So how long have you been playing...Or when did you get your first guitar?

[Twiz]

Milod,

I think that anything we learned originally on one instrument definitely gets translated to secondary instruments. I only had a very, very brief experience with learning to play the trombone, but I sometimes think of similarities between that instrument and guitar. -Like when I'm playing slide for example. My band's drummer picked up the guitar from playing with us over the years, and the things he writes are a lot more rhythmic sounding.

[LPguitarman]

I've been playing for about 38-39 years. I'm 48 going on 30.

[RichCI]

I got my first guitar - a Yamaha acoustic - and started taking lessons in junior high school (that'd be around 1979/1980) my first electric when I was 15 or 16... man, I suck at math and now I have to think... this is why I always tip 20%... so that'd be around 1982.

 

I still have the electric - a D'Agostino - but it needs a LOT of work to get it functioning again. I sold the acoustic back in highschool to a neighborhood friend. I reconnected with him a few months ago and was asking about it. He said he played that guitar to death to the point where it wasn't worth the upkeep anymore; at least he put it to get use.

 

So, I've been playing for around 30 years although you'd never suspect as much. I should be an Eddie Van Halen by now.

[MojoRedFoot]

What I find interesting is how many of us played trumpet before guitar.

 

m

 

Funny you should point that out. I started on trumpet at 10 years old (1991). I got my first guitar for Christmas 1993. I was 12 at the time. I got my first electric a few months later. It was a 1980s Kramer 6000ST I think. I have been playing non-stop since then.

[milod]

Yeah, I think anything we learn about music is part of "us" as we develop as people and musicians.

 

I started playing piano more than 60 years ago. <shudder - since I can't possibly be THAT old> I never was good, never cared for it, and was super-happy to quit when I got my trumpet in the fourth grade. But in ways I still "think" kinda keyboard sorts of solo music more than "band" music although I've played in ensembles ranging from folkie duos to orchestras of various sorts.

 

I think the thing about "freedom" with guitar is that it's probably the most versatile sort of instrument that's portable. Period. It can play Bach or back up a lonely singer of blues or centuries-old folk ballads. It can be a lead melodic instrument or handle various sorts of backup as would a keyboard. With electronics it can be almost any instrument.

 

Yeah, I love the guitar both as a picker and a listener. The versatility of the variations of the instrument is incredible. I guess one reason my electric hollowbody is my favorite because, except for playing loudly in a bluegrass sort of environment, it seems to handle everything from a bit of "classical guitar" playing to rock, jazz, blues, country, cowboy... it can do a single or double-stop sort of lead or it can be folkie song accompaniment or...

 

m

[cabba2203]

What I find interesting is how many of us played trumpet before guitar.

 

In fact... my first rock band gigs were with the trumpet. But then' date=' in the pre-Beatle early '60s, having a sax and/or some brass was pretty common. Even post Beatle I'd use the trumpet occasionally for a piece or two until I lost my front teeth and had storebought replacements.

 

m

[/quote']

 

I think it's natural, trumpet being a lead-able instrument, same as guitar, but yeah - usually I see people who started on piano also playing guitar. That's how I play keyboard, I use guitar fingerings and such.

 

In addition to trumpet, I also played French Horn, so I was that geek in school lugging a trumpet, french horn and book bag. My father played the accordion and we would play together, me on trumpet.

Funny thing tho, I originally wanted to play DRUMS but my parents thought it would be too loud - LOL, as opposed to the volume a trumpet can make.

[charlie brown]

Got my first guitar at 13, played as best I could, through several equipment changes, until I was 22.

Took a 30 year break, and started again, about the year 2000. (Reliving my youth??? ;>)) I only

wish I had the chops (meager, as they are) I have now, with the energy, I had THEN! "C'est La vie!"'

 

CB

[cookieman15061]

Well got my first acoustic when i was 6 but just kinda picked out notes of songs I knew. Was more into drums but decided to get serious and starting taking guitar lessons at 13.

Joined my first band at 15.

I turned 50 this year so I guess 37 years of playing.

 

The beauty of it all is no matter how long you play, the guitar will humble you. I played an acoustic set 2 weeks ago with another guitarist/ singer and a percussionist playing bongos etc. and it was unbelievably good. The crowd loved it and I didn't want it to end.

But this weekend sat in with a band and Ugh!! Nothing I played sounded right to my ears. My leads were stiff and unimaginative. My amp sounded like garbage and couldn't get anything to sound decent and to top it off it was 90 degrees in there because they were having problems with the AC.

 

Lol still great fun anyway.

[FirstMeasure]

What I find interesting is how many of us played trumpet before guitar.

 

 

 

Not only did I play one first, I got pretty good at it. First Trumpet in Marching, Concert, and Jazz Band. I still use some Sousa Fills when I'm playing Rock or Blues. Also played Bass in Jazz Band my senior year.

