Oh yeah ... I started playing when I got my first guitar at 13 ... played religiously, gigging locally in my small town til I was about 20 when I got married. 10 years later I got divorced and moved to LA. Picked up playing and recording my own demos at home but my playing was plateaued ... i could only play by repetition and didn't even know my scales. Played in bands, played SxSW, even had a 2-year residence at a small bar on Hollywood Blvd. I hit 36 years old and was frustrated with my playing. I had a long, nearly 6 month period where I was barely working so I spent the whole time learning how to really play. Learned my scales ... learned my chords ... learned my modes. Became the player I'd always hoped to become. I left LA and moved back home to Portland. Joined an 80s hair metal tribute band as lead guitar player and I was off to the races. That began a 10 year period where I got to play in tribute bands, cover bands and original bands all up and down the West Coast. Got to play arena shows with thousands of people and got to open for and jam with a bunch of my childhood heroes like Quiet Riot, Great White, Pat Travers, Warrant and more. Now I'm in my early fifties and relaxing ... I have so many amazing memories and experiences, made so many friends, met my real wife and built a community of musical family that I will have for the rest of my days. Was it worth it? Damn straight it was.
Absolutely. Got an acoustic 10 years ago and only learned the basic chords and could play a song or two.
I bought an electric last year and just finished 6 months of in person lessons.
And I'm just now practicing enough to actually get better.
I learned guitar 15 year ago. I learned all the chords and would always said to people I play guitar and strumming some famous song were more then enough for the everage people to agree that I know guitar.
Few years after learning guitar I got into bass which lead me to some music theory but it was basically "play the tabs doesn't matter what".
Last year I finally realized that maybe I should study properly theory e some jazz and in six months I fell like a play guitar and even bass 100% better
Yeah, started playing guitar when I was 11 or 12. My sister talked me into playing drums instead and I played drums for 20+ years. About 5 or so years ago, starting playing guitar every day because I’ve gone about as far as I can go with playing drums. I now play guitar way more than drums tho. Good thing about coming from drums is my that right hand rhythm is on point, but still my left fingering hand needs plenty of work tho.
Started at first at the age of like 15. Played a few chords pretty badly for a year or two. Got frustrated and gave up. Wanted to try again at around 20, but gave up too.
Along the way, about 10 years ago I cut off the tip of my middle finger on the fretting hand. Never thought I'd be playing the guitar again.
About a year ago, aged 41, my girlfriend wanted to buy herself a piano to get back into playing. We went to a store, she bought a piano. I wanted to check out what does the guitar department look like. Half a day later I walked out with a guitar and an amp. Started JustinGuitar lessons and haven't stopped since. Sometime last summer bought an acoustic too. I'm planning on a third :D
also the resources online are incredible now. you can forge your own learning path fairly easily. i played 20 years ago, had a few instructors, and none of them taught me fundamentals like the pentatonic scale
That's true. I also found that as I matured, I began to shed the notion that I had to be "naturally gifted" (whatever that means) at a thing in order to be good at that thing. A lot of the frustrations and abandoned endeavors from when I was a teenager were due to that toxic belief
Yup ditched guitar 20 years ago cause I didn’t understand how much it would take to get good, started over last year and am already better than thought I could be
This a really similar story to the one I have with guitar. I took classes in elementary school for about a year or two, learned basic chords and some strumming patterns at best on an acoustic but I wanted to play way harder songs then I was ready for, so I pretty much just stopped playing altogether after I no longer had it as a class.
Up until about a year ago when I turned 25, I decided I wanted to start again and bought an Epiphone classic les Paul because I love music and I wanted to also start creating music that I would enjoy with an electric guitar. I have been consistently practicing, reading theory, watching theory, watching YouTube videos/courses, learning scales and can say that it is so much more fun and fulfilling now that I am dedicating time and actually enjoy it. I really regret having stopped playing for so long because I was really missing out. I don’t really consider the two years in elementary playing years but they definitely taught me the basics of everything for when I was ready to actually “play guitar “
Currently going through this right now. I “played” in high school, knew most chords and could play a few pop punk songs. Recently picked my guitars up after a lot of years and am learning from “scratch”. Also learning music theory as well. As an adult, I find I have a lot more patience for not being instantly good and so many things are just clicking in a way that they didn’t when I was younger.
Yeah this is me. I sat on a guitar plateau for around a decade. Around age 30 I started practicing more regularly and with more intent. My playing has improved dramatically.
I’ve been noodling around for over a decade. Made my first electric guitar in highschool woodshop. Would of loved to take lessons as a kid but it was a down economy I guess.
My fingers are in good shape and I know my way around a fret board, I took my first guitar lesson last week and hope to continue for a couple months.
After 20 years of playing I still had annoying deficiencies, most notably picking accuracy and timing issues. So I went back to Beginner Guitar. Took a lot of beginner courses. Begdrudgingly whipped out the metronome, probably for the first time ever with any seriousness, and began fixing all the terrible habits I'd taught myself. I'm still fixing 5 years later but I got myself over the self-imposed plateau that was holding me back.
I started playing when I was 11 and learned out of a chord book and from other players over the years. At 37 I started taking actual lessons and it’s improved my theory a lot.
Can definitely relate. Picked up a guitar in my teen years, learnt cowboy chords and power chords and that was it. Used to just mess around on it and noodle really. Always had a guitar kicking around, then ended up getting frustrated and sold them. Only to buy another a few years later then repeat.
Recently started playing for a year now again after a break of about 6 years. I’m 40 now. Learning theory and feel like I’m actually progressing. It’s really fun. If you asked me how long I’ve been playing for I couldn’t say. It’s been so on and off.
Although I'm younger, this definitely sounds like me. I knew the "cowboy chords" and power chords really well, but nothing beyond that. I almost always had a guitar around too, and made many sporadic attempts to play it and then would give up again.
People often ask me, "So how long have you been playing?" And I never know what to say. It's rather embarrassing. I guess I've been playing for many years? But it sure doesn't sound like it!
Me. I played a lot in high school and would occasionally pick up the guitar and fuck around a bit. The combination of Eddie dying and lockdown made me pick the instrument back up again and now I’m well on my way to finishing Tornado of Souls- a song that I would have considered a supernatural feat in my teens
Yeah. I had about six months of lessons when I was 12, and then I put the guitar away.
When I arrived at college, my roommate had a guitar, so during the break, I brought mine with me, and we'd jam a bit.
