Well I'll add mine to this thread of some interesting stories--I always enjoy hearing this stuff.

Anyway--I don't remember why I wanted to play guitar--I've always wanted to--as far as I can remember I wanted to guitar, and as a small child would tell people that.

So when I was 8 I started music lessons--but not guitar--piano.

My parents had done some research and were told that it is good to start kids on piano, and then they can switch to other instruments after developing some co-ordination and at least a bit of a musical ear, learn some theory, etc.

I have to say it did help, and so I don't regret it that way. I took piano lessons for three years. I enjoyed the first two, but the third I had a new teacher as the previous one had moved out of the city. This new teacher had a new way of learning piano--so basically my previous two years went out the window and I started from scratch. I lost interest in it. So I told my parents I wanted to stop piano lessons. They agreed, although I stuck out the year.

That summer our family was in a K-Mart and they had a real cheap acoustic guitar. I had some of my own money and asked if I could buy it. My parents bought me a couple of books and some picks. I was going to teach myself, because I knew the notes, how to read music, and how to count. I went back to the way I learned my first two years, and tried.

But I had trouble sticking with it, because I wasn't sure I was playing it right, and I was pretty sure my guitar was never quite in tune. So I told my parents I needed lessons. I started that fall. My mom picked me up after school and drove me there. The teacher recognized my guitar was a waste of good plywood, and to start I used a borrowed one. I also started on a classical, first learning the notes & stuff, then I learned classical guitar.

Anyway the first Christmas after I started guitar lessons I got a classical guitar--and I was ecstatic. My parents thought I knew I was getting a guitar--but I was oblivious.

I sold the K-Mart guitar for the same price I paid for it--and that's the only guitar I've ever sold.

Two years later I switched to a new teacher and started playing electric (My parents bought me a Les Paul copy.) Then about a year after that I also started playing bass, but I preferred guitar.

So it's been many years and some more guitars sine then, but I still play, and I still love it.

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It wasn't Willy-Nilly, it was at crows.

I've been playing off-and-on for about 15 years. My mom had an old Harmony guitar which she bought when she was in college. It was always laying around the house, just calling out to me to be played. I picked it up now and then when I was a kid but never got very far with it since it was a righty guitar and I'm left-handed.

Then, when I was 15 I got my first job at a local supermarket. Inspired by Jimmy Page and the 1st two Led Zep albums I discovered in my parents' record collection, I saved up some paycheck money and bought a used Les Paul copy and a practice amp. I took lessons for a year or two in high school, then went off to college and played bass in a couple of bands.

After school, life got busy with work, etc., and the guitar and the bass didn't get used very much. Then one day about three years ago, I got inspired to get out the old six string and fell in love with playing all over again! Started practicing again just about every day -- and then about a year ago formed a band (my first in nearly 10 years!) with a couple friends and my little sister on drums!

So my love affair with the guitar has been an on-again-off-again kind of relationship, but somehow I always keep finding my way back!

My story is pretty typical. I was young, maybe twelve, and living in a home where music was always available. My dad played guitar -- and still does -- which, along with a few choice rock cuts, inspired me. I dusted off an ancient old classical guitar from the basement closet and, with the help of the chord chart in Tom Wheeler's the Guitar Book, began teaching myself.

My father was sufficiently impressed, I believe, with my ability to play barre chords on the mile-high action of this classical so, in the summer between grade 7 and grade 8, bought me my first guitar, a Cort Earth-series acoustic. I went to work immediately: teaching myself how to play was (and still is) immensely rewarding, and I played rock for years.

My first electric was a beat up Harmony Les Paul copy that dad found in a pawnshop somewhere. I still have it, but I've gone through a series of guitars since then. Now I'm playing in a gigging band and just about done university. My how time flies.

It thrills me to hear this and I find it fascinating that we all have stories like this:) i mean the satisfaction we all get from playing is just brilliant:D i've this last hour sat and played an acoustic whilst running the bath and its been bliss...

