onewilyfool Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 For my work, I am on the computer most of the time, and doing technical things, so Guitar , for me, is a respite from my left brain activities. Plus, like a lot of you guys, I just LOVE the sound of guitars and music. It is sheer enjoyment for me, a little trip for my mind.....I'm sure a lot of you understand..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR GIBS Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I have a LOT of music in my mind and this MUST come out of there. When I was a boy I wanted to play violin, but my parents and me we lived in a village and there was to way for a teacher to come just for me to teach me play violin. Te same situation was with the piano... My fatrer had a guitar, my uncle played well on guitar and one day I started on guitar. I play guitar to express myself musicaly. To make my own music, to make my own songs. I adore the sound of a good acoustic guitar. I have 8 guitars and I have given 7 other guitars to friends as gifts. My thirst for the perfect acoustic guitar sound is insatiable, so I don't plan to stop, but I plan to CONTINUE collecting guitars and play on them. And I concider myself as a very lucky man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUP7iZU_F_I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluesKing777 Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Big question! I was 8 years old and went with my father to his boss's house for dinner where the wife had just bought a new Martin something and gave us a little folk concert right in front of me! Absolute Magic. I was asked a few questions when she had a break and of course, became shy and speechless for one of the few times in my life! Then she gave me her old guitar. I have never recovered - it steered my whole life - still. I pestered for lessons and was sent to a weirdo that got me started a bit. A lot of people say they learnt guitar for the girls, but at 8-9 years old that wasn't it - one teacher at school discovered the way to shut up a loud mouth kid was to make him sit next to - yep - a goil - eeeeek. Terrifying experience..... So my reason for learning guitar was some really pure music magic, not women, though in Australia where we are 10 years behind everything, we had our "Summer of Love" in about 1977 where all of sudden women were throwing themselves at anyone that played guitar - wahooooo - but overall this was unfortunately short-lived. One day a little record shop opened around the corner from my house and though a short lived enterprise, I came home with Booker White, Mance Lipscomb, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters and Johnny Winter! Then we needed to learn fingerpicking blues! (Still trying that one!) BluesKIng777. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 ..because I don't do golf, I don't do the casino and I don't do cocaine..... I don't mean that as flippant as it sounds, I'm quite serious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EuroAussie Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 As my wife says a guitar guy is better than a bar guy. I did try golf, but realised none of my clients actually play it so I gave up. Pretty effin' expensive hobby also. Ruins a perfectly nice walk through the nature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 As my wife says a guitar guy is better than a bar guy. I did try golf, but realised none of my clients actually play it so I gave up. Pretty effin' expensive hobby also. Ruins a perfectly nice walk through the nature. and you have to dress like val doonican Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 my answer , after some thought , is similar to Mr gibbs response , i can empathise totally that feeling of something in you that has to come out ... i may not be a disciplined player as i would like but if i dont pick up a guitar for a while its not a pleasant feeling ... like aussie says , some its golf , others fish etc etc ... and i can still remember buying my first encore with my xmad money when i was 13, no one i knew played but i just took a notion... never wanted and electric even back then when my musical diet was completly electric .... just a calling . had gotten me laid a couple of times but i wouldve been playing anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatbaroque Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 i find it very meditative.I can forget about most things that are bothering me when I'm playing and singing.I started on an electric as about a 15. year old, just a rite of passage thing with my mates..playing our very bad Sabbath covers and the like. Eventually I found I was liking acousic guitar more.I wasn't much into jamming and such, kind of liked finding my own weird musical paths. When I finally could afford to buy a guitar that really made sounds close to records i listened to..that was a big step too.That was a Martin OM-18V.When I tuned to drop d and capoed on 3?...i could play 'hard rain' and it was sounding just like off 'Freewheelin' Learning songs and writing is great for the brain.Like Wily i'm doing technical stuff on computers all day. Yea and it beats golf and you get to wear hats indoors instead of val doonican cardigans. I love the sound of guitar music...seems hard wired in there somewhere to most of us here probably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 For my work, I am on the computer most of the time, and doing technical things, so Guitar , for me, is a respite from my left brain activities. Plus, like a lot of you guys, I just LOVE the sound of guitars and music. It is sheer enjoyment for me, a little trip for my mind.....I'm sure a lot of you understand..... Since you have pretty much summed up my life these days, I have nothing more to add to this, other than "me too". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duluthdan Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 To escape, to relax, to accomplish. Started in the late 60s because my older brother got a guitar, and being the impressionable little kid I was, I thought that was pretty cool. Still do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 It's actually a good question...having to think about it to answer. I guess the truth is, I don't play guitar much anymore, because I don't have much reason to. When I do, it's because I am having a day when I feel a groove in me, and it's fun to let the groove out and hear myself groove. When I'm feeling particularly musical. But most of the time, I just play the radio or listen to music instead. Why I BECAME a guitar player, mostly because of the dream. I wanted to be a "guitar player", and that was to be "cool" mostly I think. So I guess indirectly, that could include getting girls. Later and most of the time in life, the reason(s) were mostly because I liked playing with others. Like the band thing. the machine that kicks in and the whole dynamic. Evan if it is just with one other. I never really liked playing by myself compared to playing with others. I seldom would make 'music' on my own, but rather either noodle out of curiosity, or practice in preparation for playing with others. Or learn how to play something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motherofpearl Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I