Lethe
Or any instrument for that matter? Why did you choose to learn it? And why have you chosen to continue learning it.
I'm sure the reasons change over time.
And what do you aim to do with your instrument? Just strum to a few songs? write your own songs? to be the best? why do you play it?
For me I picked the guitar up due to my brother learning. I just used t play the random tune (smoke on the water etc) and and after half a year I left it. A couple of months later, I started getting really into classical music, so I got a book on that and started learning. From then on I took it seriously. A year after I got my electric and got heavily into Megadeth. That's where I learnt mostly how to play rock etc. I loved the aggression and speed of metal, so that's what made me really want to be able to play it. I'm completely self taught, so it's taken me a while to learn certain techniques and theory. But it's all been worth it. I'm nowhere as good as I want to be, but I'm trying. And I guess I'm somewhat happy with what I can do. My main reason for playing music is for expression and releasing... stuff. it doesn't matter much to me whether people like it or not or whether I have a crowd cheering. I'm very selfish with music. It just helps me. And it's a wonderful challenge every day to learn something new.
The reason I'm still currently learning is because I want to be able to express myself in more ways. To master (to the best of my abilities) this instrument and keep exploring the worlds of music.
my current motto, 'you don't have to be the best, just the best you can be'
pietersaayman
I saw Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.
I bought a guitar the next day
inflames
I was in st8 (grade10), and at a house party with Ben Holland (world champion bodyborder). Yes my other love is the ocean.
He picks up this old guitar and played some kief tunes (the chicks liked it) and so I got a guitar.
I only figured out later that the chicks digged Ben Holland and not the guitar playing ?
I was intoduced to metal in st5 (metallica, megadeth) and started playing some metallica tunes as soon as I got the guitar.
Now 12 years later I don't get as much time as i would like to play guitar, but still love it!
[deleted]
Music has always been in my family, so it was never a question whether I'd play or not. In a way that can be quite stifling(nothing puts me off more than my mom analysing my playing).
My influences were largely my parents' music(not quite Jimi Hendrix, but more Beatles and Bob Dylan), but I think the whole facination started with.......Thundercats. I know it's weird and I was very young (possibly not even 6), but the intro was so amazing and powerfull to me. And it was kind of a music video too, which was also my main facination growing up. I think that's when I realy started getting interested in drawing too. I can even remember drawing my own super horse while watching it.
So there you go, I can't pin point which music I could say influenced me. I just know that music, in my infantile mind somehow equates to superpowers.
Here's the intro...
Heath
everyone is my family is very artisit , i sadly couldn't draw , or paint or do anything like that , but i was always drawn towards music , and my dad played for as long as i could remember . when i was old enough and was earning my own money i bought my first guitar , mostly showing my parents up and see if there was anything there , having played the flute and keyboards for school orchestras (which i was fairly good at) . once i had my first guitar it was downhill from there , i get to play with spans of gadgets , repair and build all in one genre . so i found my artisit nack and can now keep up with the family . an more importantly i love it
Spyke
My reason is quite simple. I started developing my love for music rather late - std 4 or so. But as I developed I cottoned onto rock and more specifically punk rock. I realized it was the guitar riffs that mesmerized me.
This music spoke to me and moved me. I felt that there could only be one thing better than getting those chills down your spine, the goose flesh down your arms that makes your hairs stand on end from listening to a piece of music that inspired and empowered you, that made you feel invincible - and that was to recreate it myself. I had to learn how to recreate that music so that I could be responsible for that feeling. I had to learn how to play guitar.
Now still, some of my own pieces give me the chills, and some sessions with the 'band'. It's even been so intense that i go weak at the knees and can't carry on playing... some call it climax, I call it music.
DonovanB
OMG Viccy, I had the Thundercats duvet set and Bionoc 6 pj's. Wow.
My Dad used to play to himself all the time. He bought me a guitar at 6, i only really took it on at age 12 while I was bored in the house. I had friends who tried so I learned with them, then they stopped and others tried so I had a string of guys who kept me going.
My dad had all these records (I have them now) like George Benson, Stanley Clarke, Boston ( LOVE Boston!) heck so many. He used to listen to those often. I would hear them and be interested.
FatBoy
I've always had a love for music, more specifically singing. Problem was when I was a kid I played the recorder, harmonica, didgeridoo etc all "wind" instruments. I had to find something I could sing along too, so eventually the guitar became it.
Manfred-Klose
The same old st.6 scenario that inflames described.
Plus i saw a video of eddie van halen playing "eruption", so i went and learned it, eventually i figured out that guitar playing is not just solo's there is chords as well.
Keira-WitherKay
well playing acoustic nylon guitar exclusively itself is an interesting choice for me ......... as i studied double bass... and played piano but always played guitar 9electric and acoustic steel and nylon)and percussion as well ....
guess for me music is my art ........... and a way to express myself the instrument never mattered much
but for me it's a travelling thing ............. in my early years ...i tried travelling the world with a custom made "stick" double bass that actually was hinged by the luthier to fold double ...(after taking the strings off) but the flight case weighed a ton .... heheheh and never fitted into taxi's .... this instrument has now found a home in australia....
so when i decided to 100% pursue acoustic world music .... the guitar was the obvious choice..... even tho at the time i was professionally working as a multi instrumentalist either as a double bassist/an electric bassist /keyboard player / percussionist /electric guitarist/
cos acoustic guitar allows for solo performance and easy to travel with ........ and lets face it it is a versatile instrument in the right hands........
gabriella from the mexican acoustic duo Rodriygo y gabriella is quoted as saying when asked why they acoustic " acoustic equals freedom"
i buy that too.........
peace and light
keira
aubs1
Well, my mom used to play the accordion, my grandfather was a "one-man-band", guitar, harmonica (with that holder around his neck) and cymbals between his legs type of thing! My Uncle bought a guitar, never got passed Cmaj......I stole his guit after school and, the rest as they say.........is history!