Im 17 and started guitar this year in january and have been a comitted student so now i play at the same level as my friends of 5 years they just know more than me

Please people i wish to hear more

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A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski~

Well, OK. Here's Part II.

I taught myself for a year, but it was slow going and I kept hitting brick walls. Even though I have the internet and everything, it helps so much to actually witness someone playing what it is you want to learn right in front of you. So I finally found a really good guitar teacher who I'm still taking lessons from. He has a very wide range of music that he likes and teaches, and I really got into listening to a lot of music I probably wouldn't have discovered if not for him.

I was into modern rock, punk, metal and alternative when I started. As time went on I began listening to EVH, Led Zeppelin and other popular classic hard rock and metal bands too. I learned tapping pretty well, because I used to think that was one of the hardest and coolest things to on guitar. It really wasn't that hard, but I didn't know that so I thought I was actually good. I was hugely into EVH when my Dad downloaded Pride and Joy and Texas Flood for me to listen to. I had just finished learning Eruption and to be completely honest I was starting to get an ego. I guess I was adjusting to the fact that all of a sudden I was cool because I played guitar.
So Dad plugged in the CD with SRV on it and told me who it was, where he was from and how he died. I sort of kind of liked Pride and Joy. But I thought Texas Flood was slow, boring and easy. I thought Pride and Joy was easy too. I thought that since I could play EVH I could play anything.

So my Dad plays bass, and he wanted me to learn Pride and Joy so that I could play it with him. I reluctantly agreed, since I really didn't like anything metal at the time. I was absolutely shocked by how hard it really was (I had been playing guitar just over a year). I could barely play past the first few notes and the beat totally baffled me. To this day, Pride and Joy has been the only song that I've completely given up on because even after weeks of effort I couldn't play it.

You'd think that would have humbled me, right? Wrong. I had bragged to my friends about how boring and easy blues was and how good I was at it. (All I could do was play a really bad version of Jimmy Reed, but I thought that was all there was to it.) So I came up with the explanation that because blues was such a personal thing, you couldn't play other people's blues. That sounds ridiculous, but my friends believed it.
Looking back on it, I think that one of the reasons I was so into metal was because guys would talk to me about it, and I'd listen to it. I was in Jr. High and I was a little amazed by the fact that High School guys who'd completely ignore me before suddenly wanted to be my friend since I played the kind of music they were into (I'm a girl, by the way). Talking about guitar and heavy metal earned me quite a few "friends", and gave me a feeling of being really cool. Now I realize it's wrong to think that way. And there's nothing wrong with metal, but if that's the only kind of music you like there's something wrong with you.

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(Oh man, this is a way longer post than I thought it would be... )

You'd think that would have humbled me, right? Wrong. I had bragged to my friends about how boring and easy blues was and how good I was at it. (All I could do was play a really bad version of Jimmy Reed, but I thought that was all there was to it.) So I came up with the explanation that because blues was such a personal thing, you couldn't play other people's blues. That sounds ridiculous, but my friends believed it.
Looking back on it, I think that one of the reasons I was so into metal was because guys would talk to me about it, and I'd listen to it. I was in Jr. High and I was a little amazed by the fact that High School guys who'd completely ignore me before suddenly wanted to be my friend since I played the kind of music they were into (I'm a girl, by the way). Talking about guitar and heavy metal earned me quite a few "friends", and gave me a feeling of being really cool. Now I realize it's wrong to think that way. And there's nothing wrong with metal, but if that's the only kind of music you like there's something wrong with you.

So a couple of years pass and I actually did go beyond just listening to metal. I liked classic rock too. Then one night around 1 am, my Mom started yelling for me to get out of bed and come see something. (We stay up pretty late sometimes, and this was on a weekend.) Usually she'd only get me up to watch some educational show on TV, so I dragged myself out of bed fully expecting to get an hour long lesson on the history of Prehistoric Cave Art. But hey, any excuse to stay up late!

