When I was in my early teens, I played around a little with a guitar. I never lost my interest for guitars but never had another one until I retired, I'm now 65. I must admit, especially to myself, that I love collecting them a little more than being very highly motivated in learning, though I practice on my own several times a week and love doing so. Right now I've been trying to learn to read music, and learn through discs and books. I know it's past time to ever be a fair guitar player, but I just want to be good enough to have fun trying. Do you think that can happen on my own, without lessons? I've purchased so many really nice guitars from people that took a few lessons and gave up, so I'm hesitant to go down that path. I remember buying one from a guy that could play well and he said he learned from You Tube! He found that he preferred acoustic, so was selling the electric. So, how would you weigh the merits of natural ability, pure determination, lessons, and just plain practice?

I was a trumpet player so I read music. I'm 62 and just started playing bought several dvd based, took private for 4 mos. Have decided that practice is the key. Currently running through the easy stuff (Eagles). I too am a guitar collector I have a 2010 Clapton Artist "Blackie", an Epiphone Les Paul Studio and a "Mutt" strat see "www.wammiworld.com" surf green one. I started with a Line 6 practice amp and I didn't like the sound so bought a Blues Deluxe Re-Issue (now I like the sound). Scales and Chords are important to learn. Best Chord's is "Guy's Grids" but is expensive ($65). This is all cash from selling my last motorcycle.

"How, and when, did you learn to play?"

When I was 5y/o my parents gave me a guitar on the urging of my cousin who was a country and western singer/guitarist. My parents then got a guitar/music teacher for me and the rest is history. Private lessons help in the beginning while you are becoming a guitarist. The other self help methods are very good as well. Use all of them and you will reach your goals faster for sure.

_________________
you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Started when I found an old guitar of my dad's lying in the spare room and reckoned it would be cooler than the instruments I was learning at the time - oboe, piano and violin

Gave up the three of them - wish had stuck with at least the piano -and started lessons at school. I took lessons at school until I was 17 as I did guitar for my music exams at school and you had to be getting lessons to be able to take SG, H and 6th year music.

I thought I was alright until half way through about 4th year(when I was 16) a friend asked me to listen to a song he liked and show him the chords. I put it on and didnn't have a clue where to start!!!! PUt any piece of music in front of me and I will read it - I learned the recorder when I was 3 so could read music before I could read words - but playing by ear just completely lost me.

I was so disheartened by that experience that when I left school at 18 I put the guitar down for over a year and concentrated on drums!

HOwever, the 'call' came out to me again and I picked it up and started, vasically, from the beginning again, concentrating on listening more.

After a couple of years I started properly gigging and off the back of that got asked about teaching so went back and looked at different methods to how I was taught, looking more at just playing and leaving theory behind a bit and my playing took off again. I realised that some of the 'basics' that I had long forgotten took me in completely different directions and all of a sudden I wasn't stuck in minor pentatonic............

Reading music is beneficial for the theory side but you don't have to go in depth to be able to play. If you can read the note timings and the key signature you are pretty much sorted.

JUst remember though LISTENING is the key to all playing, improvising and composing. Once you start to listen to the notes and scales and chords you will actually be able to hear the music properly and your playing will soar.

I was told as a chils I was 'tone deaf' by one music teacher(violin) but I could tell if a drum kit was demi-semi tones out of tune and I am the same with the guitar.

Natural ability does come into playing a musical instrument but, again, listening and hearing is the key. My father in-law has never had a lesson in his life, cannot read music and gets to sit at apiano maybe twice a year. He has no concept of chords and chord structure but he can play a blues or boogie woogie along with me whatever key I lay it in. He just instinctively hears it.
I on the other hand had to work and ork and work at the guitar to get to where I am so I feel rather than a natural ability for guitar it is a musical instinct that comes to life on whatever instrument takes that person's fancy.

BUt practice practice practice is the key to all musical instruments. In theory, and on paper, I have been a qualified recorder teacher since i was about 15 but I havn't played it seriously since then and if I was to pick up a descant one I could probably toot a few tunes but I don't think I could even tell you the fingerings and notes on a tenor, treble or sopranino recorder now, all of which I am meant to be of teaching standards.

SO practice, listen and most of all enjoy!!!! If the enjoyment isn't there in the playing or the challenge of playing, put it down and go have a coffe, watch tv or something.........

The wookee has spoken!!

_________________
speak slowly I'm a drummer too!!

And I proudly lack a stick or a kazoo up my arse...........

dad took me for lessons in 1960- at age 6!

took lessons for several years- played in first band at age 12. we were popular because we played many styles of music. we were not old enough to play bars, so we played weddings,private parties, and many city sponsored events- sometimes in front of thousands.

i'm glad i started early- wouldn't have the patience today

How?- sitting in front of the TV trying to pick out notes from commercials on a cheap acoustic (1963)----- then a couple friends showed me chords ( E- A -D) and "Little Black Egg" (1965)------ then I learned "House of the Rising Sun"...... By 1972 I was playing bass in a band.


I must say that when I learned to play guitar there was not much else to do. I would ride my bike-- build the occasional model car- play sandlot baseball and football or play Army. That was it for me... Oh - I would sit on my front porch and listen to WLS out of Chicago. It was a rock-n-roll and pop station back then. I watched the Beatles on TV and it was all over. I was hooked on music for good.

knowledge and motivation are the keys.
dont look to 1 source for knowledge. try everywhere.
get it from friends, books, youtube, the boob tube, cd's, dvd's, the web, anywhere you can pick up a little something its worth doing. lessons never hurt anybody. if you got the time and can afford it, a little help and direction from a teacher will only better you.