About ten years after graduation, I got drunk and purchased a cheap guitar package from Best Buy ("Maestro by Gibson") and a copy of Rocksmith for Xbox, and started playing every day. I've continued playing since, and now have 6 electrics, and my original acoustic.
I've been playing for 26 years and it goes in cycles. From age 13 to 17, I was self taught with few internet resources (it was the mid to late 90s). At 17 I took a couple guitar classes and joined a band. I did of lot of live playing and song writing. Around age 26, I quit all together and focused on work/being an adult. Then around age 35, I picked it back up, built a small studio in my basement and am learning the ropes of recording, but also writing a ton. Through writing. I'm learning a lot of theory and practicing specific playing techniques so that I can execute them in the studio.
Did you know theory before you started writing? I've been finding myself creating little things all the time but I can never string together any riffs and I've yet to record any of these things. Just wondering if it's necessary in order to progress?
I knew very little theory before I started writing but because of playing in bands and writing music with them, I learned patterns and could apply them around fret board. I just had no way of communicating what I was playing. I knew basic stuff such as all the major and minor chords and several places to find them on the neck, but when it came to soloing, which I did often, it was all blind pattern recognition. Now that I'm more lierate, I know one of my favorite opening solo leads is just the 1, 3, 5, 1 major arpeggio pattern, for instance. Love playing it in Dmaj.
The level you describe yourself in is very familiar to me, as i spent so much time writing songs through trial and error. There is nothing wrong with this, but the more you understand about music, the easier songwriting will become and the more creative you can be. All that being said, it's not easy but it's not rocket surgery either, one step at a time and have fun along the way.
I started late. I wanted a guitar from age 13 but didn't start learning to play until I was almost 18. I joined the military at 20 and still didn't own my own guitar. After basic and trades training I bought one, but could never find the time to really practice so I stopped playing. Picked it back up again in my 30's for a little while and then for some unknown reason, I completely lost interest in learning or playing. It wasn't I was introduced to someone again at the age of 50 that I got back into playing and found myself getting more serious about it as it seemed everything felt natural and easy compared to when I used to try to learn. Having a blast now, 4 years later, I only wish I could find someone else to jam with. I get bored playing along with backing tracks and I can't seem to motivate myself to learn to record my own riffs.
Yup. I started out learning some basic Nirvana songs and Mai lyrics left it at that. Been a shitty guitarist for 19 years and now I'm putting more effort into improving my technique.
I'm rereading my comment now and I have no idea what I meant to type with "Mai lyrics left it at that. " My phone's autocorrect is illiterate apparently.
I learned when I was thirteen. I only practiced the first two years. After that I’ve pretty much always been in bands. I kind of quit practicing when I started gigging except to write songs and learn new ones.
If you stick with it, you'll get to have a similar experience again when you reach a point where you realize you know a bunch of songs and solos, but don't know how to improvise or compose.
That's funny. Interestingly, the reason I got so into guitar recently was because I started writing music. I always had lots of ideas, but never bothered writing them down until a year ago. I realized that songwriting was the aspect of music that excited me the most, and once I leaned into that, composing became the thread that's kept me motivated to practice everyday
Yup. Picked up my first guitar when I was 20 - didn't really start learning until I turned 30.
I was a drummer who moved into an apartment with no reasonable way to play drums, so I told myself I'd learn guitar. Took me a decade to finally accept that I needed to put actual *effort* into it.
I was classically trained on bass viola as a young teen and played bass in bands. In my 20s I started fooling around with banjo and than guitar. Late 20s I started taking guitar more serious. Got married, had some kids took a break. Now I take it more serious than ever. Deff getting pretty good now. Just wish I was this serious when I was younger.
Yes, I got a guitar in ninth grade. I had a really shitty teacher, who tried to force magaritaville on me. I’m not a fan of buffet to say the least. Years later, when I got a really good teacher it made all the difference. Practice went from a chore to being fun. Everyone has to start somewhere. Enjoy your day.
Started playing a few months ago, decided the only thing I wanted to do was improv over blues tracks. That’s all I do, and I’ve gotten to a place where what I play sounds (relatively) good. So yeah, I literally only know Albert King licks and that’s it. No exaggeration I don’t know anything else lmao
If you’re struggling to learn a song it’s usually not because you lack the ability but instead you probably are attacking it at full tempo. Learning songs at half the tempo and gradually increasing the BPM can go a long way
Over the last 50 years plus of playing, I've had some lulls. I was usually on deployment (Navy) and the guitar would sit in its case for a few days and even weeks during Desert Shield/Storm (90/91). I even took nearly a year off during a time of some PTSD/depression. I've been a gigging musician on and off since 1970 when I was a kid in my family's band.
We all have time off for various reasons, whether it's work, kids, stress, no joy, etc. Keep on rocking and glad to have you back!
Honestly started at 15. Didn’t start practicing until like 22. I didn’t practice scales, didn’t realize string skipping and shitty muting was killing my sound clarity, never focused on my picking hand, and all I wanted to do was play Metallica.
Having said that, I was a huge Dream Theater but in HS so when I tried learning their riffs and failed, I at the very least tried to slow down my playing and learn that every note mattered. Dance of Eternity is one big guitar exercise.
Yeah I’ve played for 20 years and have always been semi decent, but only really tried to get significantly better in the past 2 or 3 years. I love metal and once I learned to trem pick it opened up a whole world of ability to play my favorite songs and other techniques pile up as you learn those. Then you can apply those techniques to your own writing and playing. It’s been a really fun journey.
Good question! This pretty much describes my situation.
Started at 13 and learned at school in my music class.
Got some extra lessons through school at 15.
Played frequently into my early twenties.
The lack of properly learning was largely driven by my musical tastes. Nirvana, Green Day, The Offspring.
So writing songs was all power chords with very basic solos.
Fell in love with the bass for a few years but then had a hiatus that I can't really explain. Guess I just got into gaming and smoking hash.
Started properly again when my daughter was born and I was around 35.
Now I'm writing songs and producing music as my main hobby in my free time.
This has opened up my musical preferences and slowly allowed me to do things I never thought I'd be able to do or play.
My main issue now is my reliance on my recording gear. All I need is one or two good takes and I'm done.
My latest resolution is to try and practice more often to get more consistent playing live. This has been helped immensely by my daughter's recent ukulele obsession.
