had some local heroes sitting in the room show me tricks and techniques as we got fucked up and talked trash.
Same guys I went to school and concerts with.
 
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