But why did I pick up the guitar.........? "She loves you, yeah, yeah", "Little Red Rooster", and at the time, I firmly believed I could sing "Bachelor Boy" better than Cliff Richard!!!! hahahaha. And off course.......the King....Elvis swinging his guitar (Gibson I believe) round his back, grabbing that mic, and "those moves" in "All shook up, ah ha ha"........ ? ?
Was Elvis wearing a PINK jacket???
Lacuna-ZA
Since I can remember I've been singing or humming tunes. Not that I can sing or that I'm musical at all, I've just loved music for as long as I can remember.
I first started out on drums, because that's the instrument I've always felt drawn too. Had to put a stop to it as my parents moved around alot and one day they just couldn't move it again and sold it. I picked up a guitar few years later but gave that up very promptly. I wanted to be involved in music somehow so I then thought of doing sound engineering.
Again, that didn't realize because my parents didn't think it was a good career choice. So for years after that, I kinda forgot about my passion for music and settled into the routine of becoming a grown up. And last year I had a wake up call, that I wasn't doing anything for the love of doing it. So I set myself a goal to be involved with music and no matter what I would stick with it.
Guitar was the easy choice as I've already had little experience on it. Also, easier to practice without annoying the neighbors. But I would love any instrument really.
AlanRatcliffe
For me it was in boarding school (Athlone Boys in Bez Valley, JHB) in Standard 7. A friend played me the guitar solo from Kiss Alive II (don't laugh!) and that was it - I was going to be a guitarist. I did the obligatory pleading to the parental units for a guitar from and got one (nylon Yamaha) and got packed off to classical lessons. With two 15 minute classical lessons and with a repertoire of Finnegans Wake under my belt, I quit - It just wasn't the same thing as the music that got me interested.
The next year (Std. 8) a new guy (Thanks Dudley!) came to the hostel and he was one of those "hum it for me and I'll figure it out" guitarists (the bugger), so I hauled my Yammy out of storage and wheedled and whined until he taught me things like House of the Rising Sun, Apache and Venus. Never looked back from there - kind of threw myself into it, devouring every book I could get my hands on... and of course, started buying electric guitars and immediately taking them apart to figure out how they worked, building ever-larger "guitar" amplifiers (with Autona modules and/or Bailey/Lindsay Hood kits) and cobbling together home-made effects on the cheap.
It has to be said (and I don't think anyone else has mentioned this. You cowards!), but another prime motivating factor was Athlone Girls High down the road from Athlone Boys ?
I just love music and try learn as much as I can. No great shakes as a guitarist, but I tend to branch out into every related area, which makes me a decent generalist. As far as I am concerned, the important thing is having fun - and I'm succeeding in that.
DonovanB
Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
It has to be said (and I don't think anyone else has mentioned this. You cowards!), but another prime motivating factor was Athlone Girls High down the road from Athlone Boys ?
Thats why I played rugby.
Creaszy
My father used to play guitar back in the day, so his 6 and 12 string acoustics were always sitting in a corner begging to be played. When i was about 12 i had 2 friends that played and i geuss i just wanted to be cool too. Plus my heros Beavis and Butt-head said that guitars were chick magnets.
I've picked up a few things here and there from other people, but mostly i'm self-taught. Its quite strange that i'm far better than i ever dreamed of being when i started playing, but somehow i still have tons to learn, especially theory - i know almost none. I can remember the first song i wrote with a band, the whole song was 2 chords (Eb & E), the "solo" consisted of 8 notes. After years of progress and a ton of influence from Opeth, that 2 chord song was still our most popular. Guess less really is more.
Thanks for the Thundercats clip Viccy, i used to love that show.
Explorerlover
I was introduced to the Beatles at the tender age of 6, and Metallica at 14. Sound very cool, and then I saw James Hetfield jamming at some show with an Explorer...that was it...I had to be that man...
[deleted]
I had to learn how to recreate that music so that I could be responsible for that feeling
Well said.
chris77
In my std 7 year our school choir once sang at a festival/competion/show or something and one of the songs was Bohemian Rhapsody, which they did with a full band. I wasnt in the choir, but we could all hear them rehearsing after school and I was curiously attracted to this supposedly dweepish spectacle. On the day of the performance me and a few other blokes were "volunteered" to carry the heavy equipment to the bakkie and help offload and set up at the theatre. The guitarist was first to plug in and played something that just froze my mind and boiled my blood. Something just went click. I still dont know what he played or how long it lasted but I remember that it blew my mind at least twice as severely as my First Big Kiss that I had only a few days before. (Sad but true. Not all first kisses are magical I guess...) When I started working after school a big chunk of my first paycheck was used as deposit on an red Starfire strat with practie amp and I have not been without at least 1 guitar since.
TomCat
I've started my foray into guitars fairly late in life. Although I do not come from a musical family, My wife's family are all musicians and performers.
My wife recently wanted top move from piano to electric guitar and so at the beginning of this year went and got our first electric. I suddenly became her "unofficial roadie" as she is no "Technocrat" and so I started studying guitars in more depth so that I could support her better........
Anyway, the guitar big hit me bad so I bought my own guitar about two months ago and have had great fun since then.......
I also decided that as a sound engineer I needed to increase my musical knowledge and experience more so that I can engineer better.....
MikeM
I remember before I was even in primary school I had a mini guitar, must've been like a 12" scale or something jammed that thing like a rockstar (Well I'm sure it must've at least looked that way) and then a dumb neighbour kid broke it ☹ Years later, probably when I was 11 or so, I got a guitar for Christmas and yea - always been interested in music!
