Why do you play guitar?

Modern Saint said:
You are the first person that has said Narciso Yepes. Never heard anyone else mention about him but myself. Did you ever have an interest in his 10-string guitar?
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Yeah, of course.

At this point, though, I have more of an interest in something like Paul Galbraith's 'Brahms' guitar.
 
I'm into music. I like not just listening to music, but I also like making music. I also used to play brass instruments (from 6th grade till the end of my sophomore year of college), but I've always enjoyed playing guitar much more (especially after I seriously got into learning how to play it, when I was 15 back in early 1979). So, guitar it is.
 
USian Pie said:
People get mad if I sit on their couch and masturbate. They usually don't mind me sitting there playing guitar, though.
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Maybe a new stylist? Since I went "all clown makeup, all the time," I've been getting no pushback for couch wanking.
 
My dad was a career US Navy officer, starting off as an airman recruit in Elvis/Sun Records-era Memphis in the late '50's (for reasons I still don't understand, there was and/or is a "Naval Air Station" in Memphis, Tennessee, USA), which is where I was born in 1958.

By the time the early 70's rolled around, Dad had become a US Navy officer and was off on tours of duty off Viet Nam. While on his travels (and on previous travels during the 60's, when he did a couple tours of duty with the spy organization, the National Security Agency, where he went to Europe to eavesdrop on the Eastern Bloc), he picked up a variety of acoustic instruments. He was mainly a banjo player. But never a "natural." Learning instruments came difficult to him, and he had to work at it.

Dad's rule was, if any of his (5) kids could learn an instrument he brought back, he would give it to that child. I had a slight advantage being the oldest. Dad had a "Mel Bay" guitar book, so I took that and taught myself with a (very) little bit of help from him. In junior high school, my school actually offered a one-trimester guitar course. By the time I could take it, however, I already knew everything they taught.

But that was a good thing, for a couple different reasons.

First, since I already knew the course material, what the teacher did was round up everybody who could play even a little (only a few people), and send us out into the hall to jam. So I got to sit in the hall with some stoner dudes and learn stuff from them. Easy automatic "A."

Second, they would not let you re-take the course every single grading period. Instead, before you could take any instrument over again, you had to take a trimester of the other TWO instruments. So the first year I took guitar, and then recorder, and keyboards. I wasn't very good at the other ones, but it got me more well-rounded musically, and more motivated to take guitar again and get another easy A. After I took guitar a second time, I just took shop.

During high school I continued playing guitar, mainly acoustic. At some point my parents got me a small amp and a horrible Sears electric guitar. But the electric was so awful I mainly stuck to acoustic. There was an interdenominational religious group called Young Life at my high school. It was very low-key, just 2 or 3 dozen kids, and met at people's houses, not at church or anything. I was one of a couple kids who could play guitar, so we provided the musical accompaniment. No PA's or anything like that, just totally acoustic playing and singing. We did a lot of folk-song type stuff-- "Kum Bay Yah," "If I Had a Hammer," "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," even John Denver songs. It was great fun. Plus there were some really cute surfer chicks (my high school was 3 blocks from the beach) that attended. I didn't know it at the time, but by doing Young Life I was becoming at home with playing in front of others, albeit on a very intimate level. In my senior year, 1976, we all took a trip (from Florida) up to the mountains of North Carolina for a weeklong camp/retreat, and of course my trusty guitar went along. I still have a songbook from that era with lots of folk songs and simple religious songs.

During undergrad I put the guitar down for the most part, but started back in "party bands" in law school. Just playing covers for the most part, but a very eclectic mix including non-commercial punk music like the Ramones, Clash, 999, Devo, etc. Did that throughout the '80's, and it sort of morphed into being in originals bands, which I've been in almost continually since '89. Oftentimes in more than one at the same time. There's no money in it, of course, but it's fun. In the mid-90's the church I was at started having more modern music so I've been doing that too, although I recently threw in the towel at the place I have been playing, when a new pastor agreed to water down what we were doing into an acoustic-only service. Eventually I'll probably church gig again somewhere, but no huge hurry.
 
I bought a guitar when I was 14-15. I saved up all my money from minimum wage jobs and lawn mowing and got a cheap harmony strat at the Service Merchandise catalog store. I bought it because guitars were cool and I wanted to learn to be cool like a rock star. I practice and took lessons. I enjoy playing a lot, but I realized a long time ago that I lack the talent and time to ever really be great at guitar. I play for fun and to relax these days. I still love it as much as when I was a kid. It is a part of my life. I can't imagine NOT playing guitar. I play for myself now. I can't imagine being in a band or playing shows.
 
Gosh where do I begin? I started out years ago just listening to music. My pops died when I was about 10 - his influences were jazz: Brubeck, Getz/Gilberto and John Coltrane, that kind of thing.

I was apparently a baby prone to illness so my mother would put me on my baby blanket in front of the hifi (one of those big wooden affairs with a turntable inside, speakers, the whole works) and play all kinds of music: Segovia guitar, Classical music by Grieg, Debussy, Beethoven and Mozart, jazz by Dave Brubeck and pop by the Beatles, Elvis and the like.