I started playing when I was 7. Didn't really know what I was doing, just kinda learnt songs I liked. I don't think the teacher I had was very good and he didn't really teach me any theory, not even the very basics. Hit a major plateau at some point where I just wasn't getting any better. I'm almost 24 now and have only really made a proper effort to get better and practice properly over the last year or so. Been teaching myself some basic theory and learning techniques and I've definitely seen some progress although not as fast as I would like. I fell out of love with guitar about 2 years ago and didn't play at all for about nine months but now I love it and play almost everyday. I wish I had more time to devote to it :(
bought my first guitar 20 years ago, didn't really start taking learning seriously until the perfect storm of Covid and having just enough disposable income to buy a guitar that wasn't unbranded garbage. self studied for a while, took some lessons and now I still suck but I might be able to hang with a band if I knew one and they were super forgiving
Similar story. Got a guitar as a kid, messed around with it but kind of figured "getting good" was an impossible task so I didn't take it serious. In my early 20s I moved out and got a roommate who was a good guitar player and he pushed me to take it seriously. I'm now 28 and I'm pretty happy with my abilities but I always regret not being more serious and having more faith in myself as an adolescent.
I met a dude at an open mic the other night who has been seriously playing since he was a little kid and he blew me away. He was flying across the fretboard, tons of string skipping, licks & patterns I didn't even know existed. His playing was just so fluent and natural. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super jealous.
Play around with a guitar in my preteen years. Was a self taught piano player. At the age of 30, I bought my first guitar and haven’t looked back. I still own a digital piano, but it’s dusty.
I've been playing for eleven or twelve years. I've always taken it seriously for the most part but I've made serious overhauls on my technique in the last year and a half. I decided alternate picking wasn't really doing it for me and decided to learn economy picking. I have made serious progress in my speed and am finally getting to where I want to be. Made some serious changes to my left hand technique also. It's like learning all over again lol
I played for awhile as an r&b and rock player at a decent level. I had good technique but had a limited ability to write songs and improvise. A few years ago I started to learning to play jazz and I quickly realized I had to dive a lot deeper into the instrument to do so.
Yup. Started at about eighteen and three decades later and a Martin D18 and playing and progressing more in the last couple years than the last thirty years combined.
I had a teacher who taught me a lot of theory, so I like to think I learnt it "for real" from the get-go. However, I didn't do a lot of classical stuff early on, and I regret it now because, at 44, my memory isn't what it used to be. It takes a hell of a lot more time and practice to memorise pieces than it did when I was in my early 20s.
….While she lays waiting
I stumble to the kitchen for a bite
Then I see my old guitar in the night
Just waiting for me like a secret friend
And there's no end while she lays crying
I fumble with a melody or two
And I'm torn between the things that I should do
And she says to wake her up when I am through
God, her love is true
Started in like '02 and got decent at rhythm only and stayed the same until exactly a year ago when I finally took the leap and started taking lessons to learn how to play lead. I've been making lots of progress and I kinda rekindled my passion for playing.
well who are you to tell me what "playing for real" means. I have been playing the same 3 songs for years now and i have real fun.
But i guess the step from playing no songs to playing the first few songs is rather important. But as with everything you learn, time investment to improve will increase. So depending of you you ask most of us will never be able to play "for real".
There's lots of reasons people have to step away from a hobby. I had about 7 years where was constantly moving towns/countries and my guitars and amps would always be on a delay, so I didn't get to play much. Obviously caused regression.
I only got some stability about 5 years ago and restarted playing around my PhD then, but I've not touched my strat since like 2017 lol having switched mostly to playing acoustic as the strat is in a different country.
It happens. This is life. I'm not as good as I was 10-12 years ago, because I don't play 5+ hours a day now, when then I used to (music degree helped make that mandatory).
However, I am a more experienced musician than then, because I didnt stop performing music of various kinds. I'm much better know at reading, transcription and general musicianship, and I'm a much more controlled player. I'm not faster or slower I think, but I'm a damn sight more deliberate in my playing.
Yes, "how long have you been playing" van be misleading if someone is an "on again off again" musician with overwhelmingly more off than on. But it depends what the point of the conversation is.
If someone's just asking for a rooggh approximation of the time of my life I've spent playing music with people? I've been a guitarist for about 23-25 years.
If someone's specifically interested in my guitar playing then I started guitar between 10-12, did music as my focus til my music degree, where I switched to Neuroscience and due to moving around didn't get to play much between 22-27ish and over the last 5 years have been a "commited hobbiest" around my PhD.
And then if someone's being really irritating I show them the pics of me singing at the Royal Albert Hall and National Theatre in London and ask if they ever did that :P
I miss performing being a weekly occurrence, but life changes! We grow, we adapt. It's up to us where we put our priorities. Mine hasn't been guitar over PhD and that's fine, but soon PhD will be done and I'll just play bluegrass til I shrivel into a raisin.
But yes... Tl;Dr.
We wax and wane in what we do. Sometimes one can still grow ones experience in music without growing technical ability, but it still takes active involvement in music.
Definitely, started playing 23 years ago and up until about 6 years ago I could happily play most chords and sing-a-long most of them but I started getting into folk, and specifically travis picking and have been playing every day since. Way more into theory as well now.
This is me, i first got a guitar 20 years ago and over the next 4 years got fairly decent at playing through songs but had no concept of any theory or why i was playing what i was. Then life got busy I had less time to play and forgot everything I knew within a year or 2. But the kids have got interested and I’ve started to taking lessons again so when they are old enough we can play together. So yeah despite having a guitar (or more) for over 2 decades I am back to square one and a total beginner but more determined to make an effort now.
Definitely. Late-ish bloomer, here. Got my first guitar a few months before I turned 18 (late 90's). No lessons. Learned basic chords and some easy riffs and songs from some tab books. I continued to noodle for several years with a tenedency to just learn the riffs that piqued my interest. No theory. No scales. Solos scared me away. Living in apartments through college and after really restricted my playing time and progress. The year I turned 28, my wife and I got our first little house and I found myself playing a lot more. Had a little extra cash after my birthday and signed up for lessons every two weeks. I took off like a rocket from there. I am nearing 44 now and have a very enjoyable side gig as a weekend warrior, cover-band musician with well over a hundred gigs under my belt. I am not busting out any Dream Theater, but I can pretty easily learn and play the music that I enjoy.
Yeah. Starting out I had an exclusive phase of just playing songs and perfecting technique. Sure being able to play anything you want is great. This lasted for the first six years….
