Discovering the music......whats your story?

[Monkus]

I don't know if this is the right place for this post, if it isn't apologies in advance. I thought it might be interesting to hear (read) the different stories on how we got started.

I was 6 (or 7) in the Junior choir of our church. My parents made me go even though I hated it at first. There was this old piano and I used to plonk on it to while the time away before I was picked up. I remember hearing "Fill up my senses" by John Denver somewhere and it stuck in my head. I was playing it with both hands before I knew I was playing it. Then I learnt some of the hymns that I had liked.

I didn't realize I was playing music until one of the church organists found me playing. Apparently that piano was off limits but she didn't care and I heard she stood there for about 15 minutes just watching me play. She corrected some mistakes and helped me with some fingering but never tried to teach me theory, which I'm grateful for. If I was forced to learn music theory at that age, I think I would have quit. I wanted to play what I heard.

My dad had an old classical Palmer guitar that I released from its misery from his closet and started to play that. I was playing steelpan, piano and organ in church before I was 10, guitar at around 15, no formal training, but the training I got from my older peers was invaluable.

Play what you like, but play it right - whats your story?

[just strum]

Mine, like many my age was The Beatles. Although I was aware of music before that, it wasn't until they arrived on the scene did I really take an interest. I was about 8 years old at the time, but only dabbled in drums and guitar, never really dedicating myself.

Years later, I am now embarking on my dream to play guitar. Even today, life takes time away from the enjoyment of learning to play, but when I get those times, I truly enter another world.

As for "play it right", I guess I would have to ask "what is right?" I think you will find a number of musicians that don't "play it right", but play it in their style. I let go of playing it right early on, I just play for enjoyment and if it sounds good to me...well, it's right.

[Monkus]

I just play for enjoyment and if it sounds good to me...well, it's right.

Exactly...I had confidence issues early on so I would play really softly, so I didn't "attack" the music as I should. So right for me was getting it to sound like it should in my mind. I totally agree with you.

[street music]

My mother alway had a piano in the house as she played the church piano and my oldest brother was learning when I was about 4 years old. Mom & Dad wanted me to learn Piano but I was more interested in the Beatles, CCR and all the British explosion that was taking place. I wanted to play guitar but they wouldn't hear of that evil piece being in their home. SO I DIDN'T LEARN anything other than my love for evil music.
I have been learning now into my 3rd year and hope , like Strum to someday be able to sit with others and play.

[Spudman***]

After my parents would beat me and lock me in the closet I would lay there in the dark and listen to the songs that I could faintly hear on the radio. When we would go visit my moms parents I would dink around on the piano they had. No one ever showed me anything about playing it. Then when I was 8 I talked my folks into getting me an acoustic guitar (Santa really) and taught myself to play.

My love for music all started in 1965 when I got my first Beatles record.

[just strum]

Exactly...I had confidence issues early on so I would play really softly, so I didn't "attack" the music as I should. So right for me was getting it to sound like it should in my mind. I totally agree with you.

To better explain my comment, this is something said to me by one of the fretters here. I only changed "...easier for you to play like Strum" to "...easier for you to play like you"

It's printed and sitting near my gear.

Regardless of who you are, your level of experience, or how much you think you might suck... NOBODY can play like YOU! Your playing is unique... and that's what makes it an art and not a logical exercise.

Why sound like Clapton... the world already has one of those.

Why work so hard at trying to sound like SRV or Hendrix or whoever else... already been done... by SRV and Hendrix and whoever else!

Wouldn't it be easier for you to play like you? You already know how!

Embrace your own muse... don't waste your time coveting others.

I will let the author speak up if he so chooses.

[wingsdad]

I was born into a family of singers of Broadway Show Tunes of the 40's & 50's and of Movie Musicals of the '30's & 40's. My parents didn't play instruments, but they loved their music and there was always music on the 'Victrola' filling the house. We lived down the block from my dad's brother and his family, and they had a Wurlitzer organ that he'd play and lead the gathered clan in sing-alongs. My cousins & I were thrust to center stage at these gatherings as soon as we could stand.

