-
Hi all!
Thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss and get people's thoughts on why they started playing as there could be a whole lot of reasons.
So, when you decided to play an instrument, what made you decide to pick up the guitar in general? What really drew you to it?
Why this instrument of all the instruments out there?
And after you started playing (if jazz wasn't the instigating force) what made you want to learn jazz over all the other genres out there?
-
04-20-2017 07:01 PM
-
For the money and women! Isn't that why anybody picks up the guitar?
In all seriousness, I didn't start until I was in my early 20's and I picked it up because all I could really do is sing, and I wanted to be able to play an instrument I could sing along with anytime, anywhere (plus, who really considers anyone who can just sing a real musician?). Shortly after I started taking lessons, I got sidetracked by courtship and marriage, then I got into bluegrass a year or so into marriage and picked up the 5-string banjo. My skills on banjo soon surpassed guitar, but I always wanted to get better at the guitar, and family and job always kinda took precedence.
Fast forward to now, I am 48 years-old and my kids for the most part are grown and gone. I'm still working full-throttle (tho I'd rather not be), but I found a good instructor and made a commitment to deepen my skills on guitar. My main focus is Western Swing, and my main influence is an obscure singing/guitar-playing cowboy by the name of Wily Jim (Pfeiffer). YouTube him, if you're curious. He is one of the most intense swing players I've ever heard...
My real motivation now, tho, is regret. Regret that I squandered my youth and didn't learn to play an instrument, or do anything really constructive before I was 20.
-
My father played guitar, and I wanted to do it too. He played jazz, and that's about all I ever listened to growing up. Jazz and western swing were what I heard, and what I liked. I never was able to like rock or much of anything else. I started listening to the Benny Goodman sextet on 78rpm records as far back as I can remember, and I remember asking what each instrument was as we listened. I thought that was great music then, and still do. My musical tastes have changed very little over the years.
-
The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and the Stones. Later, on the radio, Jao Gilberto and the Surfaris and the Ventures, and most of all, Jimi Hendrix playing Foxy Lady with the feedback and that E7#9.
After that, the Deluge....
-
I always felt I was a musician even long before I was. I couldn't figure out what instrument I wanted to play. I'd tried piano, drums and trumpet. It wasn't until I heard Jimi Hendrix play All Along The Watchtower that I decided.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
When I was 14, CD players were the hot new thing, and I wanted one for Christmas. I got one, along with a gift certificate to Musicland (Sam Goody) to buy a few CDs. On the new release rack at the front, there was Eric Clapton, 24 Nights. I had heard the name, but didn't really know who Clapton was. But it was a 2-disc set for a single disc price, and I needed to make the most of that gift certificate, so I bought it. The following Christmas I wanted a guitar.
-
It is hard to play lying on the floor.
-
Originally Posted by citizenk74
And then I heard Wes Montgomery.
It has always helped -both early on and now - that I can get around on it and still barely read music.
-
Really don't know. I played tuba in Jr Hi band, I hated the tuba, but dug playing music. Then a real short time with trumpet and I stopped playing anything for awhile. Then don't know why my parents rented me a nylon string guitar and I took some lessons and really took to it. I went to a church dance that had a band playing Surf and Rock tunes and I wanted to play electric guitar. The rest is my history of playing guitar and bass.
-
It was sort of like that for me. But when I heard Buddy Holly at 6 yrs old, I knew I wanted to play guitar... and when I heard Wes at 16, I had to play jazz. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
A friend of mine. His guitar was always hanging by the door. One day I couldn't resist, I had to pick it up!
-
Day Tripper, January 1966. The only guitar in the house was a horrid beast with a huge neck, high action, and railroad-tie frets. I spent a lot of time with that guitar learning folk and country blues before I realized how bad it really was. I've still got the Ovation Balladeer I replaced it with.
-
Wow guys. These are some really cool stories! Seems like the general consensus is you heard somebody you loved the sound of and had to try it for yourself.
Nobody gives us enough credit but it's amazing the impact us musicians have on people.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
A couple of things... 1) I was around 9 or 10 years old in 1967-68, my older sister, older brother and I where playing Beatles and Rolling Stones 45's on a plastic little suitcase record player; so the Beatles and Stones where part of it. 2) Carl Verheyen (the now famous guitarist, at least among guitar players) was in my older brothers class and was about 13 or 14 at the time and he had a rock band, played at our grade school fair. I thought that was pretty much the coolest thing I'd every seen. That is what got me interested and at 10 years old I started taking lessons from Carl Verheyen.
Last edited by fep; 04-21-2017 at 01:48 PM.
-
When I was about 11 years old (or there abouts), my brother came home from high school one day with a record in his hand. He grabbed me by the arm, dragged me into the living room, sat me down in front of the
"hi-fi", put on an LP and said "you have to listen to this". The LP was entitled "music to listen to Barney Kessel by". I was totally entranced!
