What Were You Doing At Age 11?

[2bornot2bop]

I was still shooting marbles. Piano was my first love at 7 but never had the opportunity to play and we didn’t own one.

[jazznylon]

All I did was play video games and sleep.. never had the 'luxury' of starting to play an instrument at a very early age. Even if I did I highly doubt I would have had the mental capability to seriously pursue it as I was blissfully unaware of the world in general and was content with my own laziness

Good times...

[wintermoon]

You can tell some of the young guys from the old here, some were playing video games, others were shooting marbles

[ThatRhythmMan]

You can tell some of the young guys from the old here, some were playing video games, others were shooting marbles

But some of us are old “young guys”. The video games we played at age 11 were pretty primitive.


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[wintermoon]

But some of us are old “young guys”. The video games we played at age 11 were pretty primitive.


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We didn't have video games, and we had to walk uphill in the snow to school w newspapers on our feet instead of shoes.....both ways.

[sgosnell]

I don't recall ever playing marbles, but tops, yes. You spun your top into a circle with others, trying to knock other tops out. We cut big slices into the sides, to make knocking other tops out easier. We made bean shooters out of clothespins. I got caught with one in my desk, once. It was loaded, so hard to argue that it was just a clothespin. Video games didn't exist, nor did TV when I was that age. It existed, but the signal didn't get piped in that far from the stations. AM radio was available, and I listened to a lot of it, but not quite the same as video games. My kids didn't even have video games until they were past 11, they didn't become a thing until then. Pong was available earlier in a few bars, but not for home use. I have a very hard time believing that i'm as old as I am. I never even conceived the possibility that I could get this old until recently.

[jumpnblues]

Just beginning to learn how to play guitar. I was listening mostly to The Ventures. Also listened to Duane Eddy and Chet Atkins. I really liked the jazz masters too. My first guitar was purchased by my parents in 1961. It was a Sears Silvertone and the strings were almost an inch off the fretboard. It sounded pretty wonky too. The guitar was in a Christmas sale bundle with an organ amplifier that looked like a wooden stereo console. You could only turn it up to about a whisper. However, it did have vibrato. Within a year I traded for a Sears Silvertone guitar amp with a 1 x 12" speaker. And I had swapped guitars with a neighbor for a Gibson Les Paul Jr with a single P-90 pickup. The new amp and the Gibson sounded much, much, better. I had a whammy bar installed so the guitar would sound better for surf music. Thus started my 60+ year journey of playing guitar (and 5 string bluegrass banjo and mandolin). My latest journey is learning jazz guitar. But it is a much slower journey vs other musical challenges I've undertaken. I love it though.

[lawson-stone]

I was spending a long summer on my grandparents farm in North Georgia while may mom and dad destroyed their lives in a very ugly divorce. I'd played around with guitars most of my life (can't remember not doing it) but never really tried to learn how to play. To pass the time I bought a classical guitar and started learning to play "Classical Gas" while working through Frederick Noad's Playing the Guitar. I had the record of Mason Williams and some sheet music that I think was only partly accurate, but between the two I learned the song and it was the first thing I ever played for an audience. Noad got me through the basics and by summer's end I'd also gotten back home and started taking lessons from a brick mason who played nights at local bars and AmVet gigs and such. At 12 I played with him for a gig on St Simons Island, Georgia, which I count as my first real musical public performance. Had my parents had a happy marriage, I'm not really sure I'd have turned to the guitar to pass a long lonely summer cutting my grand-dad's pastures and feeding his animals.

[Doctor Jeff]

I was spending a long summer on my grandparents farm in North Georgia while may mom and dad destroyed their lives in a very ugly divorce. I'd played around with guitars most of my life (can't remember not doing it) but never really tried to learn how to play. To pass the time I bought a classical guitar and started learning to play "Classical Gas" while working through Frederick Noad's Playing the Guitar. I had the record of Mason Williams and some sheet music that I think was only partly accurate, but between the two I learned the song and it was the first thing I ever played for an audience. Noad got me through the basics and by summer's end I'd also gotten back home and started taking lessons from a brick mason who played nights at local bars and AmVet gigs and such. At 12 I played with him for a gig on St Simons Island, Georgia, which I count as my first real musical public performance. Had my parents had a happy marriage, I'm not really sure I'd have turned to the guitar to pass a long lonely summer cutting my grand-dad's pastures and feeding his animals.

I grew up in North Georgia. Where was your grandparents’ farm?

