Ok, why'd you do it?

bodia

Authorities said.....best leave it.....unsolved
Joined
Jan 21, 2015
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Suburban Chicago
It? What is it?

Why, pick up the guitar of course. Was there one moment that drove you to it? Was it something that simmered and built? What's your story on how you got started? Why'd you venture down the musical path?

Here's mine:
Back in the spring of '79 I was just finishing 6th grade and getting ready to head off to Jr. High School in Davenport, Iowa. That was a time when they still taught music and art in school. I remember some group being at the school putting on a seminar about playing an instrument. The goal was to get students to commit to an instrument, and joining the Jr. High band or orchestra. I was young and impressionable (and loved music...playing records non-stop at home), and gravitated to the saxophone. I played alto sax in B band in Jr High as a 7th grader and got moved up to A band in the 8th grade. I played the baritone sax in 8th and 9th grade in A band and Jazz band. Downer here; our band teacher was a total tyrant. Really turned me off on playing. I decided not to play when I went off to high school. That was the end of my music career for the time being.

Fast forward a couple of years. Off to see my first concert in late '82. April Wine and Uriah Heep. Had never heard of Uriah Heep, but they rocked. Mick Box floored me playing with one hand (simple 4,2,open pull offs). I'd never seen anything like it! Next was Joe Walsh, then Ozzy and Vandenburg, and then Blue Oyster Cult/Aldo Nova/Dokken in the span of a few months. That was it. I had to have a guitar. Pulled the sax out of moth balls and traded it in for a no name 5w amp and a Hondo II Strat copy. Played quite a bit for the next 5 years. Graduated from college with an a degree in electronics and moved to Chicago to get a job. Playing went by the wayside. Thought of selling everything on more than one occasion, but just couldn't bring myself to let go. Spent more time over the ensuing years not playing than playing, but I still get enjoyment of plucking around.

Glad I found this place as it has re-kindled the fire. I find myself starting to spend more time playing then I have in several years. Thanks to everyone for that!

What's your story?
 
I was 17. I liked girls. Girls liked it when I played music.

I already played keyboards, but they're harder to carry around to parties than a guitar. So I decided I needed a guitar to play when a keyboard wasn't available.
 
I just got geeked about music and wanted to make something that made me feel like I do when I listened to it.

I was way into Ray Parker Jr. (he's done way more than Ghostbusters BTW) and Prince and they both played guitar, so I figured that was the instrument for me. My mom got me a Silvertone Mosrite copy (cause even then I had to have a whammy bar) and a Montgomery Ward amp with tremolo built in, and I would stand on the coffee table pretending to be on stage and write little songs, even though I had no idea what I was doing.

I put the guitar down for a few years when I got into hiphop and skateboarding. It was through skateboard videos in the 80's and the punk music that they featured that got me back into rock music and guitar. I dug out the old Silvertone, bought a distortion pedal and started up again, but this time because of the music I dug and the guys who played it, I decided I needed a Les Paul...

What did I do? What do you think I did? Instead of asking my parents or trading it in, I destroyed that guitar by taking it apart and trying to build a new single cutaway body for it! I swear, I've always been a little crazy with modding guitars, :D

Went to my first Hardcore show my second year of high school, joined a band the next year, went on tour with them that summer (who the hell lets their 17 year old kid go on tour for weeks with a bunch of skinheads?!?!) quit school senior year, and my life has been f@cked ever since.
 
I was a pretty good trumpet player in school and I come from a musical family.

When I was a sophomore I started playing my dad's Stella acoustic. I figured out how to play chords on my own.

One day I found a fender duo sonic in pieces under mom and dads bed. I put it together and started playing it. Soon I was sneaking the schools bass amp home for the weekend to practice with.

Our school had hosted state solo contests and the jazz band drummer and I started jamming ACDC in the music room. Before we knew it, there was a huge crowd checking us out and wewere getting louder and louder. We got into a heap of trouble for ddisrupting state solo contests.

I was hooked!
 