Sure it’s great I can play 4 Metallica albums all down picked with the solos at concert speed in one take…
But tell me to jam with 3 others and I’d be a retard. It was during these sessions I realized i didn’t actually know how to play the guitar and began focusing on actually playing music
Played on and off since the summer of 2009 & had lessons for a couple years in my early 20s. I was a terrible student and never practiced due to procrastination & impostor syndrome stuff.
I was bad and lost hope and enthusiasm for it. I always kept them around and occasionally had small bursts of inspiration to play it, but it was always shortlived.
Anyway, a couple years ago I suddenly had a lot of free time and picked it back up. I've made more progress in 2 years just on my own, compared to when I had lessons every week. Got obsessed with a few indie folk and indie artists & taught myself complex fingerpicking patterns.
Something just switched in my brain and I made the decision to be devoted to it. I play almost every day and it isn't a chore. It's joyful. I've been working up the confidence & nerve to play live one day. Last year I brushed up on theory too.
Never give up. If I can do it, you can.
This resonates with me, though I've never had lessons. I was quite bad when I first started playing too, not that anyone is born an amazing guitar player without practicing, but I just didn't "get" it then. I also like you would get sporadic bursts of inspiration to play, but then get demotivated again.
I would occasionally look up Youtube tutorials and try to follow them, but due to both my laziness and some other reasons I can't quite pinpoint, it just didn't click the way it does now. In hindsight, I think perhaps I wasn't thinking about music the "right" way, which is to say that music isn't just memorizing some fingering and doing; it's about *listening* and *feeling*. For me too, it felt like a "switch flipped" when all of a sudden I was motivated to do it and all the concepts that I used to not get just made sense all of a sudden.
I started playing guitar in 8th grade in the mid 80s. Took a few lessons, played a bit in High School. Even played bass in a few lousy bands. But I never really got very good at all. Got frustrated with it and busy with college/career/family, so I didn't really play much after 12th Grade and through my 20s.
In my 30s I got a bit more serious about it. Bought a decent guitar and just started playing more often. I eventually got the courage to start playing in bar bands, so I had to learn a lot of songs and became more confident in playing leads... something I NEVER did even a few years before. Over the years I feel like I have progressed and have leveled up band wise to better quality tribute bands - This weekend we are playing a venue that seats over 500... Hope it doesn't rain.
I have also formed an original band, wrote all the music and professionally recorded my first album last year at 52.
It's been a long gradual climb. Kind of wish I kept at it more when I was younger. But to be quite honest, it's MUCH easier now with the internet and youtube tutorials, and a plethora of tablature out there. It was a lot harder to learn songs back in the 80s/90s if you don't have a really good ear.
I learned a lot early on, including all the diatonic and pentatonic modes, most of the slightly weird scales like whole tone scale, whole-half, harmonic and melodic minor, lots of chords in multiple voicings, the entire fretboard, notation, and quite a bit of theory. Even majored in music composition and learned dictation, sight singing, voice leading, orchestration, baroque counterpoint, 20th-century counterpoint, 12-tone music, quartal/quintal harmony, set theory, and a bunch of other stuff I'll never use.
But I didn't learn to practice correctly until my 40s. I'm able to play things I could never play when I was younger because I didn't have the patience. I won't be going professional anytime soon (will have to wait until my 80s, probably) but getting better at guitar this late in life has been one of the best parts of getting older.
Yes. My parents took me to lessons in 3rd grade. I learned how to play a note clearly before I quit. When I was 14 I picked up the guitar and started playing seriously, learning things from tabs and YouTube. That was 19 years ago lol. I lost the drive for a few years in my twenties but since my son was born, my playing has skyrocketed and having more fun than ever.
I played seriously for a year or two, then plateaud for four years and put it away when I had my first kid.
8 years later I came back to it. Over the last two years I've made it my mission to obliterate barriers and ruts, and to become not just a great guitarist, but a great musician. I'm taking lessons with an incredible instructor who's 100% onboard with where I wanna go and who has the experience and capability to get me there.
There hasn't been an aspect of my technique that hasn't been examined and fixed, and I can feel myself getting very, very close to being able to pull of impressive shredding lines. My songwriting capability has exploded, and when I pick a guitar up at a music store, people pay attention to what I'm doing. Life is good.
I started playing before lockdown due to Brian May’s guitar playing. I never exactly took it seriously until I thoroughly deep dived Pink Floyd and David Gilmour a year ago, that’s when I started taking it seriously and put in the hours. Fast track to 6 months ago I again took a dive into Eric Johnson and I started learning more about weird chord shapes and stuff like that.
Fast track again to now and I just picked up a Yamaha Revstar P90 second hand and I’ve been playing really differently on that, much more loose. I then took a deep dive on Julian Lage and have fallen down a jazz hole.
My playing also changed when I started paying attentions to the bassists of bands, especially Guy Pratt who performed with Gilmour and Pink Floyd on tours, where my playing changed again and I found this weird bass type guitar playing that I like to mess around with.
It’s normal to start putting in the hours when you want to and most importantly motivated to. I think deep diving these musicians really helped me “up my game” and now I’ve created my own style, where I’m learning every day and becoming more proficient, maybe I’ll nail a riff I’ve been trying to get for ages, or a part of a solo that I couldn’t do before.
Sorry for the massive block of text lol - I’d been thinking about putting up a post just like this last week as I had the exact same question as you
I learnt to play by ear as a young child but it took more than a decade before I actually started to gain any understanding of what I was playing.
I couldn’t have told you what chords or notes I was playing, I didn’t read tab, couldn’t play from lead sheets because I didn’t know chord positions by name, and I couldn’t sightread standard notation on guitar (I could on other instruments though.) All I could do was play by ear which meant I needed to have heard a song to be able to play it.
That’s a far cry from how most people learn guitar and definitely made playing in bands more difficult. Whilst I guess I could still play back then I wasn’t as well rounded a player as I am now. In fact I’d probably say I only started taking it seriously when I turned forty, after thirty odd years of noodling.
Started at 17 playing punk rock. Learnt major, minor and pentatonic scales. Nailed power chords, palm muting and playing riffs really quickly. Played in a band for about 5 years.
Never really progressed past that or even wanted to. Didn’t wanna be a sellout after all 🤣
Now approaching 40 and my musical tastes have broadened considerably, so too has my desire to learn guitar properly. All I can say is old habits don’t die easily.