_________________
63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

I'm in my early 50's and have been playing for decades....

Let's go back to the late 60's. I was 10 years old, in grade school, and just started playing trumpet in the school band (I already kind of had an "ear" for music). My oldest sister was playing a Cream album on her record player in her bedroom and had it turned up loud (our parents weren't home at the time). I heard the opening notes of "Sunshine Of Your Love" and ran to my other older sister's bedroom where she had a nylon string acoustic. I sat on her bed, plinking out that famous guitar lick, without ever having a guitar lesson. My older sister came into her room and caught me playing her guitar. Her jaw dropped at what I was doing, but instead of thinking it was great, she yanked her guitar away and then slapped the $*%^ out of me!

Ever since, I guess I realized I had a talent for music and kept playing all these years. Besides guitar and trumpet, I am sort of a multi-instrumentalist and play a little of everything.

School Band
Trumpet
French horn
Baritone/Euphonium
Trombone
Guitar (Jazz band in high school)

Today
All brass
Some woodwinds (flute, sax, and maybe clarinet - but not that good)
Piano/Keyboards
Drums
Bass
Mandolin
Violin, Viola
Harmonica, Kazoo, and anything else I can get my hands on!

dang butch your a talented mouse arent you! congratz. how have you had the time to learn all of those?

_________________
63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

i began my guitar journey in 2007 when i was 14... i originally wanted drums lool but settled for guitar after a while... i like to think it was kinda my destiny to take the guitar lool when i was a kid i got 2 toy guitars and a real nylon string sadly only the toy red stratocaster survived but then again it was the coolest one i had... (lool now that i think of it i have a thing for guitars that caught my eye as a kid the firebird studio is one of my favourite guitars but only cause i liked the thunderbird bass on tv)... my first real guitar inspiration was probably looking at ian d'sa from billy talent play his black and red strat in the music video "surrender" a while after i started playing... then my second revelation was when i listened to nirvana... kurt cobain was awesome to me i would spend my time screwing myself over to get the solo to smells like teen spirit right it was the first real song i ever played to perfection... i would get my tabs through ultimate guitar.com

what does lool mean??

_________________
63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

sorry i kinda do that lol means "laugh out loud" i tend to put a second "o" for no aparent reason wow i put a lot of them on this post

I always sang--around the house, in religious services, wherever. I could carry a tune very well and wasn't a bad mimic (I could copy other people's voices pretty well), even as a kid. When my voice changed I could do deeper voices as well, and still had the ability to do falsetto (cool for harmony parts).

My mother got my brother and I to take piano lessons, and he thrived. He was a natural and played very well from day one. I struggled and didn't "get it"; I eventually quit.

In junior high, I wanted to join the band, but the only instruments left were french horn and tuba. Since I was massively undersized, I picked the french horn. I did pretty well, alternating first and second chair with another guy. But due to the fact I still couldn't read music (poor teaching on the band director's side and laziness on my side) and the fact that the only concerts were related to religious holidays I didn't celebrate (and would not partake of in any way), I got burned out on that instrument.

I continued to sing, and occasionally picked up my aunt's guitar or a guitar belonging to a friend and could pick out some very basic simple things (like a bastardized version of the "Bad To The Bone" rhythm). I wanted a guitar but my parents wouldn't buy me one. When I finally got enough money to get one, I was already knee-deep in trying to rebuild an old hot rod, so I didn't have the money.

At age 19, I finally bought a Fender F250 acoustic from a friend (I still have it) and he taught me four chords (three of them wrong), so I was in heaven. Within a few months my parents were so impressed by (1) my grades in college and (2) my new-found ability to play guitar fairly well, without lessons or any actual instruction, that they gave me some money to buy an electric. That was my G&L F100 (still have it, too) that I bought from the same guy who sold me the acoustic.

About a year after I started playing guitar, I was frustrated by the fact that so many of my "friends" (some turned out to be anything but...) were very advanced and gave me no slack or instruction to help me whatsoever. I had some natural ability and was a decent rhythm player, but I couldn't get the nuances; plus they wouldn't play any originals (which I was already writing), so I was the odd man out.

I picked up an old harmonica and started playing along with an old tape of Muddy Waters' greatest hits during my 45-mile commute to work (Lord only knows how many wrecks I caused while trying to copy Little Walter while driving down the highway). Within three months I was fairly proficient and six months later I debuted my newfound ability in front of my "friends". This time they were impressed, but still gave me no slack with my guitar playing.

I didn't take guitar lessons until almost nine years later--I only took them for about four months--and they opened my mind to possibilities I had not seen before. My playing improved threefold, and I wish I would have been able to keep taking lessons. Some scheduling problems with my job and some health problems of my wife make me quit, and I just haven't had the opportunity to start taking lessons again since then. I hope after I finish college (this time around) I'll be able to take the time to take in a few lessons again.

A few years ago I had to have three different surgeries within two years, and the repeated anesthesia intubation (and the nature of one of the surgeries itself) damaged my ability to sing in the upper registers of my natural voice and completely decimated my ability to sing falsetto at all. I have had to re-key some songs I sang easily before, but at least I can still sing somewhat, albeit with less range than before.

_________________
Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I started in 1974 and am still learning.

we are always learning i like that