Members Freeman Keller Posted February 18, 2017 Members Share Posted February 18, 2017 I started playing around with the guitar in the '60's while I was in college. Not really sure why - I don't come from a musical background and I don't sing. That was the early days of rock and roll but I mostly listened to folkie stuff - protest songs, some blues. Dylan, Baez, Seeger, the Allmans, Butterfield, Cream, the Dead. Someone showed me three chords (and the truth) and I could strum along with a lot of the music of the day. C, F, and G or G, C and D - good old I, IV and V. With a capo I could play in any key, but since I don't play with others there wasn't much need to. Long about then I heard Ry Cooder and Bonnie Raitte and John Hurt and the Rev and RJ and learned about the 7th chord (didn't realize it was the flatted 7th until just recently). Started playing 8 and 12 bar blues, mostly in E and A but now with that added blue note. Started finger picking - discovered that I could play a recognizable song all by myself - the bass line, some rhythm and a nice little lead. Maybe not very good but at least you could tell is was Blackbird or Tears in Heaven or Anji or Deep River Blues. Then I discovered John Fahey and Leo Kottke and have been hopelessly lost and frustrated for the past 40 years. Got a slide. Learning new tunings and trying to play impossible songs, struggling with each one. The interesting thing is up until that point I really don't know that much about music. Its kind of ironic - I'm a scientist and engineer by training and music theory is just mathematics - but it was so easy to just learn some tab - maybe I was just lazy. A couple of year ago I built an electric guitar (and started hanging at this forum). Don't know why, I don't play in a band, don't like a lot of the loud stuff that passes for electric music. Don't want to shred, don't want to stand in my living room with my guitar hanging down around my knees. Bought a nice old vintage tube amp (which died so I build another one), didn't know anything about effects so I bought some sort of thing that would do it all (but it turns out pretty poorly). Didn't like most of the sounds the effect thing makes, frankly don't even care for the neck pickup that much. Since you can't play cowboy chords on an electric guitar I figured how to move my barred F and A and my C7 up the neck and I could still play blues in A. Got introduced to the "minor pentatonic scale" and learned all the patterns, but what I also discovered was that I was just playing riffs and licks, not real songs. The idea of putting on a cd of "jam tracks" and noodling along in the minor pentatonic really makes no sense - why play a solo that isn't recognizable as a song? Then this last fall I built an archtop guitar. Again, don't really know why - I had the wood and was bored. I had just built another guitar for a very good jazz player and I kind of liked the sound, so what the heck, I built myself a jazz box. Now what am I going to do with this critter? Start completely over, again. After 50 years actually learn the fretboard. Learn how and why chords are built and sound like they do. Learn that my beloved flatted 7th chords were really different from a major chord with a natural 7th, or 6th, or 9th... Learned that I can move any of those chords anywhere on the fretboard and not be afraid of playing in a key like B flat or F sharp. Actually learning to read music (again after playing clarinet in the 5th grade). Starting to once again play some songs that you might recognize - Stormy Monday, Satin Doll... So now every evening before dinner I go into the music room, plug my new little archtop into a clean channel in my little tube amp, switch to the neck pickup, pull up my music stand with a jazz chord book and practice ii, V , I progressions in keys that I didn't know existed with chords whose names I can't pronounce for a half hour or so. Then after dinner I take one of my acoustics in by the fire and finger pick some old blues the way I used to do. What a long strange road Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members u6crash Posted February 18, 2017 Members Share Posted February 18, 2017 Kudos to you. I go back and forth on deciding how much I want to commit to guitar. I started with lessons when I was 15 (and played trumpet for about ten years). Just learned tabs and stuff through college. About six years ago I hit a point where I decided to buckle down and took lessons from a pretty talented kid in Chicago. It was great, but I was working third shift and commuting 50 miles to work and got promoted and started working longer hours. Thankfully my cousin is a music teacher so I can pick her ear about it every now and then. I might get serious about it again someday and learn some more theory and practice on the regular, but now music (and guitar building) compete for my time with my other passion which is visual art. I wasn't a millionaire by 30 like I hoped, so I guess I'll use whatever time I have to work on those things that I love. It would be interesting if you wrote/recorded/documented somehow where you are now with music and revisit it in a year. A lot of illustrators will pick a subject, draw it, then draw that same thing the next year to see how far they have come. Hope your progress continues! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Les Paul Lover Posted February 19, 2017 Members Share Posted February 19, 2017 I've never taken any lesson, but got a few pointers given to me by professionals along the way. I still can't read music properly (I can decipher it, but it's painful), though I learned the pentatonic (minor/major, it's the same, I still don't understand why those scales are minor or major depending on the starting / root note. E minor pentatonic is / sounds exactly the same as G major pentatonic), major diatonic (again, why all the modes? Totally don't get it. I mean I understand different modes have different root notes, but for all intents and purposes, it's the same scale, with the same notes.)The harmonic minor scale is extremely rewarding too. But in essence, learning the interaction of the scales and their relative chords had been a fantastic guide throughout my musical meanderings. Though after a while, especially in jazz, learning which notes or off the scale and still sound good becomes pretty interesting too. You can stay stuck in the scale system and trying to break out of it is important too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members badpenguin Posted February 19, 2017 Members Share Posted February 19, 2017 Freeman, I feel you, and understand completely. My journey was a bit different then yours, and yet, is ending up in the same place. (go figure!) Always had a guitar floating around, and learned the basic "cowboy" chords by 17, then when my friend started a band and needed a bass player, picked up a bass, a late 60's Gibson EB3L if I remember correctly, and started learning. I got good quickly on it. The scales, forms, arpeggios, modes, all made sense to me on bass. Sight reading was a dismal failure, since no matter how hard I tried, it looked like a giraffe if I connected the dots. Still does to this day. I managed to get lucky, and was able to put food on the table with bass playing. And buy a car, and a house, and of course, doing the "rock star thing" lost most of it due to 1) drugs, 2) ego, 3) evil ex-wife.(not necessarily in that order.) After blowing out a tendon in my left hand one evening during a gig, decided that I wanted to go back to my first love, guitar. I wish I could say the transition was easy. That damn B string flummoxed me for years! But, after 15 years of trying, I am now able to do most of what appears in that lonely and quiet spot of my creative brain. And now, I am doing the exact same thing as you are, and starting back with the basics. AND, having fun doing so. Plug away my friend, and be thankful we don't have to deal with the blisters on the fingers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Emory Posted February 19, 2017 Members Share Posted February 19, 2017 Dang we have lots of points in common on the journey... no wonder I like your posts so much (haha). I can't build a guitar, no where to try even if I wanted to. I'm pleased as punch I at least learned skills to set up a guitar decently (how pleased is punch, btw?) Dang that jazz box is just plain lovely. That first photo of you I bet I could foist onto my best long time friends as me in my 20's and they wouldn't catch it. Nice to read about the personal side of you, though you do come shining through in more techy posts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted February 19, 2017 Members Share Posted February 19, 2017 after almost 25 years of playing guitar, i found out, that a regular practice routine, no matter how short it is, if it is regularly, can improve my playing significantly.... i could have started with it much earlier, instead wasting time on the computer playing solitaire or zapping the tv. i don't want to imagine where my abilities would be, if i had started earlier... after all this years of playing, there is still so much to learn and to practice, which keeps playing guitar still interesting, rewarding and fun i never had a guitar teacher, mostly everything is self taught by listening music, buying tabs and the internet oh and i do have some serious solititaire and/or tetris skills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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