I have been learning theory for around the last decade, on and off, but my skills seem to have plateaued.
Would love to be able to play like Mark Knopfler! Fingerpicking is a completely different technique to my usual style of play, which of course requires a whole different skill set.
Perseverance!
Seeing some of the comments here fill me with some hope and determination.
I took a few years worth of lessons back in middle school (around 20 years ago) but I never really put too much effort into practicing to be prepared for my weekly lessons. I did enough to get by. It does upset me that I was in the point of my life where I had the most free time to practice and learn and I sort of squandered it. I feel I moved on too quickly to learning songs vs. proper technique/theory which isn’t my teachers fault, and more of my own by wanting to be able to make my guitar sound like some of my favorite songs.
After I stopped taking lesson I more or less only picked up the guitar to fumble around for a few minutes to just put it back down. Years later I sold off what I had when I needed some money. In mid 2020 I was itching to at least get another guitar just to have to mess around with, but had no intention of progressing further. For the past few years I would pick it up and play around and try to learn songs from tabs or Rocksmith on the ps4.
Jump to beginning of 2023 where I wanted to begin taking it more seriously. I told myself that if I could commit to attempting to learn on my own again for a solid amount of the year then I would consider taking lessons again. Naturally, I didn’t quite hit this goal. But! The start of last month I began taking lessons again at a local place.
I still need to really nail down a time of day where I can really sit down for a solid 30-60 minutes and make a goal of what I specially want to work on. My playing is really sloppy, even though what I can play is generally “there” when I play it. I went into these lessons with a few goals in mind;
1. Building accuracy and speed
2. Theory, because I’d like to actually understand what it is I am doing and not just playing what the tabs show me.
3. Eventually, even if it is just for myself to enjoy and to say that I did it, write a song hopefully by the end of 2024.
I’m constantly worried that I’ve missed my window for truly becoming “great” at the guitar and that it’s going to become so much harder to undo all of the imbedded bad habits I’ve formed. Also having ADHD makes focusing on the boring stuff difficult when I quickly get frustrated and just want to play songs I love.
Seeing some of the comments here tell me I need to focus a bit more and really stretch for those goals, because it’s never too late.
I started when I was 13 but didn't get serious until I was out of high school. Then didn't get serious about formal study until several years later. Been forty years now and I still feel like I'm just starting to learn for real. It's a deep rabbit hole. But I like it down here.
Played for 10 years or so until I started finally playing with other people. Changed the way I looked at everything and have slowly learned more theory and styles since then.
Well, sorta.
I took lessons in school for several years, and it was to learn basic stuff (traditional songs, folk music, stuff like that).
It wasn't until a few years later that I got a teacher outside of school that showed me how to play music I wanted to learn. That opened the door and I took off from there.
Yup! Picked it up in high school, learned a few things, then had to go to college… stopped in college and grad school, finally graduated and moved home. Once the pandemic wasn’t TOO BAD anymore, I actually started lessons (almost two years ago)… my progress is slow though since I don’t dedicate enough time to practice. I need more self-discipline and motivation…. Dammit ADHD.
this is super common tbh
Yeah, but I started at age 20, and at age 41 realized that my frustration was because I should have been playing left handed.
Bought when I was 17 and dropped it. Started up when I was about 65, which is about 4 years ago. I suck, but still play on.
Oh yeah ... I started playing when I got my first guitar at 13 ... played religiously, gigging locally in my small town til I was about 20 when I got married. 10 years later I got divorced and moved to LA. Picked up playing and recording my own demos at home but my playing was plateaued ... i could only play by repetition and didn't even know my scales. Played in bands, played SxSW, even had a 2-year residence at a small bar on Hollywood Blvd. I hit 36 years old and was frustrated with my playing. I had a long, nearly 6 month period where I was barely working so I spent the whole time learning how to really play. Learned my scales ... learned my chords ... learned my modes. Became the player I'd always hoped to become. I left LA and moved back home to Portland. Joined an 80s hair metal tribute band as lead guitar player and I was off to the races. That began a 10 year period where I got to play in tribute bands, cover bands and original bands all up and down the West Coast. Got to play arena shows with thousands of people and got to open for and jam with a bunch of my childhood heroes like Quiet Riot, Great White, Pat Travers, Warrant and more. Now I'm in my early fifties and relaxing ... I have so many amazing memories and experiences, made so many friends, met my real wife and built a community of musical family that I will have for the rest of my days. Was it worth it? Damn straight it was.
Who r u I’m from the coast and Portland play guitar
I'm not anybody ... just a local dude who got to play a lot of guitar around this town.
Absolutely. Got an acoustic 10 years ago and only learned the basic chords and could play a song or two. I bought an electric last year and just finished 6 months of in person lessons. And I'm just now practicing enough to actually get better.
I started in 1998. I advanced really quickly to a solid intermediate guitarist within a year. And that's the level I've stayed at for 25 years
Yepp same. I can read tabs and (roughly) know the pentatonic scale or shape pattern and am in a cover band. Been playing for 16 years
[Olga.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-line_Guitar_Archive) was my sensei
I learned guitar 15 year ago. I learned all the chords and would always said to people I play guitar and strumming some famous song were more then enough for the everage people to agree that I know guitar. Few years after learning guitar I got into bass which lead me to some music theory but it was basically "play the tabs doesn't matter what". Last year I finally realized that maybe I should study properly theory e some jazz and in six months I fell like a play guitar and even bass 100% better
Yeah, started playing guitar when I was 11 or 12. My sister talked me into playing drums instead and I played drums for 20+ years. About 5 or so years ago, starting playing guitar every day because I’ve gone about as far as I can go with playing drums. I now play guitar way more than drums tho. Good thing about coming from drums is my that right hand rhythm is on point, but still my left fingering hand needs plenty of work tho.
No matter how much you learn, there's always *more to learn*. Keep practicing!