 

Like Cabba2203, I was a Band Geek too. Can't tell you how valuable the information and experience is that a musician gets from that environment.

[Tman]

First guitar in 1972 at twelve - Gibson Melody Maker. Flying V in 76. Man I was lucky. Started in a band in 75 and have played on and off all those years except the mid 90s until last year when I picked it up again-with vigor. Never played a trumpet!

[Rewddawg1]

I got my first guitar in 2000. It was a MIM Fat Strat that I had modified after time. I was 42 yrs. old. I had always wanted to play a guitar. In fact the sound of an electric guitar has always been a turn on to me. In the ten yrs. I've been playing off and on I have had some long stints of a yr. or longer where I couldn't play the guitar due to health reasons. This has never stopped me from playing. This was sort of how I handled my mid life crisis and I am glad I did. It just goes to show you that you can teach an old dog new tricks

[Silenced Fred]

Twiz...

 

The thing that kinda gets to me is how wind instruments essentially are melody-only instruments unless in an ensemble' date=' where guitar has so many other options.

 

I kinda wonder how many of us ex wind instrumentalists play (and feel) the guitar as though it were a sax or trumpet, and how many made the shift to a broader interpretation - and not just in terms of "rhythm guitar," but more as a keyboard type of instrument.

 

m

[/quote']

 

See, that's the thing that converted me. I played sax for two years, and clarinet for one. No matter what, I felt limited. I was getting reeds at a SamAsh, and I picked up a guitar, and became enthralled. I want to learn piano, I've given up on drums (not coordinated enough LOL)

[Gibson4life]

Got my first guitar when I was eight. (1992) Been playing 18 years........I'm 26 years old. :)

[jamman]

I also started playing the trumpet , at around 8-9 yrs.old. I got a guitar at 14 and have been playing ever since. I'm 54

now.

[rockstar232007]

I've been playing for 23 years, so pretty much my whole life (I'm 27).

 

Got my first guitar at 5 (an acoustic) in '87, and my first electric in '95 when I was 13.

[pippy]

...I think the thing about "freedom" with guitar is that it's probably the most versatile sort of instrument that's portable. Period. It can play Bach or back up a lonely singer of blues or centuries-old folk ballads. It can be a lead melodic instrument or handle various sorts of backup as would a keyboard.

m

 

Although I started out' date=' about 4 or 5 years old, playing about on my dad's old bowl-back mandolin (the instrument - although not the 'artiste' - in my avatar) by the age of 6 I had [i']'progressed'[/i] to playing the clarinet at family get-togethers. I liked the thing but it proved to be nowhere near as versatile (in the hands of a rank amateur) as, say, a guitar would later prove to be.

 

In the hands of Benny Goodman? Yes. Me? No.

 

In the meantime I had gone back to the mandolin (still a rank amateur) and my love of string instruments developed from there.

[Guest rogerb]

Got my first guitar when I was 11. I don't want to tell my age but when I was born the Dead Sea was just a little bit sick!

[pippy]

...I don't want to tell my age but when I was born the Dead Sea was just a little bit sick!...

 

Now That's funny!

 

I just know I'm going to quote that.........

[milod]

Roger B...

 

Yeah, but at least...

 

A friend who's a commercial paleontologist - our region of the US and northward into Canada is rich with dinosaur fossil beds - asked me a cupla years ago if I had lost my wallet when I was in high school.

 

Yeah, I answered, I did.

 

Well, it turns out that as he was excavating the rib cage of a triceratops, he discovered an oddly rectangular-shaped piece enclosing some pasteboard identity cards oddly turned to shale, yet with the writing remaining intact... and...

 

m

[DanvillRob]

Milo, you ARE old..... and we've BOTH been playin' since Hector was a pup.

 

Like many, my dad played, and several of my uncles...so every family gathering had guitars bein' played pretty much non-stop. So, it was natural for me to pick it up, and every family gathering still today is filled with non-stop guitar playin'.

 

I bought my first guitar in Calgary in the summer of '63. It was for sale for $20. I gave the storekeeper $20 and he gave me back $1, (Canadian).

 

Got my first electric guitar, (Fender Jaguar), in late 1964 or early '65... so I guess I should be better after 47 years!

 

Worked in a music store starting in 1964 moving pianos, (I recall I was too young to drive the delivery van), and started playin' the piano in the store. I still have 2 pianos, one a 1874 Carl Ronish upright, and the other a early 1990's Shafer & Sons Baby Grand. Different from Milo, I really like the piano, it's so easy to understand...all the notes are laid out for you, (and color coded!).

[milod]

Rob...

 

Sounds about like the price tag on my first guitar - but I also splurged and got one of those cardboard sorts of cases too.

 

I s'pose today's $100-150 guitars are about the same in adjusted dollars, but the quality certainly, absolutely, is so much higher I think there's no comparison.

 

m