Classical Gas was one of the first songs I learned to play when studying fingerstyle guitar in college. I believe I learned it from a Mario Abril book (who taught in Chattanooga, btw, though I wasn’t lucky enough to take lessons from him). I also had a Noad book for classical guitar and learned most of the repertoire there.

[lawson-stone]

I grew up in North Georgia. Where was your grandparents’ farm?

Classical Gas was one of the first songs I learned to play when studying fingerstyle guitar in college. I believe I learned it from a Mario Abril book (who taught in Chattanooga, btw, though I wasn’t lucky enough to take lessons from him). I also had a Noad book for classical guitar and learned most of the repertoire there.

Madison County, Georgia on a road called "Crabapple Hollow Road" which branches off of (I lie not) "The Nowhere Road." My cousin was a lawyer and judge in the county.

[garybaldy]

I was spending a long summer on my grandparents farm in North Georgia while may mom and dad destroyed their lives in a very ugly divorce. I'd played around with guitars most of my life (can't remember not doing it) but never really tried to learn how to play. To pass the time I bought a classical guitar and started learning to play "Classical Gas" while working through Frederick Noad's Playing the Guitar. I had the record of Mason Williams and some sheet music that I think was only partly accurate, but between the two I learned the song and it was the first thing I ever played for an audience. Noad got me through the basics and by summer's end I'd also gotten back home and started taking lessons from a brick mason who played nights at local bars and AmVet gigs and such. At 12 I played with him for a gig on St Simons Island, Georgia, which I count as my first real musical public performance. Had my parents had a happy marriage, I'm not really sure I'd have turned to the guitar to pass a long lonely summer cutting my grand-dad's pastures and feeding his animals.

At 11 I was working through The Nick Lucas Plectrum Guitar Method with my teacher.
It was very much a 'Boom Ching Ching, Boom Ching Ching, Boom Ching Ching, Boom Boom Boom' book, but it taught me to recognised triads etc on the written stave.
Both my elder brother and I would have had a Futurama each by then. I knew a 12 bar in E and he would attempt to solo over it. Of course all the family loved it!
Didn't do my first gig until 2 years later (1969).

[Gilpy]

Age 11, I was taking piano lessons and playing trumpet in the school band. Never got very good on either instrument.

I finally started guitar at 17. Two years later I played my first gig and have never stopped.

[RobbieAG]

I had just started playing guitar at 11. I started playing clarinet at 8 but stopped when I started guitar. I wasn't very interested in guitar and didn't work at it until I hit 14 when I started playing with my friends. Then I became obsessed with it.

[2bornot2bop]

I don't recall ever playing marbles, but tops, yes. You spun your top into a circle with others, trying to knock other tops out. We cut big slices into the sides, to make knocking other tops out easier. We made bean shooters out of clothespins. I got caught with one in my desk, once. It was loaded, so hard to argue that it was just a clothespin. Video games didn't exist, nor did TV when I was that age. It existed, but the signal didn't get piped in that far from the stations. AM radio was available, and I listened to a lot of it, but not quite the same as video games. My kids didn't even have video games until they were past 11, they didn't become a thing until then. Pong was available earlier in a few bars, but not for home use. I have a very hard time believing that i'm as old as I am. I never even conceived the possibility that I could get this old until recently.

Perhaps Marbles was a California thing, because we had actual dirt, instead of only concrete.

[sgosnell]

We had no concrete. We just scratched a circle in the dirt and played tops there. It was a small country school, and there was little or no concrete there or in the county seat. The streets were, and still mostly are, brick or dirt there, a few macadam, and it was just two-lane road through the village where I went to school. I lived miles away on a farm.

[BFrench]

11 yrs old would have been 1962, born and raised on a farm in the Ms Delta, my dad was working me like a mule...

[RJVB]

We had no concrete. [...] The streets were, and still mostly are, brick or dirt there, a few macadam, and it was just two-lane road through the village where I went to school. I lived miles away on a farm.

Sounds idyllic!

[jim777]

Chasing girls and begging for a real guitar. Isaw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (was 2 years old) and started begging for guitars. Every time I got my Dad thisclose to getting me one, one of his work buddies would say something like, "I got my kid a guitar and after two weeks it was buried in the closet" and I had to start the begging cycle all over again. Finally got a used Strat hardtail with 4 added switches and an extra single coil when I was 13 when I had saved up half the $150 it cost at the White Plains, NY Sam Ash.

[sgosnell]

Idyllic? I think dirt-poor is a more accurate term.