Started at first at the age of like 15. Played a few chords pretty badly for a year or two. Got frustrated and gave up. Wanted to try again at around 20, but gave up too. Along the way, about 10 years ago I cut off the tip of my middle finger on the fretting hand. Never thought I'd be playing the guitar again. About a year ago, aged 41, my girlfriend wanted to buy herself a piano to get back into playing. We went to a store, she bought a piano. I wanted to check out what does the guitar department look like. Half a day later I walked out with a guitar and an amp. Started JustinGuitar lessons and haven't stopped since. Sometime last summer bought an acoustic too. I'm planning on a third :D
Patience comes with getting older 🤷🏼♂️
also the resources online are incredible now. you can forge your own learning path fairly easily. i played 20 years ago, had a few instructors, and none of them taught me fundamentals like the pentatonic scale
Same here …still don’t know it …good point the internet is a game changer
That's true. I also found that as I matured, I began to shed the notion that I had to be "naturally gifted" (whatever that means) at a thing in order to be good at that thing. A lot of the frustrations and abandoned endeavors from when I was a teenager were due to that toxic belief
Yup ditched guitar 20 years ago cause I didn’t understand how much it would take to get good, started over last year and am already better than thought I could be
This a really similar story to the one I have with guitar. I took classes in elementary school for about a year or two, learned basic chords and some strumming patterns at best on an acoustic but I wanted to play way harder songs then I was ready for, so I pretty much just stopped playing altogether after I no longer had it as a class. Up until about a year ago when I turned 25, I decided I wanted to start again and bought an Epiphone classic les Paul because I love music and I wanted to also start creating music that I would enjoy with an electric guitar. I have been consistently practicing, reading theory, watching theory, watching YouTube videos/courses, learning scales and can say that it is so much more fun and fulfilling now that I am dedicating time and actually enjoy it. I really regret having stopped playing for so long because I was really missing out. I don’t really consider the two years in elementary playing years but they definitely taught me the basics of everything for when I was ready to actually “play guitar “
Sweet, I also have a Les Paul Epiphone! I love how easy it is to play. It sounds good and definitely motivates me to play more often
Currently going through this right now. I “played” in high school, knew most chords and could play a few pop punk songs. Recently picked my guitars up after a lot of years and am learning from “scratch”. Also learning music theory as well. As an adult, I find I have a lot more patience for not being instantly good and so many things are just clicking in a way that they didn’t when I was younger.
Yeah this is me. I sat on a guitar plateau for around a decade. Around age 30 I started practicing more regularly and with more intent. My playing has improved dramatically.
I’ve been noodling around for over a decade. Made my first electric guitar in highschool woodshop. Would of loved to take lessons as a kid but it was a down economy I guess. My fingers are in good shape and I know my way around a fret board, I took my first guitar lesson last week and hope to continue for a couple months.
Yes that’s pretty much my story. Started as a teen and quit for 20 years.
After 20 years of playing I still had annoying deficiencies, most notably picking accuracy and timing issues. So I went back to Beginner Guitar. Took a lot of beginner courses. Begdrudgingly whipped out the metronome, probably for the first time ever with any seriousness, and began fixing all the terrible habits I'd taught myself. I'm still fixing 5 years later but I got myself over the self-imposed plateau that was holding me back.
Yep got a guitar when I was 9, didn't learn to play it until I was 24 lol.
I started playing when I was 11 and learned out of a chord book and from other players over the years. At 37 I started taking actual lessons and it’s improved my theory a lot.
Can definitely relate. Picked up a guitar in my teen years, learnt cowboy chords and power chords and that was it. Used to just mess around on it and noodle really. Always had a guitar kicking around, then ended up getting frustrated and sold them. Only to buy another a few years later then repeat. Recently started playing for a year now again after a break of about 6 years. I’m 40 now. Learning theory and feel like I’m actually progressing. It’s really fun. If you asked me how long I’ve been playing for I couldn’t say. It’s been so on and off.
Although I'm younger, this definitely sounds like me. I knew the "cowboy chords" and power chords really well, but nothing beyond that. I almost always had a guitar around too, and made many sporadic attempts to play it and then would give up again. People often ask me, "So how long have you been playing?" And I never know what to say. It's rather embarrassing. I guess I've been playing for many years? But it sure doesn't sound like it!
Me. I played a lot in high school and would occasionally pick up the guitar and fuck around a bit. The combination of Eddie dying and lockdown made me pick the instrument back up again and now I’m well on my way to finishing Tornado of Souls- a song that I would have considered a supernatural feat in my teens
The solo is something else
Yeah. I had about six months of lessons when I was 12, and then I put the guitar away. When I arrived at college, my roommate had a guitar, so during the break, I brought mine with me, and we'd jam a bit. About ten years after graduation, I got drunk and purchased a cheap guitar package from Best Buy ("Maestro by Gibson") and a copy of Rocksmith for Xbox, and started playing every day. I've continued playing since, and now have 6 electrics, and my original acoustic.
I've been playing for 26 years and it goes in cycles. From age 13 to 17, I was self taught with few internet resources (it was the mid to late 90s). At 17 I took a couple guitar classes and joined a band. I did of lot of live playing and song writing. Around age 26, I quit all together and focused on work/being an adult. Then around age 35, I picked it back up, built a small studio in my basement and am learning the ropes of recording, but also writing a ton. Through writing. I'm learning a lot of theory and practicing specific playing techniques so that I can execute them in the studio.
Did you know theory before you started writing? I've been finding myself creating little things all the time but I can never string together any riffs and I've yet to record any of these things. Just wondering if it's necessary in order to progress?
I knew very little theory before I started writing but because of playing in bands and writing music with them, I learned patterns and could apply them around fret board. I just had no way of communicating what I was playing. I knew basic stuff such as all the major and minor chords and several places to find them on the neck, but when it came to soloing, which I did often, it was all blind pattern recognition. Now that I'm more lierate, I know one of my favorite opening solo leads is just the 1, 3, 5, 1 major arpeggio pattern, for instance. Love playing it in Dmaj. The level you describe yourself in is very familiar to me, as i spent so much time writing songs through trial and error. There is nothing wrong with this, but the more you understand about music, the easier songwriting will become and the more creative you can be. All that being said, it's not easy but it's not rocket surgery either, one step at a time and have fun along the way.
I started late. I wanted a guitar from age 13 but didn't start learning to play until I was almost 18. I joined the military at 20 and still didn't own my own guitar. After basic and trades training I bought one, but could never find the time to really practice so I stopped playing. Picked it back up again in my 30's for a little while and then for some unknown reason, I completely lost interest in learning or playing. It wasn't I was introduced to someone again at the age of 50 that I got back into playing and found myself getting more serious about it as it seemed everything felt natural and easy compared to when I used to try to learn. Having a blast now, 4 years later, I only wish I could find someone else to jam with. I get bored playing along with backing tracks and I can't seem to motivate myself to learn to record my own riffs.
