[Closed] Tell me about your guitar journey.

Erm, Live?

Way back when Hair Metal was a thing. Then packed all that in and changed from Bass to Guitar.

Now play at home only.

I too take lessons, Jazz.. sort of modern Soul/Jazz. Its what I like, the teacher I see once a month now but did go through a phase of every couple of weeks.

I also follow a guy on youtube called CaberraTV who plays similar to me, and he, like most on YT, shows chords/licks/riffs etc. I like his style and we message each other once every month or so with progress.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9ee0WoaiklZE3T2WRDJHg

tell me about yours!

I've been twiddling about on bass for about a year, just finding basslines I like and learning to play them, but I'm inclined I should get some lessons and some structure into my learning. How did you find a teacher, what stuff do you do, how much practise do you do, etc.

i play for my own pleasure, have no ear for music, read music glacially and i'm crap at tabs and as a result I have and exceedingly small repertoire. Hey ho, I have superb amp and some of the greatest guitars ever made and the sound they make is biblical and really really flattering.

Jam nights are the best way to accelerate your learning. I'm assuming it's one of those nights where a bunch of people sit around going "chunga chunga chunga". Best to sit in at first and quietly strum along, looking at everybody's left hand and spotting what chords they're playing. It's amazing how soon you start getting the chords right. You will practice like mad in the lead-up to the next one to make sure you get the popular choices right.
I found my voice suited some songs better than others. Daydream Believer, Norwegian Wood, Man in the Moon. Into Your Arms was another but it always makes me well up, which isn't a good look.
People get a bit grumpy if you use a different key to the usual one as they find it harder to play.

If you like jamming, but staying in, then try ninjam/jamtaba. You'll need DAW software (e.g. Reaper) but I learnt loads from this. (Online jamming software... Works amazingly well).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjam

I have a 12 string acoustic and a cheap but ok electric. The electric was a Christmas present in 1986, after months of nagging. I played it a lot in my late teens, including a few bands, but nothing serious. The acoustic I saw in a shop window in Skipton and immediately loved. It's been restrung (I'm left handed), but is still lovely and still played - the kids love it. I sometimes follow song books, but mostly enjoy tinkering and making stuff up. I have some PPI money to spend and would love a Rickenbacker 4003 (Fireglo)!

Had lessons at school when aged 9. First gig - secondary school end of year show for the parents.

A few years back a mate I was playing with suggested we take classes so we went to the free first lesson. What a racket, half a dozen electric guitars competing with no drummer or metronome. I tipped my amp on it's back so I could stand above it and hear myself. I soon realised I wan't going to fit in "but it doesn't go like that...". My regular play mate, who keeps good time and will have a go at playing anything if there's a crowd to please, has moved away so I'm playing in a vacuum at present. 🙁

Edit: last time on stage was June. The music teacher was leaving the school where Madame works he so invited me along for the occasion. Some songs for an ageing folky hippy and some songs for the colleagues to sing along with. Playing with a good audience is great, if the audience isn't into it, get outa there.

theres lots of jamming here also

Just to be clear, ninjam isn't backing track, it's jamming with real live other people

Some interesting stuff guys, thank you.
In reply to theotherjonv I found my teacher from a local flyer ad, he is an accomplished player. Currently practicing Livin on a prayer, Thunderstruck, Metallica, chords, scales, hammer ons, pull offs, pinched harmonics, muting, string skipping exercises, currently practicing between three and four hours a day.
Keep em coming, fascinating.

Get yourself a Ditto Looper pedal OP, you can jam with yourself then.

Started as a child around 7, wanted to play Hendrix and Led Zeppelin etc etc, but my parents took me to an amazing teacher who taught me classical guitar, how to read music and theory. Did all my grades etc and still play it every day at the age of 40. I also played electric guitar which was pretty easy to achieve as classical study is so good for general playing and gigged with some bands over the years, but nothing compared to being able to play Bach, which is by far the most rewarding music. So very thankful of that teacher, it's was hard work but a lot easier when you are a child, I can now just sit and sight read music for hours, very rarely do I play my electric guitars. 🙂

My advice to anyone is to get a GOOD teacher, you can only do so much via Youtube and you will pick up so many habits. Also learn to read music.

