While it's true you can learn to play a number of styles of guitar without knowing standard notation, why limit yourself?

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

30-40 years ? I guess that seemed a long time to me too when I was in my 20's.

But, Chet Atkins, Joe Pass played into their 80's, Andre Segovia into his 90's, Clapton, Richards, Woods, Page are all nearing 70.

I plan on playing for at least the next 25 years - into my 80's, that'd give you 50-60 years (and likely more with medical advances in your lifetime), so we'll be expecting Big things !

guitslinger mentioned taking care of your hands and he's 100% correct ! I spent most of my career as an Exec. in an office, but I have a lifetime of restoring cars and woodworking as hobbies, plus I played college hockey - goaltender. I've broken every knuckle on each hand. Fortunately, they healed and as yet, there is no sign of arthritis, but there is some very slight range-of-motion limits (a couple chords I can only play using different fingers than the norm, but it works well).

But, one of the toughest parts of my learning to-date has been to get my wrist, tendons and fingers to move the way they need to. It was a difficult 2.5 mos., but all seems well now.

cheers!

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'11 FSR Am. Vtg. Ltd. Ed. CAR '57 Stratocaster (SN# LE02639)
'14 American Deluxe Ash Stratocaster
'12 Telebration Empress Telecaster
'99 Deluxe Nashville Telecaster
'12 FSR Telecaster HH
'10 Heritage H-535
'99 Martin DC-1E
'13 Lanikai Tenor Ukulele

It would have been smart if I had taken lessons earlier. I was so determined to be self-taught, partially due to vanity, partially due to my desire to emulate my self-taught heroes and partially due to the fact that there were few-to-no instructors in my area teaching the style I wanted to play (blues/rock/outlaw country) when I first started.

When I finally took lessons (eight or nine years after I started playing), my ability increased thirty-fold in three or four months. Cost and time restraints (the arrival of the Armadillo Infant, now the Armadillo 'Tween) necessitated the suspension of that endeavor...now I again live in an area with no qualified teachers, besides one who insists on smoking during the lesson. No thanks! I'd like to start taking lessons again at some time.

On the plus side, however, I developed a very individualistic, unique style and approach. For better or worse, I sound like myself. I can approximate other player's licks and nuances, but I don't really "play like" anybody else...which is (partially) what I wanted to do.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



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

I feel like this is how you know you are doing it right, and is the reason why we began playing guitar in the first place.

I grow tired of seeing SRV clones. Granted this type of playing requires great technique.. but there is nothing fresh about it and 99% of the time it doesn't sound as genuine as the originators style. No two people are alike.. you can't step into someone else's head and have your brain work in the same way.


+1 about taking care of the hands, I am grateful for not being a tradesman.

Learning is the process which takes for years. You can't learn just songs you like and play them. To understand basics we must learn theory and use it in practice. It's hard work but it pays off.
Also it's very important to diversify practice because various approaches are best from practice.
Every player chooses his own way to do that.
I would like to suggest a guide like resource which helped me a lot in my guitar playing. Enjoy!
http://guitar-guide-easy.com/

I wish I'd spent more money on my first guitar, a spanish classical, or at least had paid for someone to properly set up the cheapie I did buy. The action was too high, the strings too heavy and dull, and the frets too poorly finished, to make for an 'easy' player. I bought it while living in Spain though and lacked the knowledge to know better or, at the time, the language to find out.

It was almost entirely unplayed for the first five years I owned it.

A guitarist friend of mine then spent 20 minutes on it with a file and some wire wool. It was like a diiferent guitar after that, and my experience of - and love of - playing changed from that moment on.

Lessons early on wouldn't have been a bad idea, but again there was a language issue at the start. I've been living back in England for 15 years and now - somewhat bizarrely - I am having lessons from January. Notation and theory are high on my 'must learn' list

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Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus

my only regret is stopping playing for around 8 years , i only started playing again a few years ago and i seem to be back to where i was , maybe a bit further on , but i can't stop thinking what if , cheers
Alan

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got better at it
remembered riffs / tunes that went through my head just as I'm dozing off

Got my first guitar, a MIM Strat HSS, 2 years ago for my 50th birthday. I am self-taught.
When I think too much about it, yeah I'm in too, "...wish I would've..." had formal lessons earlier in life.

But, if I may put a spin on it, I'll look at it as "I'm so glad I did".

I wish I would have started learning when I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, and a few buddies in the dorm played and showed me a few chords. It seemed so hard just to make one chord, let alone envision being able to make changes in time with a real song. And it hurt my fingers. I concluded I was "too old" because these guys had started "when they were kids" (probably 2 years earlier, LOL) and were already really good. They could play nearly any (pop/rock) song one could name. Thinking back, I bet all they were doing--with which I was so impressed--was power chords. Now I've been playing 2 years and I'm probably as good as they were (I can fake or approximate nearly any rock song using power chords and the cowboy chords) and solo a little bit, which I thought was so great then. Had I started then, I'd have been playing 19 years now and I'd be really good.

Also, I wish that after starting at age 18, I'd have joined or formed a punk band about 2 years later, as so many others have done, and perhaps I'd have made it big or at the very least I'd be a real player now who could be in some kind of band with folks my age right now.

Ugh. We are forced to make too many big life decisions at the age of 18, if you think about it, when we know NOTHING.

You only get one life and it passes by fast. The grass is always greener. I was a conscientious student (didn't really party in college) and now I have a "successful" career, but now I feel like I'd trade that or go back in time and be 18 again just for the chance to start learning guitar at that age. Literally, that is my BIGGEST regret in life (not just biggest "musical regret"). Did everything else (women, grades, staying away from drugs, generally being a nice person I think) reasonably right. In fact, as I think about it, and I admit this could mean I've had a pretty decent life, my *only* regret right now is not starting to play guitar at age 18 when I could have done so as a college student with all the time in the world. I don't regret any other choice I've made, not even marrying the woman who is now my EX wife (doing that led to my beautiful kids).

I bet y'all on this forum can relate. Music is that important to us (and most people, even the ones who have not picked up an instrument).

Today, as I play my guitar in every spare moment I can carve out, I think *constantly* about how I could have been playing for 19 years by now.

I wish I would have . . .

1) Practiced more seriously when I was a teenager rather than trying to learn the first few bars of about 100 different rock songs. I coulda been a contenda;

2) Learned more theory -- if not sight reading, then more about different ways of playing chords;

3) Not sold my high school rig (including a sunburst Fender Mustang and the now legendary blue and orange Univox Super Fuzz) in my early 20s and stayed with it rather than not play for nearly 10 years <sob>.

4) Gotten over my stage fright and played live more than I did.

5) Spent the money I had saved on lessons rather than on a 250W Ovation Cat System amp I was never going to gig with as it turned out.

I guess everyone has regrets.