play the guitar to take me out of this world and to a place where it's just me lost somewhere. It's really my time away from everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merseybeat1963 Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 To get high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zombywoof Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 In the beginning, I was not good looking and my daddy was not rich. I sucked at sports and at any rate could not see giving up all of my free time to participate in them. It was either play guitar or become a chess wiz or something. Guitar seemed to be the route of least resistance. For whatever reason I just stuck with it. These days, the notion that fame and fortune were right around the corner has long since faded away and along with it the hunger I used to feel. My job while being mired in enough BS to keep any policy wog happy requires enough creativity to keep that part of my brain alive and well. So the guitar is not a tool of survival. But it remains a part of my being. And all the pressure that was once there when I gigged and taught for living is off. I play out only when I want to and then it is usually at a benfit or some ad hoc throw together thing. In the end though I think for me the guitar still has the power to awaken the little Devil in me. You never know. You just hear Jim Garland's "I Don't Want Your Millions Mister" or Mojo Nixon's "I Hate Banks" at the most inappropriate time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ol fred Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Odd round-a-bout journey to the guitar. My parents were HILLBILLIES, dirt poor, my earliest memories are of listening to the Grand Ole Oprey on the radio in our one bedroom shotgun shack and begging my parents for a guitar, ff course that never happened. Purchased my first guitar in Viet Nam during my second tour, I was starting to listen closely to the protest songs. Despite featuring the finest quartersawn jungle softwood and inlaid beer can appointments with a purchase price of around three dollars (if I remember correctly), (Some days starting at that time and in the days that followed are still a bit hazy) she wasn't the finest instrument I ever owned but she did set the course for the rest of my life. Like others, I need to get the sounds out of my head, it soothes the savage beast in me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fortyearspickn Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 OWF, Can I Copy & Paste my response to Ol Fred's "What got you guys (gals) started playing guitar? " a couple of days ago? Or would that be redundant? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fortyearspickn Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Or, can I Cut & Paste (aka "plagiarize") someone else's comment from your "How often do you guys/gals actually play guitar?" from a week ago? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ol fred Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Or, can I Cut & Paste (aka "plagiarize") someone else's comment from your "How often do you guys/gals actually play guitar?" from a week ago? Saaay, fortyyearspickn....Howlong have you been playing ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 OWF, Can I Copy & Paste my response to Ol Fred's "What got you guys (gals) started playing guitar? " a couple of days ago? Or would that be redundant? I think you should do whatever it takes to answer the question. In my case, why I started playing has only marginal relevance to why I play today. The teenage kid who started playing guitar in the early 60's is a lot different from the 65-year-old man-child who continues to play almost 50 years later. Life changes us. We sometimes still do the same things, but not always for the same reasons. Certainly some of that spark is still there--the absolute magic of making music with your own hands--but a lot of that youthful motivation has been supplanted by the sometimes-harsh reality of another 50 years of living, and the need to escape from that reality through the highly-addictive drug of playing the guitar, no matter how poorly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gruffchris Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 ..because I don't do golf, I don't do the casino and I don't do cocaine..... I don't mean that as flippant as it sounds, I'm quite serious. see now, I think the guitar slots in quite nicely, lol. I watched someone play and thought, wow, so I picked up one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdd707 Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Well, playing guitar (however badly) bookends my life ..... started as a teenager and played enough to consider myself a player. I started (probably) to be cool and then discovered that some girls really really liked it (oddly others could have cared less). I tended to like those who got it or at least liked music in general. After all, a single young man had to have someone to take to concerts. Strummed a bit while raising my daughter and having a career. Then stared playing again at full retirement. I find that it now gives me the same pleasure as an old man as it did during those many hours that I spend painfully learning chords and folk songs in my room as a teenager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I could be flip and state "because it's easier than carrying a piano" - although there's a lot of truth to that. Trumpet didn't make it as a solo and/or accompaniment instrument. Music and martial arts are the zen side of me. Both, for all intents, for all of my life. Compared to some here, that's a long time; for others here, a parallel to their own although I think I'm the oldest "regular." If music is inside you, guitar to me is the most practical and versatile instrument around. It can change as your musical tastes change, it can accompany, join in an ensemble or do a pure solo gig. As with many other aspects of one's life, it can also be a point of deep, deep study going back to Vetruvius, theory, composition and history of music and technology in different cultures; or it can simply be something to relax with before beddy-bye. The making of music is in our DNA. It's stronger in some of us. When I no longer can play or learn, I think I shall go gently into that good night that becomes increasingly near. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J-Doug Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 To maintain my tenuous grip on sanity. Also I love music and I can't imagine my life without making some every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
struma6 Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 Because a piano is just too frakken heavy to carry around. OK, not the reason At first I was just caught up in the folk flood way back when. Started and loved it. And, for chicks. Can't lie. lol...din't see milrods answer. I fail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L5Larry Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 I started to play guitar to get chics. I continued to play guitar to make money. I still play guitar for the artistic endeavor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.