... playing Bach..... lovely...good man 👍👍
I've been playing since I was 8.....used to play loads but now not so much , usually Irish trad in dadgad...

Started at 11 in 1986 - full classical guitar lessons. I did okay, graded up as per the traditional route... and then discovered Led Zep and Deep Purple. My guitar teacher was an epic old man in his 80's who was quite happy to take a break from Pagganinni and do something else, but then he used to be quite the name on the Jazz scene of the 1930s and 40s.

My first electric guitar appeared at the Guitar Show where I was noodling on an electric in the Marshall booth. Jim Marshall gave me the amp, and Nigel Tuffnel (for he was in character - this was the JCM900 launch) gave me the guitar - I still have it... it is hideous... unless you have a love of the late 80's crackle finish shred machine in which case it is a work of (cheap) art!

Moved on from 70's rock into Goth, played most venues in Scotland and a few south of the border (Rock City was the biggest in the south, Barrowlands in the north) then the band split in the early 00's and the guitars got packed away and haven't been out much since. That said, my big brother passed away coming up 2 years ago and I inherited his recording studio which is currently in boxes in the garage. Once we move I plan to rebuild his studio on this side of the Atlantic and see where it takes me!

I was quite good once, but the pharamcuticals and booze seem to have taken their toll and these days I am decidedly average at best when I do pick the guitar up. My brain kinda remembers what to do, my fingers are like sausages with all the dexteriry of a dead pig. It annoys me, I regret putting the guitars away and I need to sort my self out.

Currently I have the old crackle finish Aria Pro, a lush (but non functional) Gordon Smith custom built for me, a Hammer Arch Top which needs some serious attention at some stage, a Seagul OM accoustic and a Gibson Les Paul made out of Swamp Ash rather than Mahogany. Amps are a Peavy Windsor Studio (which I don't really get on with), a Mesa Boogie of unknown provanence which I gigged to destruction and really need rewiring, the old Marshall head is somewhere, but hasn't been seen in a decade and a Yamaha THR30 which I bought to start playing again and then didn't.

Never had any lessons but I had 10 years of classical training on piano before I took up guitar.

I can play pretty much anything by ear on guitar (and piano), although I sometimes need a bit of assistance from Youtube to work out really fast stuff. Can't sight read either traditional notation or tab to save my life, though. We're all different.

The main thing I've done over the 38 years I've been playing instruments is to practise. Not so much when I was younger, but from about 13 I was playing piano and then guitar all the time. Many people expect too much too soon and give up when they think they're not a natural, but the key is just focused practice.

JP

I bought loads of effects and learned to make unearthly noise, then decided I rather like the sound of just the guitar through a relatively small amp. I really ought to sell some pedals. Playing music outside your own four walls is a mug's game, pretty much.

Joelowden......yea Bach, where do you start haha? I used to hate it as a kid, I thought there were far to many notes and no hook, but how wrong was I. It's just a never ending supply of the most complex and beautiful music, also some of the most challenging stuff to play on guitar. On acoustic I also enjoy playing Nick Drake and Elliott Smith, that sort of thing.

Lots of great stories and plenty of advice to take from them if you are learning. Mainly, it takes time!

Got a guitar when I was 14, still playing and loving it 28 years later.

I've never did anything serious with it, went to classical lessons when it was 15/16 for a bit, too daft to stick at them, did a few grades, gave me a very good base to build from though. Fannied about in the studio in my late teens/early 20s, culminated in one gig. 😆 kinda drifted away from it for a good few years til my late 20s/early 30s, not completely. I maintained what I'd learned, but never took it much further.

