I signed my son up for a 6 week after school program. Hopefully he likes it enough that he'll want to continue after 6 weeks.

Here's a video of him playing a couple of little things.
You guys can play name that tune and see if you can get them all right, but one of the things he made up himself, don't want you guys racking your brain trying to figure out what it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGL1TzFhNyM

Glad to see that your son has an interest in playing guitar. Hopefully he will like it at the end of the 6 weeks and continue.

RK

Nice strat! Did he want to start playing or did you suprise him with a guitar? The thing about kids, the more you force them to do something the less they will want to do it. I think if he starts getting bored with it, take him to a concert or two, probably get back his interest

Well, I play a little, so he had some interest from that. Then I saw that Strat on Craigslist for $40 close to where I was picking up another guitar so I decided to get it for him.

He didn't show a lot of interest like the first week he had it, but he's been messing with it at least a little everyday since.

That's sweet yo

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Clapton right? Good Job...Keep up the good work...

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There's about 5 songs he plays parts to or tries to. I'll post what they are tomorrow. Give people a chance to post what their guesses are.

Layla - Clapton
China Girl - David Bowie/Stevie Ray Vaughan
Sunshine of you love - Cream/Clapton

you are a great dad!

my dad took me for lessons at age 6 in 1960. he took me to many music events, drove me to practice and gigs when i was too young to drive, and always offered words of encouragement.

even though he had no musical training, my dad understood many things about music that i never could imagine.

here's to those dads (and moms) who gave us the gift of music

That's 3. I think there's like 4 more songs in there, but a couple are hard to tell. They're his versions lol.

way to go jason,
your son shows talent. inhereted or absorbed listening to you i presume.

he plays alot better than when i started, thats for sure.

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I bought my daughter a used Squire, put in Tex-Mex pickups and added a tortoise shell pickguard. It looks really nice, but as much as anyone who plays a guitar would surely like this guitar, she has little interest. I've tried to teach her, but her music is in country, which I don't play. I'm stuck with her and I'm hoping she'll come around to other things. Since she liks country, maybe I should of purchased an acoustic for her....

Sorry, had to point out my situation.

That's awesome your son is playing such classics songs. It helps the next generation remember the songs we knew growing up.

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I just want to pop a quick $.02 worth in here (well...quick for me at least! LOL!)...not so much on which tunes the kid is playing but about kids and music in general...

While I think that parents who encourage their children to do something like playing guitar is certainly wonderful, I would also like to offer a piece of advice...please allow the child to play the type of music that he/she wants to play and NOT what -you- want them to play or think they should play! Ok...this is just my personal opinion as always based on my own experience but here's a little back story...

When I was -very- young (age 4), I wanted to learn guitar. My parents being the wonderful and supportive people that they were (back then at least) went out and bought me a used 3/4 scale classical acoustic that was an unclaimed repair from a local luthier for $25 and sent me off for private lessons. While this was all fine and dandy and wonderful and all, the problem was that I wanted an -electric- guitar and I wanted to learn how to play the kind of music that my older brother was listening to at the time...namely stuff like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Shocking Blue, etc...in other words what we today call "oldies". Unfortunately my parents wanted me to learn the kind of music that they liked and that's what they had the teacher teaching me. I was sat down and week after week forced to play nothing but what I considered to be completely lame garbage. As I've often said in these forums as well as elsewhere, you can only play "Little Brown Jug" and "When The Saints Go Marching In" just so many times before your freakin' head explodes!

Right from the start I kept asking for an electric guitar...and back then I really wouldn't have known the difference between a "good" instrument and some cheapy department store POS. Every time I asked I was told things such as "Maybe if you keep your grades up, we'll get you one for your next birthday...or Xmas or Easter...whatever. Well, each birthday and Xmas came and went and no electric. What's worse is that every time I tried to play my acoustic like an electric (picking down near the bridge for example for a different sound) I'd get my hands smacked with a ruler and told "That's NOT the way you play a guitar!". I was certainly never taught anything like "improvisation" back then or encouraged to be original. I was only allowed to play what was on the sheet music in front me...the old "Sam Fox Modern Guitar Method". Well needless to say, after a few years of this I quit...even back then I knew there was absolutely no point to this what so ever. Whats more is by the time I quit I was also playing cello and was singing in school choir...both of which I also quit (and the cello was a rental so I never even got to keep it).

Over the years that followed, every now and then I would pull my old acoustic out...I still knew a few chords and notes and really did want to play but every time I mentioned an electric, I got completely shut out by my parents...which after a while really makes a person start to resent music as a whole (not to mention one's parents).

Fortunately when I was around 17 and I had my first job, I realized that I no longer needed my parents to buy me want I wanted...I just went out and bought an electric myself (and my first amp soon afterward...I didn't know they needed amps at first and ended up plugging my guitar thru an old tape deck! LOL!) and started taking lessons again. This time I was VERY lucky in that I had a teacher who on the very first lesson asked me what -I- wanted to play (which by this point was stuff like Clapton, Pink Floyd and BTO)...and that's really where it all started and I've been playing ever since.

As Stratguy740 put it so well, the more you try to force a kid to do something, the less they are going to want to do it. I can't say for sure that I would have kept on playing when I was a kid had my folks of gotten me an electric...I was a rug rat after all and wanted to be out running the streets with my friends, but I can say there would have been a MUCH better chance that I would have stuck with it had I of been allowed to learn the music that -I- wanted to learn and not just what was arbitrarily forced on me.

It's certainly worth exposing a child who wants to learn music to all types of music but in the end, if you really want the child to stick with it, PLEASE let the kid play what they want to play...even if you despise it yourself.

Again just my own $.02 worth...please take it for what it's worth.

Jim

Those are good points, but in my son's case, he does like these songs. I used to be listening to these CDs in the car when I would pick him and his sister up from school. So they grew on him I guess. Plus he hears me playing them on the guitar all the time. I never said, " Hey son you're going to learn this today". I would be playing something, like Layla, and he would bring his guitar in and say, "how do you play that?" and I would try to show him.

But actually he didn't learn to like Sunshine of Your Love from me, even though I'm a big Clapton fan. He actually started listening to that song and one of the other one he's playing from hearing it on Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

But one of the songs he's playing he never actually heard, cause it has a bad word in it I wouldn't listen to it around him, but I do play the song on the guitar and that's where he heard it.

Sorry, posted that twice, damn work computer.