As I got older, I started checking records out from the local public library. We had a upper midwest record distributing company right across the street and I found a 45 RPM of Santana's "black magic woman" in two pieces. I glued it together and listened to it at home for about a week and I was captivated by the lead guitar sound - sort of a keening singing cry - I finally bought the record after my parents got sick of hearing "GOT A" (CLACK) "BLACK MAGIC" (CLACK) "WOMAN...." and then went to the local public library to find records with what I considered "good guitar playing" or "weird music" (more on "weird music" later) on them.

I kind of hit the jackpot in terms of checking out records from the library when I checked out "Between Nothingness and Eternity" by Mahavishnu Orchestra which was a live record of that band practically exploding onstage. When I heard John McLaughlin I naively thought "I would like to play the guitar like that guy....I wonder if it is as easy as he makes it sound?" LOL! I think I picked up my moms acoustic guitar and using a pick and trying to do a Mahavishnu fast single note thing and while I had some speed I was so sloppy I immediately realized asking a 10 year old kid from the suburbs of Minneapolis to play some Mahavishnu runs was like asking a pet dog to build a spaceship to go to the moon.

I wanted a guitar pretty badly by this time (and by a guitar I mean the only obviously real guitar, an ELECTRIC guitar) but my dad had talked to two burned out veterans of the bar circuit who he asked "hey, my kid wants a guitar, what do you think he should get?" And these guys, shell shocked, dazed and pale faces said "Oh no, not guitar! Anything but guitar! Collecting coins, collecting stamps, raising tropical fish, anything but guitar! His fingers will hurt, he'll broke as hell and hungry all of the time. NO GUITAR!"

I had a strat-like instrument I had my eye on in the Sears catalog and was hoping to get it for Christmas. I instead received instead a plastic Sears redburst Emenee tiger guitar I believe it was. Not what I really wanted. Plastic, plastic fretboard and what I believe were nylon strings on one half and steel on the other if I recall right. I don't even know what happened to the thing but it was kind of dissappointing. But my desire for a REAL guitar did not end there. In retrospect it was just as well - that Sears thing was probably horrid.

In the meantime my mom had bought an electric organ (after my pops passed) and a classical guitar. She'd wanted a piano but the funds just weren't there. I'd noodle on both when she wasn't using them and I also had taken up drums in the school band but didn't really play with the school band so much as "I need a drum to mess with so maybe if I join up I can learn enough to use it for what I want to do with it and just pretend to be part of this horrid school band".

I didn't so much play recognizable tunes on the organ or guitar but kind of come up with finger shapes that would produce consonant pairings of notes - Some would be "sweet", some would be "sour", some would be "sad", some would be "happy" and some would be "angry". At the time I didn't realize I was teaching myself to play chords. I still play some of those chords today believe it or not. My mom could barely afford these instruments so lessons were out of the question so I'd check books out from the library and try to learn from them.

I had noticed that my mom would play these sort of free form rhapsodic chord progressions on the organ that sounded super dramatic that as a pre-teen I had no idea where they were coming from. I guess I later developed an affinity for pulling chord progressions out of thin air that I couldn't really explain where they came from as well. My mom had told me she used to go down to a local farm when she was in the orphanage and sing to the cows some of these "tunes" she made up. I wish I had recorded some of these but I was getting to be a surly pre-teen and was kind of like "oh god, not this emotional stuff again".

Music was my refuge from being a lonely bored only child in a one parent household. I had some friends but not many and endured a fair amount of bullying growing up. I finally got my sought after electric guitar when I was 15. An Austin Les Paul copy. I paid half and my mother paid the other half for $112.50 at Bloomington Music (now gone). I remember the in-store hi-fi was playing "Send in the Clowns" when the money changed hands. For some reason there was a palpable emotional resonance that happened at that moment. But, now that I had this I needed an amp. Oh boy. To be continued.
 
i became interested in playing guitar originally because i sucked at (and had no interest in) sports, have always loved music from an early age and wanted to fit in somewhere. i didn't start playing until my teens. it was me, my best friend and another friend at a middle school dance, banished to the shadows while the beautiful people danced, finding ourselves on the topic of starting a band. we were going to be the next Metallica. my best friend called "drums" and this other guy and i both said "guitar" at the same time. that was the beginning of a little competition between the two of us that would last through high school - ha!

my mom had a 3/4 size nylon classical already in the house and i took that to my first lesson. My teacher suggested i find something different to learn on, so my mom found a bright red Hondo stratocaster-type and a little peavey practice amp through a friend of hers for next to nothing (my mom was raising two of us on her own and we had very little money through most of my formative years). it was actually not a bad guitar. my teacher ended up buying it from me, modd'ing/refinishing it and gigging it around town for years. i still have the little classical. it's in the basement with a poorly repaired headstock break. i fondly remember sitting on my bed before school at my mom's house playing chords and staring out my bedroom window just listening to the sound and enjoying the feeling of the strings under the pressure of my fingers.

musical performance is my meditation and discipline, but also my way of communicating with others and meeting new people. i play because i love it, but also because it's such a part of me that to stop playing would be to turn away from myself. to risk being too dramatic - it's a "need" for me like food, shelter and oxygen.
 