I was 5 and the guy downstairs had a guitar that he let me try. It was a big old acoustic, maybe as big as me, but it captivated me. From that point on I was going to play guitar. It was quite a while before I had a real guitar so I learned music by playing my mom's pump organ, then french horn in school. I had a 3/4 (or smaller, it was long ago) sized guitar that played like crap so I made it a slide guitar until I ran out of Hawaiian songs to learn.
Started double bass at my 3rd high school (still in 1st year) and got a cheap bass which I stared really learning on, until I chopped it so that I could bow it - never got the electronics to co-operate though. A bit after that I liberated a cool looking, but terrible playing guitar. I used it to teach myself how to play melodies I liked on 1 or 2 strings, basically what ever would stay in tune until I was done. I dissected it to learn how the bits fit together.
Then I bought a classical and started learning proper guitar.
 
When I was in the Army there were rec centers that had booths to jam in and some beat up instruments. There were 4 musicians (actually 3) a drummer, keyboardist & guitar player was trying to teach some guy a bass line but he was having a tough time because he wasn't an accomplished enough bass player to grasp it. I said to myself "I can do that" and poked my head in to see if I could give it a try. The guy trying was relieved due to his own knowledge that he was not going to be able to pull it off.

After learning 2 simple R&B grooves they said to me "OK let's go do the show", and to my surprise it was all for a talent show that was going to take place in an hour. Even though it was my first time playing an instrument, playing in an ensemble, and playing on stage, we actually won the talent show. (Cheap faux Parker fountain pens was the prize) So although I never played or took lessons as a kid, I knew I could take to this music thing................but I sure hated those thick ol' bass strings, they're like thick towing cables to my hands.....................so there U have it.

I took up guitar cause I hated playing bass.
 
I started off with piano when I was 8 years old and took classical music lessons for 4 years. Being the sole musician in a household of non-musicians, I got to where I couldn't stand playing the piano because it was so out of tune but I couldn't convince my father to get it tuned. So I stopped playing and the piano was sold.

Fast forward to high school. I had this really cool classmate who happened to play guitar. He always seemed to have a bunch of girls hanging around him too. Since my brother had gotten a no-name acoustic the year before and gave up on it, I snagged it and convinced my friend to teach me to play. He taught me about 5-6 chords and wished me good luck.

My father made a deal with me that if I learned to play 10 songs, he would buy an electric guitar for me. Armed with my 6 chords, I proceeded to serenade him a few weeks later (I told you he was non-musical) and he made good on the deal.

Off we went and he got me a used no-name electric with absolutely horrible action and a worse sound, and a cheap amp. But it was better than the acoustic. Subsequently I coerced him into buying a used Gibson Les Paul for me. That one finally worked well. I saved every paycheck from my summer job and bought a Yamaha G100-B212 amp to go with it..

I progressed fairly quickly after that and was in several bands in high school and college. Then life got in the way and I stopped playing until last year.

So, to finally answer the question, hoping to attract GIRLS is what got me started but I found I really enjoyed it.
 
From about the age of 5 I can remember my Dad's insanely good stereo, and this was back in the late 50's. He just had such good taste with all sorts of stuff, electronics for sure; like we had the first color TV in my neighborhood, but I digress. He owned lots of albums and music seemed to always be happening. I dug his stuff then and now, Prima, Sinatra, you know, the popular 50's stuff. When the Beatles hit America I was 10 in 1964 and that's the year I, like a zillion others, wanted to learn guitar, so I did.

Suppose it was the Beatles that started me wanting to play. My dad and mom enjoying their music so often over a great stereo started my love of music. That hasn't let up and I'm sure I'll be singing my way out of this earthly plane when my time comes.

Zafu
 
Saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964........I was 7. That was it. Had a guitar in my hand ever since........can't imagine my life without music. :rock::rock:
 
Ace Frehley.

In '79 I was entering Jr high, and the choices were music history, band, or guitar. Ace played guitar, so the choice was simple. The folks got me a cheap Passover student size acoustic that I played for the first couple years. I saved my paper route money and bought a Memphis Les Paul copy in tobacco sunburst(yes, just like Ace LOL). played it 'til the frets were flat. At one point ( I couldn't rig the smoke bombs) I had put a strobe light into the neck pickup cavity, and changed the controls to 1 knob and 3 flashing LEDs in the other spots. The toggle switch was the on off for the LEDs and the knob was on/rate switch for the strobe light. Bridge pickup was wired directly to the jack. The neck is long gone but I still have the body.
 