Started picking it up again in my early 30s, late 30s i went through a concerted effort to teach myself a good theory base, which is more my kinda thing, opens up lot of experimental operchancities.

I'm not really suited for playing live though, not that I can't do it, still occasionally go into the studio with a few mates, it's just not particularly for me, I much prefer just noodling away myself, or more specifically playing around in abelton these days with midi, guitar, bass, piano(haven't actually ever learned to play that, but the theory transfers over very nicely to allow ye to noodle, well it's actually the other way about, the theory is easier to understand on the keyboard).

So current status, arsing about in the box really, tis a great hobby! 😆

Main line up currently is 2014 black mexi strat - upgraded pickups, vintage v100, a vintage 5 string bass, roland FP30, Abelton 10 suite, pianoteq, scuffham s-gear, amplitube, amongst other other bits and bobs, buit that's the go to stuff.

Been playing since I was about 22 and still do occasionally but tbh I am, was, and always will be rubbish. But I just fell in love with guitars themselves.

Started out with a lovely Fender mexi P-bass (which I always regretted a little as I was upsold from one of the lovely early 2000s squier pbass specials in british racing green) but decided to branch out and picked up an early Squier Stagemaster, which was kinda awesome- candy apple red, upside down body coloured headstock, floyd rose, HSS. (this was from that weird spell where they were trying to take Squier upmarket again but they didn't really know how- some randomly good guitars, and some absolute ill conceived rubbish)

I got the modificating bug off of that guitar, as everything apart from the wood and paint was junk, and ended up working part time in a couple of local shops off the back of that- mostly doing emergency first aid on badly set up/defective budget guitars, and a lot of rewires and pickup upgrades because the proper repair guy couldn't be arsed to solder stuff.

Traded the Squier with an absolutely gorgeous Fender japan Hot Rod Reissue that came into the shop one day for basically a total rebuild- a floyd rose HSS strat from the glory days of MIJ. It needed a ton of work and really wasn't economically worth fixing, but we made it good again, loved it... (one of the trem posts had pulled partly out of the body and cracked it through into the pickup cavity, nobody in Edinburgh wanted to fix it, I ended up walking around denmark street with just the body in a carrier bag going basically "who can heal my poor guitar". Some random in a basement sorted it for free)

bought another cheap sunburst one as another project and sold the red one to fund it. Still have it but it's in bits, because I went a bit mad and started converting it to HH with All The Switches and never got it finished. Duncan invader in the bridge and a custom shop 59 in the neck, coil taps, series split parallel, les paul style switch in the top horn and a cut-out tap switch, it would have been nerdily awesome if I'd actually finished it, now I've no idea how to wire the stupid thing, forgot everything I knew. I think this is the only absolute keeper though as a) I got the headstock signed by Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro who's one of my guitar heroes and b) no bugger'd buy it. It hasn't had strings on it for at least a decade.

Got a Gibson SG Special which I didn't take to at all, traded it for a silver series MIK Tele loaded with seymour duncans at some point, which I still have. Had a terrible BC Rich Warlock cheapie which I got signed by some of Slipknot and swiftly ebayed and used the money to get a USA 7 string Virgin, which was actually fantastic, and hung properly round the neck despite being a pointy stupid metal guitar. It went DURR DURR DURR which is all I really wanted. Sold that one for way more than it was worth to some random ebay american that turned out to be Tripp Eisen from Dope/Murderdolls/Static X/prison. I never did figure that one out, it was nothing special but he had me dismount the neck and ship it to california, cost a fortune. You can buy em today for buttons, nobody wants them.