To my surprise, it had nothing to do with history. Or maybe it was history in a way. It was a guy wearing this crazy outfit, a black hat and he was playing this beat-to-crap Fender Strat like he'd never see another guitar again.
So I sat down and watched. Strats were always my favorite type of guitar, but I'd ditched them for a Les Paul. But this guy, man, I'd have never thought that a Strat could sound so powerful. He was playing blues, but I didn't really notice. He was so stinkin' good that it didn't matter that I hated blues. And he was fast! At least as fast as EVH, way faster than Jimmy Page and he didn't even have to tap or do sweep picking or anything! And yet he was playing fast and playing with soul at the same time, which was something I hadn't seen or thought about up until that point.

After a few songs, my Mom turned to me and asked me if he was any good and all I could do was nod my head with this giant grin on my face. My ego went strait out the window that night and it hasn't come back. Just watching humiliated me enough to make me realize that if I was ever going to get anywhere near that good I'd have to make a huge effort. But at the same time I realized that even though it would take working my butt off, there was nothing I'd rather do more.
I remember I had to ask my Mom who it was, and she told me it was Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was kind of surprised, because I remembered him from when my Dad tried to get me to listen to blues and because I remembered hating it. But I was so blown away, I couldn't hate blues anymore. As soon as the credits started rolling I literally ran full speed back to my room and grabbed my Fender Strat from under the bed where it had been for a year and I immediately tried playing that lick on Riviera Paradise where Stevie picks the string behind the nut and uses the whammy bar for vibrato.
It worked, and it sounded so cool that I couldn't stop playing it and I had to go show my Mom that very instant.

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Website: http://www.rebeccalaird.com
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(I talk too much... But hey, ya'll wanted to hear it. )

That night, still on my Strat, I figured out everything I could remember. I tried to do Pride and Joy again, I figured out the intro to Voodoo Chile (I didn't know it was a Hendrix song at the time) but it was in the wrong key, and I figured out Third Stone from the Sun. I was actually right about the key on Third Stone From the Sun, because I knew that Stevie tuned down a half step from trying to play Pride and Joy.
I could go on and on and on about how much I've learned from Stevie, but you'd be ten years older by the time I finished typing.
He made me want to play guitar the best I possibly can, he totally changed everything for me. I wish I could thank him.

Since my Dad had already told me that he was dead, that part didn't surprise me when I heard it. What surprised me was after I started reading interviews and I began to realize who he was as a person. I was used to finding out that the various famous guitarists I liked were all arrogant jerk heads.
But Stevie wasn't like that at all. He was actually humble, especially in the way he talked about and treated the people who had influenced him. He really didn't have to mention who he listened to and who helped him all the time, but he did. And thank God he wasn't too big to mention those people, or I wouldn't have heard of them and I would be missing out so bad. Stevie's either directly or indirectly responsible for at least 80% of the music I listen to now.

It also really surprised me that he died just two years before I was born. That really hurts. Especially since I got to meet several people who knew him personally when I was in Austin. They're being completely honest when they talk about him, they aren't just saying nice things because he's dead. They mean it.

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/beckslaird
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I didn't come from a musical family or have any formal training. I was 16 back in 1996 and I had become friends with a guy in school who was a year older than me and he played in a rock band. They did all original stuff and I was completely enthralled with it. At the time I was dating a girl who for some stupid reason, didn't want me to get a guitar. Well, we broke up at the beginning of February and on the 14th I bought my first guitar (I remember the date because it was valentine's day). It was a cheap Strat copy (Barracuda) in white. I had no amp so my friend loaned me his little Coron practice amp. I just got one of those books where it shows all the chords and I started learning.
One odd thing about how I learned is that I was never particularly interested in learning other people's songs. I never learned many covers. I just started making up my own stuff early on.
I was incredibly inspired by Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones. While everyone I knew was listening to Grunge/Alternative, I was collecting Stones CD's and air guitaring to them every night. That was how I learned Keith's completely messed up rhythm style - something that affects my playing to this day. Keith is also what made me fall in love with the Telecaster - and Fender in general. I think there is no better ambassador for the Fender brand than the image of that man with his 52 Tele slung low and his picking hand in the air.
My buddy's band eventually broke up and after much persistent lobbying on my part, he agreed to start jamming with me. Thus began a writing and recording partnership that continues to this day. We learn from and inspire each other in our writing and our sound.
About 6 years ago I picked up bass because our band needed a bassist and they are hard to find around here. Last year I bought a cheap drumset and I've also picked up drums.
Because of my lack of formal training, I'm not a great technical player, but I have a hell of a sense of rhythm which is my strength. I'm one of those players who doesn't think about the music, they feel it.
I've given up on the dream of becoming a rock star, but music is something I love and I couldn't imagine NOT being into it.