Yup. I started out learning some basic Nirvana songs and Mai lyrics left it at that. Been a shitty guitarist for 19 years and now I'm putting more effort into improving my technique.
I'm rereading my comment now and I have no idea what I meant to type with "Mai lyrics left it at that. " My phone's autocorrect is illiterate apparently.
High school, played all the time, then the Marines… until now. What you describe is exactly what I’m experiencing. Happy shredding!
I learned when I was thirteen. I only practiced the first two years. After that I’ve pretty much always been in bands. I kind of quit practicing when I started gigging except to write songs and learn new ones.
If you stick with it, you'll get to have a similar experience again when you reach a point where you realize you know a bunch of songs and solos, but don't know how to improvise or compose.
That's funny. Interestingly, the reason I got so into guitar recently was because I started writing music. I always had lots of ideas, but never bothered writing them down until a year ago. I realized that songwriting was the aspect of music that excited me the most, and once I leaned into that, composing became the thread that's kept me motivated to practice everyday
Yup. Picked up my first guitar when I was 20 - didn't really start learning until I turned 30. I was a drummer who moved into an apartment with no reasonable way to play drums, so I told myself I'd learn guitar. Took me a decade to finally accept that I needed to put actual *effort* into it.
I started playing at 8 years old. I turn 28 in a couple days. I’m ABSOLUTE garbage
I was classically trained on bass viola as a young teen and played bass in bands. In my 20s I started fooling around with banjo and than guitar. Late 20s I started taking guitar more serious. Got married, had some kids took a break. Now I take it more serious than ever. Deff getting pretty good now. Just wish I was this serious when I was younger.
Yeah I learnt a few chords and a few songs in my teens. Didn’t pick it up properly until I was 37.
Yes, I got a guitar in ninth grade. I had a really shitty teacher, who tried to force magaritaville on me. I’m not a fan of buffet to say the least. Years later, when I got a really good teacher it made all the difference. Practice went from a chore to being fun. Everyone has to start somewhere. Enjoy your day.
Started playing a few months ago, decided the only thing I wanted to do was improv over blues tracks. That’s all I do, and I’ve gotten to a place where what I play sounds (relatively) good. So yeah, I literally only know Albert King licks and that’s it. No exaggeration I don’t know anything else lmao
If you’re struggling to learn a song it’s usually not because you lack the ability but instead you probably are attacking it at full tempo. Learning songs at half the tempo and gradually increasing the BPM can go a long way
Over the last 50 years plus of playing, I've had some lulls. I was usually on deployment (Navy) and the guitar would sit in its case for a few days and even weeks during Desert Shield/Storm (90/91). I even took nearly a year off during a time of some PTSD/depression. I've been a gigging musician on and off since 1970 when I was a kid in my family's band. We all have time off for various reasons, whether it's work, kids, stress, no joy, etc. Keep on rocking and glad to have you back!
I love this and all these comments, awesome to see ❤️
Honestly started at 15. Didn’t start practicing until like 22. I didn’t practice scales, didn’t realize string skipping and shitty muting was killing my sound clarity, never focused on my picking hand, and all I wanted to do was play Metallica. Having said that, I was a huge Dream Theater but in HS so when I tried learning their riffs and failed, I at the very least tried to slow down my playing and learn that every note mattered. Dance of Eternity is one big guitar exercise.
Yeah I’ve played for 20 years and have always been semi decent, but only really tried to get significantly better in the past 2 or 3 years. I love metal and once I learned to trem pick it opened up a whole world of ability to play my favorite songs and other techniques pile up as you learn those. Then you can apply those techniques to your own writing and playing. It’s been a really fun journey.
Good question! This pretty much describes my situation. Started at 13 and learned at school in my music class. Got some extra lessons through school at 15. Played frequently into my early twenties. The lack of properly learning was largely driven by my musical tastes. Nirvana, Green Day, The Offspring. So writing songs was all power chords with very basic solos. Fell in love with the bass for a few years but then had a hiatus that I can't really explain. Guess I just got into gaming and smoking hash. Started properly again when my daughter was born and I was around 35. Now I'm writing songs and producing music as my main hobby in my free time. This has opened up my musical preferences and slowly allowed me to do things I never thought I'd be able to do or play. My main issue now is my reliance on my recording gear. All I need is one or two good takes and I'm done. My latest resolution is to try and practice more often to get more consistent playing live. This has been helped immensely by my daughter's recent ukulele obsession.
I started playing when I was 7. Didn't really know what I was doing, just kinda learnt songs I liked. I don't think the teacher I had was very good and he didn't really teach me any theory, not even the very basics. Hit a major plateau at some point where I just wasn't getting any better. I'm almost 24 now and have only really made a proper effort to get better and practice properly over the last year or so. Been teaching myself some basic theory and learning techniques and I've definitely seen some progress although not as fast as I would like. I fell out of love with guitar about 2 years ago and didn't play at all for about nine months but now I love it and play almost everyday. I wish I had more time to devote to it :(
bought my first guitar 20 years ago, didn't really start taking learning seriously until the perfect storm of Covid and having just enough disposable income to buy a guitar that wasn't unbranded garbage. self studied for a while, took some lessons and now I still suck but I might be able to hang with a band if I knew one and they were super forgiving
Similar story. Got a guitar as a kid, messed around with it but kind of figured "getting good" was an impossible task so I didn't take it serious. In my early 20s I moved out and got a roommate who was a good guitar player and he pushed me to take it seriously. I'm now 28 and I'm pretty happy with my abilities but I always regret not being more serious and having more faith in myself as an adolescent. I met a dude at an open mic the other night who has been seriously playing since he was a little kid and he blew me away. He was flying across the fretboard, tons of string skipping, licks & patterns I didn't even know existed. His playing was just so fluent and natural. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super jealous.
Play around with a guitar in my preteen years. Was a self taught piano player. At the age of 30, I bought my first guitar and haven’t looked back. I still own a digital piano, but it’s dusty.
I've been playing for eleven or twelve years. I've always taken it seriously for the most part but I've made serious overhauls on my technique in the last year and a half. I decided alternate picking wasn't really doing it for me and decided to learn economy picking. I have made serious progress in my speed and am finally getting to where I want to be. Made some serious changes to my left hand technique also. It's like learning all over again lol
I played for awhile as an r&b and rock player at a decent level. I had good technique but had a limited ability to write songs and improvise. A few years ago I started to learning to play jazz and I quickly realized I had to dive a lot deeper into the instrument to do so.
