What made you play guitar?

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    Very cool :thumbup:

  • I luckuly grew up with my fathers and uncles taste of music - only quality stuff.

    When I really wanted to learn how to play guitar, I listened to The Sweet, Kiss, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple...

    When I strarted picking ut out songs and playing along records it was:


    Kiss - Alive & later Van Halens first album. Then I realized funk was so cool - and so that really changed everything.

    And later I re-fell in love with my guitar when going deeper in to flamenco like: Paco de Lucia, Al di Melo & McLaughlin - Friday night in San Fransisco. afro-latin towards house music mixed with all previous is still alot of fun :)

  • I started late to play guitar. In the years when men are in want of a young girl friend and buy a Harley, I desidet to buy a guitar and an amp. My wife was happy that I left the other nonsens...:) To play guitar in a rockband was a dream as I was much younger. Now the dream is true. I'm guitarist in a hobby rockband, covering our heroes from 60ies and 70ies and doing some own stuff. 1 or 2 gigs a year an every second week rehearsal.

  • I started late to play guitar. In the years when men are in want of a young girl friend and buy a Harley, I desidet to buy a guitar and an amp. My wife was happy that I left the other nonsens...:) To play guitar in a rockband was a dream as I was much younger. Now the dream is true. I'm guitarist in a hobby rockband, covering our heroes from 60ies and 70ies and doing some own stuff. 1 or 2 gigs a year an every second week rehearsal.

    It's never to late for rock'n'roll.:)

    Think for yourself, or others will think for you wihout thinking of you

    Henry David Thoreau

  • Maybe nobody will read this, but here is my story, and it is plenty personal and important for me.


    I was 14 years old, suffered from depression and my parents never knew how to deal with it, psychologist pushed for activities for me to get involved into, psychiatrist tried to administer drugs but my parents refused. They tried everything, from choir groups, karate lessons, basketball team (I am a tall guy for my country) theater group etc. I started to get annoyed about it all, on top feeling always down on depression.


    One day going out of school late by my own, I heard on the distance someone playing a violin, somehow it peaked my interest so I followed the sound and found a girl playing in a garden, she was younger than me and I was mezmerized how good she was. I asked her what she was playing and she told me she was just making up a melody (Which up to this day I can remember), I made small chat, and we became friends in a couple of days. She tried to teach me to play violin, but I have stupidly long fingers and it felt really unnatural to me. Feeling frustration about it, and not being able to play with her, somehow it poped in my mind to go home and tell my mother I wanted to play guitar or something (it was the only instrument that came to my mind), and right there I discovered my mother used to play guitar too and she had one old damaged nylon strings guitar in the closet since she was young.


    My depression faded, as in 2 weeks with my fingers hurting, I was already improvising chords with the violin girl. It all made click somehow. She is no more, but my way of remembering her is always bringing a guitar anywhere with me, as I am ever thankful to have found in the music something to keep on going, and what truly makes me happy. I have always been more in love with music than with guitar itself, but that was until my father took me to hear Carlos Santana, as he tought I might like it (he loves his older songs), and then, electric guitar overfueled my enthusiasm for playing, I started to look for references, and one simple saturday, a friend of mine brought a dvd with videos of rock and guitar players, and I heard a Manhattan performance from eric johnson, the one you most likely have seen in youtube, followed by the iconic Cliffs of dover performance, that moment right there made me a guitar player, not just an amateur musician.


    Guitar to me is a fuel, its a reminder of people who changed my life, reminds me to my friend which played violin for herself, my mother that never threw away his old guitar, my father that loves the feel and intensity of santana´s riffs (we are so different but we love some nice lating rock), and the excitement of performing beautiful melodies with the mastery of someone as tactful as Eric Johnson.


    Playing guitar means a lot to me, and if I would lose a hand or two, I would find a way to keep on playing, I am sure.

    The answer is 42

  • someone set earlier... the energy... nailed it for me. Pinching my dad's music tapes and listening on my Walkman in bed when I was a schoolboy. Dire straits. Def Leppard. Ac dc.

    Mid 80s. Then walked in my mates house and his brother had master of puppets on. And that was it . I couldnt believe what i was hearing. was 11 or 12 at the time. That went on for years. Got. my 1st guitar at 15.

    Dimebag was then on my radar. And that covered the next ten years.

