How Long You Been Playing?

Victor Vector

Born to Rip
Joined
Oct 15, 2023
Messages
136
It just came to me....I started playing when I was 8, got my first guitar (a cheap classical with black strings) and took lesson from Mrs. Sandborn, a little lady with short grey hair...still remember it like its yesterday. Tom Dooley...Jet plane...Guantanamera....all the classics.
Thing is im 58 now, 50 years!!! Of course theres been some breaks/down time but OMG...50 years, whered it go??? :cool:
 
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I, too, started young - 7. My first guitar ever was a little nylon string from Walgreens that my mom got with S&H Green Stamps. Wrote my first song on that guitar. It was called "I Come From Cuba" t was inspired by the movie Scarface starring Al Pacino. Saw it in my early years. My friend Dennis - still a songwriting partner after 43 years - wrote the lyrics:

"I come from Cuba
I sell dee drugs
It makes me rich

I come from Cuba
I sell dee drugs
Day make me crazy"

We were like 9 years old singing this song in the park for old ladies. They'd give us pennies and we go to the local corner store and buy little penny candies and a bottle of Coke. It would usually set us back about 65 cents each, lol....

That song and little cheap-o guitar opened a life-long creative outlet for me. I have been paying 47 years now.
 
I traded my alto sax for a Hondo II strat copy and a cheap 5w amp with two knobs when I was 16 (going on 57 now). Played a lot until I got a job in the Chicago area (moved from Iowa) when I was 20. Have always had a guitar (or guitars) in the years since. Don't play nearly as much as I should.
 
I played my first gig 62 years ago this summer ... It all started at my cousins wedding , I was 6 . They had a swing band and I was fascinated by the drums ( 1961) During the break the drummer asked me if I wanted to play , I said OH YES , so he put me on his lap , put my hands in his and we played the whole first song . CHACHING.. for my birthday my grandmother got me drums, a cheap set. "If you practice , I'll get you good ones. My brother and I formed a Surf Band as we lived close to the Coast and visited Santa Cruz often . Dick Dale, The Surfari's Oh yeah.

Then came the Beatles in 64 and well that just changed the world . Living in the Palo Alto , home to Stanford, and The Grateful Dead when the scene shifted I was learning Inna Gadda Da Vida instead of Wipeout.

In middle school I took up viola and my brother took up cello , it got us out of normal class and gave us a chance to play together.
He was always lucky with the ladies , so I'd steal his guitar when he was too busy to care. After a while we realized I was the better guitar player , he was the better drummer.

We both became engineers for HP , but also Luthiers following a family tradition ( we are going on our 4th generation )
I studied Classical guitar in college under Charles Ferguson, who had the odd distinction of playing withthe Sha Na NA at Woodstock , and holding a Masters in Classical Guitar (and Prof) from Stanford, he was also a Segovia honor student and a great deal of fun outside of class.

The rest is just doing the garage band / top 40 thing until kids hit , then just Luthiery and home studio stuff
 
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I started in 1990. I was 18, so I started late. Admittedly, I’m not a very good player. I never really had an interest in becoming a great guitarist. If I had spent 1/1,000,000th of the time actually learning how to play properly, instead of being a “gear ho” I might actually be a half-@ssed player by now.
 
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I started playing at 13 and I'm 61 now, so 48 years. Did a lot of gigging young, which helped pay for college studying classical guitar. Ended up going into Music Therapy and just retired last year after over 30 years in the field. Currently teaching at a local music school. Never made it big like I wanted, but very grateful for taking up the guitar!
 
I remember I was 16 or 17ish, before that I had no knowledge about music. NO INTEREST in music and/or playing the guitar. In fact, I think most people would laugh at me if I told them I was going to learn how to play and tour with a band one day. I hated church and standing during worship music. I hated singing, I wanted no part in it.

How it begin:
My parents were starting a Spanish Christian church on top of a mountain with a couple friends. (For those who don't know, I'm tri-lingual) It was a very small church, maybe 10 adults total and just a few kids. One of the kids there plated a Fender American strat, he was only playing a few months but knew a good amount of licks and had a good sense of rythym.

His name was Raphael, and he somehow convinced me to ask my parents for a guitar. My dad who was and still is considered a wealthy man, told me that I had to promise him that if he bought me a guitar I would have to commit to it. So I promised and tried my best. He bought me the cheapest thing who could find which was of course a Squier Strat pack, for Christmas, which came with a tuner, cable, set of strings, and a 5 watt solid state Crate amp. Everything was terrible quality and yet I fell in love with it and still have it til this day.

So I tuned it up, brought it to the top of the mountain and my friend Raphael taggt me the opening link to Weezer's Island In The Sun. So we did that for worship and that's all we did for a few weeks. I know thats not a worship song, hell, it's not even a Christian song but we were kids. And we were trying.

What happened next:
Fast forward a couple months and that church of course died off. People lost interest but I was still trying to play and all I played was some two finger rock chords, my dad liked that I was playing but asked "Is that all you can do?" And I simply said "Yes". So he located guitar teachers and paid for me to get lessons. It taught me all I needed to know about music theory and really did open my mind. I learned scales/modes, how to play by ear, music sheet, chord charts and tablature. And all that good stuff.

Fast forward 10 years later after that and I looked and played different. I had grown confident in my playing as well as my singing. I played at the country's biggest churches and opened for Stryper, Slipknot, Tenth Avenue North and others. I was also in a band that toured and I am proud to say that I played in every state of the USA except for 2 states (Hawaii and Alaska). It wasn't long after that Elevation church asked me to play with this church plant team.


Where we are now:
Playing steadily for a well known mega church on Sundays and help out with various smaller churches when I can. I'm almost 45 and I specialize in worship on guitar. Something I once hated.. but it's strange how we change, evolve, and mature over the years. Now I'm working my dream job so when some people try to troll me on forums and pretend I don't know as much as I actually do, my wife and I chuckle a bit 😄
 
I started piano at 4, and got around to guitar in my teens - 1967, a lifetime ago. But I''m still better at keys than guitar, and I can explain why:

The piano keyboard is a much more intelligently conceived and arranged device than a guitar fretboard. It's well laid out, everything makes sense, the note placement is consistent from octave to octave, and both hands operate in much the same way. Also, it isn't physically painful to play.

Have you ever seen a 'piano face' like you do 'guitar faces'? Of course not. Piano players don't have to contort their bodies and wrists to operate the instrument. Piano players do not need calluses to play.

The guitar is a device created to torture the hands and warp the brain, a device for masochists and lunatics.

That's probably why I'm obsessed with it. 🤣

The guitar has one advantage: it's easier to carry a guitar to a jam than a piano.
 
It just came to me....I started playing when I was 8, got my first guitar (a cheap classical with black strings) and took lesson from Mrs. Sandborn, a little lady with short grey hair...still remember it like its yesterday. Tom Dooley...Jet plane...Guantanamera....all the classics.
Thing is im 58 now, 50 years!!! Of course theres been some breaks/down time but OMG...50 years, whered it go??? :cool:
Wish I’d have taken lessons.
 
It just came to me....I started playing when I was 8, got my first guitar (a cheap classical with black strings) and took lesson from Mrs. Sandborn, a little lady with short grey hair...still remember it like its yesterday. Tom Dooley...Jet plane...Guantanamera....all the classics.
Thing is im 58 now, 50 years!!! Of course theres been some breaks/down time but OMG...50 years, whered it go??? :cool:
I’ve played since 1972. Not well, but I’ve made it work. As I knock on the door of 70, the fingers don’t cooperate as much as I’d like.
 
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