My dad had a restaurant in Baltimore City (Hampden) and there was an electronics place 2-3 doors down, with guitars hanging on the back wall. I'd oogle them every Saturday, after washing a bunch of coffee mugs, but spend my $7.00 on Kiss albums...Alive I...the cover, probably the number 1 reason, and number 2...girls, of course!!! I actually remember looking at Rush's Hemispheres and thinking..."what a dumb/silly idea for a cover". Now, its one of my favorites.
 
Love, and still do, the Smashing Pumpkins. I wanted to play Smashing Pumpkins songs. Even though I knew nothing about music really I knew that their drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was incredible. I was in 6th grade when I first got a drum kit. My brother got it actually and it was set up in my mothers office. I would practice everyday after school. Despiote the fact that my parents house was on a corner and thus was surrounded by quite a bit of land, all of the neighbors were pretty much all senior citizens, so they would call the cops on me for playing too loud - it wasn't even 5 in the afternoon yet. Finally we got so annoyed by the constant calls we just said **** it and got rid of the drums. I still wanted to play Smashing Pumpkins songs so I switched to guitar. I learned on my grandfathers Les Paul. This explains why I can't stand playing strats.
 
It's all Brian May's fault.

I became borderline obsessed with Queen shortly after I started college, in part because their CDs/tapes were impossible to find for a while when they were switching over to Hollywood Records as their US label. Anyway, one weekend I was home from college and went to a bookstore that had just opened. I happened upon a copy of Ralph Denyer's The Guitar Handbook, thumbed through it, and found its writeup on Brian May and his homebuilt guitar. Then I flipped through the rest of the book and remembered dimly that guitar was the one part of our elementary school music classes that I had actually liked. I started to form this idea that maybe, maybe I could learn how to play guitar.

The following summer I had an internship, and I used some of the proceeds of that to buy a cheap-@$$ Strat and a crappy practice amp. Those ended up being sold to pay for another hobby that turned out to be a bit more lucrative (Linux), but the following year I got another guitar and amp and started taking lessons.

The rest is history, or at least speculative fiction.
 
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Kurt D. Cobain
Yeah, yeah...not what everyone wants to hear. BUT, Kurt put everything he had in to every piece of music he ever made...you can hear it and you could always see it. I always felt that Kurt made sure his band could be felt as a single driving force during the time of the singer with the ego/lead guitar player with ego...and then the other couple guys they play with mentality was really the main format of a band.

I started playing guitar about a year after he died and I was just a kid. But, even then, I could see what a spark Kurt was. He was larger than life and still was able to play exactly what he wanted to play and he didnt care who he played it to. Sure, I dont really listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit (first song I ever learned on the geetar) and some of the hits anymore...Ive just heard them too much. But when I read about Kurt or watch his documentaries...taking his drug use out of the picture...he was straight brilliant.

To be a rockstar and define a generation without answering to anyone....isnt that a good reason to pick up the guitar and find some buddies to start a band with???
He is the reason I picked up a guitar, he is a huge part of the reason Im doing what I do today. The dude was a serious force.
 
Both my older brothers had cheap LP copies, Harmony and a Greco if memory serves. 1979 I went to see Kiss in concert and was left completely mind blown. Started playing at 10 years old, was I garage bands all thru high school, eve rocked the talent show my junior and senior years. Girls tend to like lead guitar players. I was at a gig in my juniors year playing Van Halen, Ozzy, Hair Band staples and Metallica, etc when a hot girl brought me a drink, I married her a year later. I got a real job, had a kid, bought a house and now Im watching mu 21 year old son go thru the gauntlet,lol. Life is a trip. Ace, Randy and EVH got me going, Dime, Vai and Tremonti keep me rolling.
 
Wanted to be a drummer...Mom & Dad took me to the local music store and as soon as Dad heard how loud they were, I was a guitarist! Went home with some kind of Fender Strat and a Fender practice amp.

That was 1979.

I eventually became a drummer as well and play both now.

Ace Frehley was a huge reason that I wasn't too upset about going to guitar instead of drums.
 
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