-
I'll add a bit more to my story. Originally Posted by KirkP
Before taking up guitar I had a couple of years of piano lessons. One of my favorite books was Tchaikovsky's Album For the Young. It had a bunch of short tunes with lovely melodies accompanied by really nice harmony. I think this book had a strong influence on my approach to guitar. When most of my friends were strumming cowboy chords, I insisted on fingerpicking and would look for other ways of playing the chords for better harmony voicing. It was only decades later when I started to learn jazz standards that I began to understand the theory behind the harmony.
Here's the entire album, performed on piano. 24 pieces in 30 minutes.
Last edited by KirkP; 04-22-2017 at 11:28 AM.
-
I was bored at school and not really taking part in it. In the third year they had some electives for hours that they weren't teaching, and one of those was guitar. I tried the one my best friend was in - role playing games - but didn't think I fitted in, so I switched to guitar ... first time in years I was looking forward to going to school!
Of course, I'd grown up listening to classical and country and folk and rock,so I never saw the point of blocking myself off from anything I liked ... I listened to Jazz as well, and found I loved it.
-
I think I was attracted at an early age for the wrong reasons after being exposed to this type of children's television....
-
I guess I was about 7 or 8 years old when sometime in the mid 50s I saw Les Paul and Mary Ford on TV. A few years later I heard the Ventures' (Walk Don't Run) and Duane Eddy's (Rebel Rouser).
Instrumentals such as: The Virtues rendition of "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" (still one of the best jazzy/rock solos of all times); Jorgan Ingman's "Apache"; Lonny Mack's "Memphis" and; Joey Dee and the Starlighters "Peppermint Twist" (another great jazzy/rock solo).
Chuck Berry.
Started taking lessons in the early 60s (pre British Invasion) and came across an album by Tony Mottola called "Romantic Guitar". I then realized how great the guitar could sound. Listened over and over to Chet Atkins, Johnny Smith, Wes, Howard Roberts and a host of others.
Another important influence was that I grew up in an era when it was common to hear live music at local restaurants in New York City. Most times a solo guitarist.
Good thread. Thanks.
-
Three things: Chicks, chicks, chicks, and dough!
I played clarinet and oboe starting in third grade, but then rearranged my priorities. In sixth grade (age 11), I was listening to Hendrix, the Beatles, and Led Zep, and wanted to play electric guitar! My parents wisely said, "You need to learn to read music on guitar!" and gave me classical lessons for a year and a half, and then I bought my first Les Paul copy and Fender Champ, and got a "rock" teacher! I returned to classical later in high school, and have a degree in classical guitar. I came later to playing jazz, so am still "catching up" after all these years … or at least that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it!
Marc
-
I picked up the guitar again after 30 years because I enjoy music and had regrets of giving up certain things that I love to keep the lights on, pay other bills, etc. I work in the IT industry in higher education and wanted some more physical connection to creativity like guitar, drawing, and painting rather than digital pictures under glass or user interfaces. I still like these digital things, they just don't have the same feel. The feel of strings and the feel of sound or the feel of an actual pencil over real paper.
So I'm a month in and can barely get through the open G major scale and my technique is terrible, but I love it. Picked up the magazine Guitarist Aces and am following Tony Polecastro's acoustic tutorials online. Just mixing them up to see where I end up. Feel as though I'm heading towards the jazz-blues mix and cannot stop listening to Lonnie Johnson's The Complete Folkways Recordings.
Michael
-
I tell people it was for the girls, but I think it was probably more just loneliness as a young teenager. It was something that I could listen to and talk with. Albeit at that point in my life I was listening to and spewing my own garbage. It was mine though.
-
My older brother got a guitar. A Harmony for $25. He didn't stick with it so I got a chance. I did.
-
The moment I realized that if I arrived at a party with a guitar, that I'd never leave alone.
-
Well, there are long-term causes and proximal causes. The long term causes were the Beatles, the Stones, etc. The long term causes for playing jazz were- I think- Oscar Moore and the other guitarists with Nat Cole; my parents were big Nat Cole fans and I heard a lot of those records growing up. When instrument lessons became available at my grade school I wanted to play guitar; cello was as close as I could get. Didn't last long, my heart wasn't in it (and too bad, because cello! What a beautiful instrumental voice. I should have kept with it and added guitar later).
The proximal cause was a single event. It was hearing this guy:
On my 19th birthday, which was a long time ago now, several of my dorm-mates woke me up at midnight and dragged me out to the Midway Bar near Fountain City WI for my first legal drink. Howard Leudtke and Blue Max (the generic name for his various trios) were the band and we sat at a table 3 feet away from the stage. I came out on fire to play the guitar. Specifically I wanted an ES-347 like Howard's at the time, although I had no idea of what it was.
Howard's a regional legend. If you ever go to Dave's Guitar mecca in La Crosse, you'll see a wooden statue of Howard in the entryway. I jammed many a "blues night" in the 80s in La Crosse with Howard, the Sky Dog Blues Band, Dave Rogers Blues Band, Irene Keenan and the Wails, etc. Great times!
Funny, I've never gotten that ES-347 though.
Reply With Quote
Monk's Mood
Today, 04:25 PM in The Songs