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The ultimate Rolling Stones experience!
https://www.facebook.com/TheMainStreetExiles

haha cool.

I guess it all happened because of clarinet. Somehow, indirectly, I owe my passion for guitars to that Selmer.

I went to Sam Ash several years ago with my dad and brother. My brother wanted to get an acoustic, and it still remains with him. It's a Yamaha, and the action is so high you can't bend above the 7th fret. I got a clarinet to be my own, because that was the instrument I played in elementary school band. It cost over $700 (by the way, I'm planning on selling it to hopefully get a mini deja vibe), but I thought my brother's guitar was really cool. So I asked my dad if I could get an acoustic for my eleventh birthday. He said, "sure." However, it happened in May, early May, I remember because a distant relative of ours had died that day. My dad came home with a box. Inside, there was a Carlo Robelli 1/2 scale guitar. I was so excited, and picked it up and played a chord (I had already learned some from my brother). Soon, I was slightly progressing, playing my own stuff, and never learned a whole song. I just for some reason stopped and didn't pick it up anymore. I thought, "another wasted instrument." But then, I picked it up again. This time I was listening to similar things, but starting listening to more guitarists. Jimi Hendrix was the second true master I heard (the first being Gilmour), and Fire was the first song I heard. I also thought he was White until I saw the Monterey footage. Purple Haze was the second song, and I guess that's what inspired me to learn. I picked up the acoustic again, got an electric guitar last year, and never looked back .


-The Screamin' J

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CURRENT RIG:
2008 Squier bullet stratocaster modified with Rumpelstiltskin pickups -> Dunlop GCB-95 Original Crybaby -> Fender Vibro Champ XD

"Could you take the stain from this pair of pants, and put in on this pair of pants?"

I played bass before I got to play guitars. I was 20 already when I started learning the bass.. I borrowed one from my cousin, it was well used, rusty "no name" bass but with a good tone.. Then later on I asked dad to get me a bass.. But he said no. instead He got me a Squier and that's how I started playing.

Hi texasguitarslinger: my wife has a little Sony Reader for carting around manuscripts. I'm going to download your story into it and read it on the train.

Nobody tell me the ending - I want it to be a surprise!

- C

It's probably not worth spending that much time reading, but if you have nothing better to do than it's better than doing nothing. Once I start talking about something I really like, like music, I tend not to be able to stop.

And it hasn't really ended yet. I'm still learning more and more, and finding tons of new music. Well, it's new to me, even if it is anywhere from 70-20 years old. My friends think I'm crazy for listening to something as old as T-Bone Walker or Robert Johnson.

_________________
Website: http://www.rebeccalaird.com
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My parents were both musical. Dad played about 6 chords on the guitar and Mom had taken piano as a kid and there was one in the house. Both sang.
There were nights when the TV or radio never got turned on, we would just sing and play for an hour or so.
My brother and I started more than one cover band and played a lot of summer gigs and we were allowed no more than 2 gigs a month during school months.
Life came along, and playing music took a back seat to paying the mortage etc. Things change though, I retired this year and have been re-learning for the past 7 months. I'm to the point where I pick up a guitar now and start playing and singing a song I haven't heard or thought about for an awful long time.
Tonight my wife was watching something on TV that had no interest to me,so headphones and solid body into the amp. and away I went. Seems like a full circle of sorts.
That's my story,
John.E