There were a couple of others but they didn't stick- a japanese squier HH with a copy floyd which I bought for peanuts in a junk shop, filled with leftover electronics from other guitars (it was officially my "spare guitar for gigs", even though I never played guitar live even once) and sold for some ridiculous amount of money as MIJ was all the collector's rage at the time. It was actually not bad at all. Maybe that paid for the Gibson, not sure. A Squier Tele Custom which I just liked looking at but wasn't really all that good. And a really horrible Schechter active 7 string which I probably played about twice then sold frantically for a loss just as nu metal was wearing off. An epi thunderbird which it turned out I never actually owned, I just sort of aquired it from the shop and then gave it back a while later, it could only play Placebo basslines but it was good at that. And a wee Crafter travel acoustic, which should have been rubbish but was actually pretty nice.

Oh yeah, and recently a total impulse buy Epiphone Genesis Pro which I bought off gumtree to try and get myself back into it after I broke my wrist, but I never really did. It's kinda cool though, I keep meaning to sell it but I like it.

TBH I was always an aquirer rather than really a player. I played bass in a band for a little while, but really basic stuff, we had a brilliant drummer and a good guitarist so it was my job to plod, and plod I did. Played with a few other bands on rhythm guitar but none of them ever actually did anything.

Just don't ask about the ukelele.

Flautist and Piper by training...

I go through phases of playing guitar then finding it pretty boring.

All the electrics have gone. Decided to do some work on my acoustic to fix the action a bit and sort the frets. Ordered the relevant tools/materials. The day the arrived I snapped the headstock off in an unfortunate hoovering incident. It remaines unfinished but the headstock is back on just required some reinforcement.

Regardless of style I play with my fingers. Can never keep hold of a plectrum.

I’m starting to be tempted to go along to some jam sessions - We’re talking not very confident beginner level here - some areas of skill developing but “stitching it all together” is harder, I imagine playing with others will help massively with that.

Where / how do you go about finding them? I’m in Daventry by the way in case anyone knows of anything....

I took it up as when my daughter started playing classical at school. Treated myself to an acoustic and had some lessons for a while. Daughter wanted an electric so got her a cheap fake strat, but she carried n more with the classical, and I started noodling with the electric. Swapped the cheap pickups for some secondhand ones off eBay and had it set up by a luthier.....it really plays very nicely.

After a year or two away from it I've spend the last few months playing it daily. I have a Digitech modeller and plug it into the PC, play backing tracks from Youtube and listen through the headphones. I've got a Peavey Bandit 112 Amp and occasionally let it rip when I'm in the house on my own.

It took me a while to master the fretboard, but being a singer with a decent grounding in theory, I've been able to find my way round, especially on rhythm, and can get the hang of basic chord progressions with practice. I've got a good sense of timing, and the singer in me can create some good blues licks to sit over various backing tracks, which has resulted in a good few hours spent simply enjoying myself as I progress.

There are some good tutors on Youtube, and a couple of them have got me on my way with some good old punk, which I suppose is what I really enjoy playing. Pistols, Ramones (yes, I know!) Undertones, Only Ones, Damned, a couple of Cure songs, and some of the easier Queens of the Stone Age etc etc. A lot of rock and metal riffs simply use the same chords but in different progressions, so I'd tentatively suggest I could learn enough songs to play along with others. My personal journey took off when I mastered barre chords/power chords and variants, to the extent of learning which voicings/roots to use to demystify some of the classics.

I try to learn some solos, but for some reason I have mental blocks which gets me partway, but my fingers are too slow and clumsy to keep up which leads to frustration before I can master even some simple ones. Daft really, 'cos with practice some of my blues improvs can sound pretty good. I do tend to get in a rut with certain licks, and fear I'll sound predictable, but after all, change the tempo, rhythm and key of a blues track and the same licks played over the top can sound completely different.

Still, it's as much about the journey as anything else.

What Scapegoat wrote made me remember that when I had a nice old Japanese Tele I put on the CD "Riding with the King" which is something that BB King and Eric Clapton rather lazily put together over a few lunchtimes. Even though the music is nothing great it lends itself to a 3rd lead noodling around in a minor pentatonic over the top.