My earliest birthday and Christmas gifts were the typical children's instruments...xylophone, a 'Schroeder' piano, drums...

... then, at age 5, came this particular Christmas gift I'd asked Santa for, that'd I'd seen played on TV by this adult with funny ears on his head, just like all the kids he lead in song, that mystified me until I heard Elvis Presley on the radio & TV in '56...suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do with music, and I 'assumed the position' with my genuine Mouseguitar:



The first record I ever bought was an Elvis 4-cut 45 (Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, My Baby Left Me, I Want You-I Need You-I Love You). I'd sing along as I thumped hopefully on the hopelessly and perpetually out-of-tune plastic ukulele.

An older cousin (3 years older) gave me a real guitar a few years later, a Sears Silvertone acoustic he handed off to me when he got his Sears Silvertone Danelectro. It was hard to play, but he showed me some stuff that was just amazing, especially since he played lefty, strung righty (chords upside down) and GAS overtook me to this day by the age of 11.

I was happy to make progress for a couple of years, getting sporadic lessons from him with Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins licks, The Ventures, other surf and country stuff, but these were instrumentals, kinda boring to me, and he didn't sing. Then he showed me some Chuck Berry licks until that same cousin, Canadian with early access to stuff coming over the pond from the Mother Country, turned me on to this album he'd just got of 4 young guys in suits and funny haircuts from England in the summer or fall of '63, and one of the tunes on it was Chuck's Roll Over Beethoven...a tune I knew how to play and could sing.

As with Strummy & Spudman, the Beatles kicked the whole thing up a notch.

Sunday night, Feb. 9, 1964, was truly a life-changing experience, and I was in my first garage band within a week.

[just strum]

[ted s]

I think I was 6, I had one of these..

Early one Sunday morning while my parents were still sleeping I went through a stack of 45's that were inside one of those big old console am/fm reel-reel stereo's and found The Animals House of the Rising Sun & The Beatles Revoluton. Years later I scooped Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert from the same stash. I still have it somewhere.

[wingsdad]

Thanks for that clip, Strummy...:

Gathered around the little b/w set in our living room like so many families did every Sunday night at 8 Eastern for Sullivan, when they pulled 'Til There Was You from The Music Man out of their bag, my folks were hooked...singing right along with a tune from 'the family repertoire'...I remember my 34-year old Mom swooning over Paul, much to Dad's befuddlement.

3 nights later, Feb. 12, they played 2 shows at Carnegie Hall. Living just 30 minutes north of NYC, a friend of mine's dad was a photographer for the NY Daily News assigned to cover it.

The next day, my 14th birthday, when I walked into my 8th Grade English class, that friend handed me this 8x10 and said: "...my dad couldn't use this one, the drummer didn't come out good, and since all you've talked about since Sunday...Happy Birthday":



I've read somewhere that photographers were banned that night, but obviously, that's not quite right...this was a newspaper photog...maybe that's why he couldn't use it?

[marnold***]

You guys are old

I took piano lessons but there was no love for it. I wanted to take up guitar because my uncle would occasionally bust out his acoustic and play some hippie music (Peter, Paul, and Mary, etc.). I wanted to learn, but I wanted an electric. That got nixed. I played a crappy acoustic for a few years before discovering the bass. I played in a band my senior year in high school using the school's bass. I got my own before I went to college and played in a couple of bands, but only talent show-level "gigs". In high school I also became a metal head which just increased my desire to play guitar. After I was married a couple of years I finally bought an electric. I've been trying to wrestle with the darn thing ever since.

[cherokee747]

Rolling Stones and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That's all it took for me. Yeah I'm old too!!! Mike

[street music]

It appears that the Beatles effect on many of us was the turning point in music. That makes me feel as I am part of a great era of music that transformed this ageless generation.

[Monkus]

Regardless of who you are, your level of experience, or how much you think you might suck... NOBODY can play like YOU! Your playing is unique... and that's what makes it an art and not a logical exercise.

Why sound like Clapton... the world already has one of those.

