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How did you start playing?


nicksg941

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This sounds dumb: I was like 14 or 15, and American Pie 2 came out. All the people in the movie seemed like they were having an awesome juvenile time, and the music they were having fun to was Blink 182, Sum 41, and bands like that. So my best friend and I decided we wanted to start a band so that we could have fun like that. We weren't all that serious about it, until he got a guitar for his 16th birthday. Then a couple months later on my 16th birthday, I figured I would get one too. Long story short, he never practiced that much, started smoking a lot, and now works at Jimmy Johns. I stuck with playing and have a better future ahead of me. The one thing I owe him, though, is that if he hadn't gotten a guitar I probably would have never got one. I guess it paid to be a follower! I've been playing for about six and a half years and can't think of anything else I'd rather do than play music - although I have one more year left of college, so hopefully I can find a job to support my terrible addiction.

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When I started listening to Metal' date=' I asked my friend to teach me. I ended up learning by myself, and have been taking some guitar lessons to broaden my playing scope.[/quote']

 

+1

 

I started to dabble in metal. Instead of classic rock. I wanted to play the awesome sounding riffs. It was van halens best of album that did it for me. I wanted to learn panama. Thanks eddie.=D>

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Back to the mid seventies, I grew up in SW Kansas with no FM stations and only two AM rock stations that would come in at night if the weather was good. Good Rock and Roll was impossible to find.

 

My family had their own business, and my older sister was, um, less than honorable - so she was popular with the guys.

:-)

 

Her boyfriends all had really cool cars and they listened to all the really cool seventies rock.

They got to go to concerts in far away exotic locales like Denver, Wichita or Amarillo.

 

I had a beater acoustic ( I don't know where it came from) and what few cool records I could find at our one store.

I tuned it using my neighbor's piano and then would go home to find out my turntable played too fast.

The result was that the songs were sharp, unless recorded half a step flat - then they were closer.

Trying to guess on proper tuning meant a lot of popped high E strings, so I "Keefed" it much of the time.

Closest place to buy strings was 60 miles away - really - and they did not sell single E strings.

Got a better acoustic when I was 13, then got a piece of crap Ibanez when I was 16.

EVH rip-off, and I STILL hate Floyd Rose trems....

 

Bought, sold and traded beater cheapo import guitars until I was 28, then I bought my Strat.

Les Paul Standard was soon to follow.

 

Probably 50 guitars over the years, I have about of them 20 now.

 

I have nicer stuff and a better stereo rig too.

Still spend time in front of the stereo in my underwear thrashing out songs well enough to play onstage - dressed.

 

=D>

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I started out on a Fender P-Bass in the early '80s. I was in to Geddy and Squire and Buttler and Bruce.

In 1988 I bought an Alembic Spoiler.

In 1989 I moved to guitar when I bought my Gibson ES 175.

Since then I've added a Stratocaster and Telecaster to the collection.

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I was a kid in 1969 and I saw this guy on TV kicking the **** out of a white Gibson SG - he was a great guitarist (I thought) at the time, playing in an Australian heavy rock band called Zoot.

 

His name was RICK SPRINGFIELD - the same one you Americans know and love as the soap opera star.

 

Then I saw this cool guy who looked like a gypsy. He blew me away - a real badass with attitude. I forgot about Rick Springfield and became a life long Keith Richards fan - and all I wanted to do after that was play GEEETAR.

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... Just got thinkin' - Homz' comment that one can't always be original...

 

I was talking to a friend last night about what I might be pickin' at a jam tonite - the guys discovered I was once reeeeeally into blues.

 

First real, raw blues I heard I was maybe 12-13 back in the 50s. I had this great big mama-jama console tube type radio with a 12-14 inch speaker that had great sound for the day. I'm up late one night reading sci fi and spinning the dial and ... there was John Lee Hooker doing that blues about the flood at Tupelo...

 

It took quite a while for it to really "stick" in some ways, but I never forgot it. Since I couldn't see anything on the radio, I had no idea how exactly the sound came about... I was more into jazz trumpet at the time. Still... the concept stuck. And it stuck through my first guitar at age 18 that did very little blues - more folk and a little flamenco.

 

The memory stuck through my bluegrass phase (with a long weekend too of blues joints in Chicago) and then the classical phase... The Ian Tyson phase... then some years of doing rock in the 60s and country in the 70s... Living in Memphis some years probably brought it back in my head. But the funny thing about Memphis in the 80s is that none of my black friends were into blues. <grin>

 

Ah, well. Life's interesting. Blues Alley was about all there was at the time since it was before the rebuilding of Beale Street into a tourist trap.

 

So... does one say John Lee got me started thinking guitar? I s'pose.

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