Music has always been a big part of my life. When I was a kid, I was always at the record store (I could see it from my house). My dad played guitar and I thought it was the coolest thing that he could play the same stuff he listened to on records. As soon as I could hold his acoustic I tired to play, but never got serious until I started playing with some friends in high school. After my first gig, that was it, hooked for life.
 
Music has always been a part of my life, as well. Early on, I was drawn to rhythm, and the little 5 year old playing on cardboard oatmeal cannisters with my mom's wooden spoons (she could see my need, so she shared the wooden spoons with me). For Christmas that year, my parents bought me a toy snare drum, but being 5 years old, it didn't take me long to damage the head on it. My parents were not wealthy, and so that was the end of any musical instruments for me for quite a while.

In 4th grade, we had moved to California, and I wanted to be in the school band at the new school. My parents talked to the music director, and although I wanted to play drums, he said the drum section was full. If I wanted to play in the band, it would have to be on the clarinet. I never bonded with the clarinet, but I did try, and I was certainly learning to play my clarinet faster than a couple of other guys I knew that were playing a violin, and a trumpet. So there had to be something there.

We moved again when I was in 6th grade, and at the new school music lessons were group lesson given during the lunch hour. While other kids were playing, I was taking lessons. Then a problem developed. My music teacher would have everyone play the piece that we were given to practice, and every week he would should shout "Wrong! Play it again!" after I played the piece. I realized that I was playing it like the kid next to me, and he wasn't telling him it was wrong. I also realized that he never told me what it was that was wrong, he was just shouting at me. It took several months, but I eventually deciding that baseball would become my focus. Although I was a skinny kid, I always did well playing baseball, constantly surprising people with what I could do. After baseball, I moved to church league softball, and just loved playing every week . Things stayed that way until I was entered into my 40's, although I have been singing in school choruses and church choirs since I was in Junior High School.

That when the divorce came, and I was really blindsided. I was being drawn to ministry at that time, and due to a serious back problem that I had dealt with all my years as a chiropractor, my time as a chiropractor was drawing to a close. The bottom line is that I ended up going to seminary, and a friend of mine told me that if I was going to work with kids I need to learn to play guitar. Before I left for seminary, she gave me an Alvarez RD-8 acoustic, and I just loved the way she made it sound when she played it. In seminary, I learned enough chords (the basic cowboy chords) to play some of the praise music of the time. Going forward from there, I was pretty satisfied for about 7 years, but then I wanted to explore the electric guitar world. I got a cheap guitar/amp package at Walmart (couldn't afford much back then), and found out I really liked playing an electric, and I started branching out from the cowboy chords.

As I grew in ability, I wanted to work on better rhythmic playing, so I decided to pick up a drum practice pad, and a pair of sticks to work on rhythms (yeah, that tells you I had no real understanding of how to really learn to play the guitar. The practice pad and sticks reignited the rhythm desires that had been in me since I was 5, and I began learning to play the drums as well. I know play both the guitar and drums in church settings. I have played in 2 bands: one a group of pastors, where I play the drums and sing backing harmonies, and the other as part on the church praise band, where I play the guitar and sing backing harmonies. I also have learned to become comfortable with playing playing guitar and singing as a solo. I even took a poem that someone had written, and turned it into a song that I played before my church.

I can't ever imagine not playing music. It gives me comfort when I need it, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment.
 
I really appreciate the stories. It's not overly dramatic to say that without music, you'd wither away and die. I know I'd be dead if it weren't for punk / alt rock of the late 70's / early 80's. Music is a way of connecting with other people -- I can't imagine many things more meaningful than that. For music to be memorable, it must come from a place of feeling.

And thank you for reminding me I was overdue on a Mahavishnu listening jag. My cat's been building spaceships and flying to moon for years - maybe she can teach your dog some physics?
 
I grew up in a family of professional dancers. In 1950 when I was three my parents moved to Birmingham Alabama and opened an Arthur Murray dance studio. When I wasn't in school I spent most of my time in that studio watching them teach to the music of Glen Miller, Xavier Cugat and El Gran Combo etc. It seems that listening to all of that music day after day for hours on end switched on a juke box in my head that has never turned off. One day when no one was watching I slipped out of the studio onto the streets of downtown Birmingham and came across an old gentleman wearing dark glasses who was selling pencils and playing acoustic Blues. I was immediately hooked and sat there watching him play until my pissed of parents finally caught up with me.

I never could shake a leg like the old man so I took up the guitar instead.






 
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I play guitar for the same reasons I like getting blow jobs from pretty women. It's stimulating. Anymore thought than that and you're trying to convince yourself you need to play.
 
Because I've always loved music. And when it's right, playing guitar is where I find me- me at one with the Universe. It's where I find serenity, peace, happiness, and my centered point after clawing through all the hectic, meaningless, stressful bullshit of everyday life. Because if I didn't play I'd die.
 
Just always have (since age 8 and always will for as long as I possibly can...
When the day comes where I can't, its time....
It is who I am, not what I do... When gone, I'm gone....
 
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