    Then all the classic rock stuff. Then satriani.

  • I've read you learn guitar and then you learn how to take drugs. My situation was opposite.


    I had been sort of an adrenaline junkie my whole life. I would do dangerous things will little experience. That all caught up with me later and I suffered a bad injury. Then the drugs came. Not the recreational ones but the ones doctor's prescribe, and not the pain killers -that was the weird part. I had trouble sleeping through the pain so the doctor put me on a small dose of benzodiazepine. I was on that every night for over 7 years. Then the shit hit the fan.


    Medical reports began stating that patients on benzos taking pain medicines would die in their sleep at an alarming rate, so the doctor cut me off.. "cold turkey" -you can't do that because the withdrawal symptom can be just as deadly. When I woke up (physically and figuratively), I heard music rushing into my head. Not just music I've listened to but music that has never been written before.


    I bought a guitar many years ago when I first got married but never wanted to practice, so it became a closet prize. When the music hit me during my "wokeness", I grabbed the guitar out of the closet and have never put it down since (except to grab my others ones).


    I wake to music. I daydream to music. I go to sleep dreaming of music. I am music.


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Notice: If anyone copies or pastes this to the web after I become famous then I will deny everything! ;)

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • Iron Maiden Live after death


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  • I read this....humbling...

  • Wow. After so many inspirational stories, mine feels pretty lame.


    I've been a musician since birth. Like a lot of you, that's not a choice any more than the number of arms and legs I have. And it's certainly not always convenient.


    I tried violin in the 6th grade because I wanted to play music and the teacher said here, play this. Broke my right arm in a car accident later that year. I told my mother, "But mom, I can still play fourth finger pizzicato!" Naturally, she wasn't buying it. The next year I took up trumpet and played that throughout junior & high school.


    It's always felt like I have 100,000 volts of electricity running through me. Music is a way to let some of that out so I don't come apart at the seams. In high school, trumpet just wasn't doing it, although at least it was the 70s and there were horn bands like Chicago, Tower of Power and Chase to inspire me. After listening to the raw, kinetic energy of Zeppelin, Deep Purple and their contemporaries I bought a cheap acoustic guitar and worked my way up from there until I could play in rock bands. The moving air and gut thump of a rock band is a physical experience for me, and I've always been a very physical performer (which is why I end up with bruises on my arm). In normal life, I often tend to make the cattle nervous, so rock and roll lets me vent some of that energy in a context that welcomes it, and be just slightly more calm later on when dealing with my fellow humans.


    And of course, there's the social aspect. Nobody wants you to bring a trumpet to a party. The acoustic guitar also became a way for me to do emotional venting, as my songwriting is typically just personal stuff. Rock stuff, too, but it's easy to sit down and write or play an acoustic tune no matter where you are or who you're with.


    Then there's sex, drugs and rock and roll. I was a rock musician in the 70s and lived exactly the kind of life you think I lived. However, by the time I was 30 I was completely bored with the whole drugs thing, and one night stands with strangers had lost its appeal in favor of more substantial experiences. Nevertheless, to this day rock remains a safe way to keep the internal voltage from building up to unacceptable levels. In the past, without a release I've been prone to the occasionally volatile social moments. Music helps keep the wheels on the wagon.


    And it's cheaper than therapy.

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  • Then there's sex, drugs and rock and roll. I was a rock musician in the 70s and lived exactly the kind of life you think I lived. However, by the time I was 30 I was completely bored with the whole drugs thing, and one night stands with strangers had lost its appeal in favor of more substantial experiences. Nevertheless, to this day rock remains a safe way to keep the internal voltage from building up to unacceptable levels. In the past, without a release I've been prone to the occasionally volatile social moments. Music helps keep the wheels on the wagon.


    And it's cheaper than therapy.

    I had a time where drugs were so readily available to me, that it was overwhelming. I tried several and none made me feel anything overly desireable. Later I learnt that I have a kind of condition where my brain produces different substances so I dont feel pleasure the same other people does with things like say, cocaine or heroine, so I suppose it is more a blessing than anything (except this same thing has negative effects on my sex life, but I have already dealt with that).


    And about music being cheaper than therapy, I would not say cheaper (those guitars are expensive alright) but way less agressive and more effective in my case.

    The answer is 42