Why work so hard at trying to sound like SRV or Hendrix or whoever else... already been done... by SRV and Hendrix and whoever else!

Wouldn't it be easier for you to play like you? You already know how!

Embrace your own muse... don't waste your time coveting others.

My vote for sticky !!!

[kiteman]

My vote for sticky !!!

Agreed, We are unique!

The Ventures is what got me excited and I told my dad I want a guitar for Xmas. I was ten at the time and when Xmas rolled around there was an F-holed acoustic guitar under the tree.

And that's not all, I also got a "Play with the Ventures" album with 4 songs on it. What a cool dad.

Now the Beatles comes around and I wanted an electric guitar. My mom bought me an Airline 335 copy from Wards and a Silvertone piggyback amp from Sears.

In jr high I met some friends and we got together to play.

"We are the Brazen Men!"

[wingsdad]

Agreed, We are unique! ...

Ah...but with so much in common, we are not alone. There's a tie that binds

Kiteman, you're 58...I'm 59...and the parallel paths of the beginning of our musical journey are uncanny: From the spark of the Ventures (you were 10, I was 11...so it was 1961), to the kickstart of that first band with Jr. High buddies inspired by the Beatles, that Silvertone amp (I wanted that piggyback, but had to settle for the $80 1x12 combo).

A little difference...I had moved from the $13 Silvertone acoustic to my first electric rig by 13 -- a 3/4 scale 2 pickup Chicago-made Harmony solid body (available from Sears catalog as a Silvertone) with a used Kay combo amp -- for $125 from a little local store, money loaned by my mom that I paid back from a paper route, cutting lawns and snow shoveling. Winning a Jr. High Battle of the Bands with that little rig justified another loan & payback, though, ...for a Gibson ES330 ($260) and a Fender Deluxe Reverb ($169). This time, payback was accelerated with scoring a pretty steady stream of gigs at the local Rec Center, Jr High Dances, House parties...usually for around $50...split 4 ways. Our parents took turns hauling us back & forth.

[kiteman]

Ah...but with so much in common, we are not alone. There's a tie that binds

Kiteman, you're 58...I'm 59...and the parallel paths of the beginning of our musical journey are uncanny: From the spark of the Ventures (you were 10, I was 11...so it was 1961), to the kickstart of that first band with Jr. High buddies inspired by the Beatles, that Silvertone amp (I wanted that piggyback, but had to settle for the $80 1x12 combo).

A little difference...I had moved from the $13 Silvertone acoustic to my first electric rig by 13 -- a 3/4 scale 2 pickup Chicago-made Harmony solid body (available from Sears catalog as a Silvertone) with a used Kay combo amp -- for $125 from a little local store, money loaned by my mom that I paid back from a paper route, cutting lawns and snow shoveling. Winning a Jr. High Battle of the Bands with that little rig justified another loan & payback, though, ...for a Gibson ES330 ($260) and a Fender Deluxe Reverb ($169). This time, payback was accelerated with scoring a pretty steady stream of gigs at the local Rec Center, Jr High Dances, House parties...usually for around $50...split 4 ways. Our parents took turns hauling us back & forth.

Man, that's just amazing, we're soul brothers.

You almost described my life. I did pretty much the same thing as to cutting grass, odd jobs for older folks, etc. We played at birthday parties, talent shows, and school functions.

My bandmate never did like me playing Pipeline with reverb and tremolo. I thought that was cool. I was really impressed with that piggyback.

[sumitomo]

Good question,I dug the Beatles,Stones,BeachBoys,Turtles(Im 52 and had an older sister who went to school with Love and the turtles were from Westchester in L.A.)but it was that early Grandfunk Railroad that made me want to play.Sumi

[kiteman]

Good question,I dug the Beatles,Stones,BeachBoys,Turtles(Im 52 and had an older sister who went to school with Love and the turtles were from Westchester in L.A.)but it was that early GRAND FUNK RAILROAD that made me want to play.Sumi

High Five sumi.

They're my fav band next to Blue Oyster Cult. Luv them 'guys. :