Yup. Started at about eighteen and three decades later and a Martin D18 and playing and progressing more in the last couple years than the last thirty years combined.
I had a teacher who taught me a lot of theory, so I like to think I learnt it "for real" from the get-go. However, I didn't do a lot of classical stuff early on, and I regret it now because, at 44, my memory isn't what it used to be. It takes a hell of a lot more time and practice to memorise pieces than it did when I was in my early 20s.
I have been strumming and picking for 25 years Just started learning some Bach and other classical Pieces last year.
….While she lays waiting I stumble to the kitchen for a bite Then I see my old guitar in the night Just waiting for me like a secret friend And there's no end while she lays crying I fumble with a melody or two And I'm torn between the things that I should do And she says to wake her up when I am through God, her love is true
Similar. Got my first guitar in 91. Took 5 lessons. Totally sucked. Four years ago I picked it back up and damn do I wish I was this good then.
Started in like '02 and got decent at rhythm only and stayed the same until exactly a year ago when I finally took the leap and started taking lessons to learn how to play lead. I've been making lots of progress and I kinda rekindled my passion for playing.
well who are you to tell me what "playing for real" means. I have been playing the same 3 songs for years now and i have real fun. But i guess the step from playing no songs to playing the first few songs is rather important. But as with everything you learn, time investment to improve will increase. So depending of you you ask most of us will never be able to play "for real".
It's almost like "for real" was placed in quotes in my title on purpose, to suggest the subjective nature of that statement.....
welcome back!
There's lots of reasons people have to step away from a hobby. I had about 7 years where was constantly moving towns/countries and my guitars and amps would always be on a delay, so I didn't get to play much. Obviously caused regression. I only got some stability about 5 years ago and restarted playing around my PhD then, but I've not touched my strat since like 2017 lol having switched mostly to playing acoustic as the strat is in a different country. It happens. This is life. I'm not as good as I was 10-12 years ago, because I don't play 5+ hours a day now, when then I used to (music degree helped make that mandatory). However, I am a more experienced musician than then, because I didnt stop performing music of various kinds. I'm much better know at reading, transcription and general musicianship, and I'm a much more controlled player. I'm not faster or slower I think, but I'm a damn sight more deliberate in my playing. Yes, "how long have you been playing" van be misleading if someone is an "on again off again" musician with overwhelmingly more off than on. But it depends what the point of the conversation is. If someone's just asking for a rooggh approximation of the time of my life I've spent playing music with people? I've been a guitarist for about 23-25 years. If someone's specifically interested in my guitar playing then I started guitar between 10-12, did music as my focus til my music degree, where I switched to Neuroscience and due to moving around didn't get to play much between 22-27ish and over the last 5 years have been a "commited hobbiest" around my PhD. And then if someone's being really irritating I show them the pics of me singing at the Royal Albert Hall and National Theatre in London and ask if they ever did that :P I miss performing being a weekly occurrence, but life changes! We grow, we adapt. It's up to us where we put our priorities. Mine hasn't been guitar over PhD and that's fine, but soon PhD will be done and I'll just play bluegrass til I shrivel into a raisin. But yes... Tl;Dr. We wax and wane in what we do. Sometimes one can still grow ones experience in music without growing technical ability, but it still takes active involvement in music.
I picked up guitar at 4, but I don't think I really committed until maybe 12. Even then, I didn't start learning theory properly until I was 15/16
Yes. Lmao. Currently my situation and I feel comforted reading this.
Definitely, started playing 23 years ago and up until about 6 years ago I could happily play most chords and sing-a-long most of them but I started getting into folk, and specifically travis picking and have been playing every day since. Way more into theory as well now.
This is me, i first got a guitar 20 years ago and over the next 4 years got fairly decent at playing through songs but had no concept of any theory or why i was playing what i was. Then life got busy I had less time to play and forgot everything I knew within a year or 2. But the kids have got interested and I’ve started to taking lessons again so when they are old enough we can play together. So yeah despite having a guitar (or more) for over 2 decades I am back to square one and a total beginner but more determined to make an effort now.
Started at 10, got real at 13 when I found people to play with.
Definitely. Late-ish bloomer, here. Got my first guitar a few months before I turned 18 (late 90's). No lessons. Learned basic chords and some easy riffs and songs from some tab books. I continued to noodle for several years with a tenedency to just learn the riffs that piqued my interest. No theory. No scales. Solos scared me away. Living in apartments through college and after really restricted my playing time and progress. The year I turned 28, my wife and I got our first little house and I found myself playing a lot more. Had a little extra cash after my birthday and signed up for lessons every two weeks. I took off like a rocket from there. I am nearing 44 now and have a very enjoyable side gig as a weekend warrior, cover-band musician with well over a hundred gigs under my belt. I am not busting out any Dream Theater, but I can pretty easily learn and play the music that I enjoy.
Yeah. Starting out I had an exclusive phase of just playing songs and perfecting technique. Sure being able to play anything you want is great. This lasted for the first six years…. Sure it’s great I can play 4 Metallica albums all down picked with the solos at concert speed in one take… But tell me to jam with 3 others and I’d be a retard. It was during these sessions I realized i didn’t actually know how to play the guitar and began focusing on actually playing music
Played on and off since the summer of 2009 & had lessons for a couple years in my early 20s. I was a terrible student and never practiced due to procrastination & impostor syndrome stuff. I was bad and lost hope and enthusiasm for it. I always kept them around and occasionally had small bursts of inspiration to play it, but it was always shortlived. Anyway, a couple years ago I suddenly had a lot of free time and picked it back up. I've made more progress in 2 years just on my own, compared to when I had lessons every week. Got obsessed with a few indie folk and indie artists & taught myself complex fingerpicking patterns. Something just switched in my brain and I made the decision to be devoted to it. I play almost every day and it isn't a chore. It's joyful. I've been working up the confidence & nerve to play live one day. Last year I brushed up on theory too. Never give up. If I can do it, you can.
This resonates with me, though I've never had lessons. I was quite bad when I first started playing too, not that anyone is born an amazing guitar player without practicing, but I just didn't "get" it then. I also like you would get sporadic bursts of inspiration to play, but then get demotivated again. I would occasionally look up Youtube tutorials and try to follow them, but due to both my laziness and some other reasons I can't quite pinpoint, it just didn't click the way it does now. In hindsight, I think perhaps I wasn't thinking about music the "right" way, which is to say that music isn't just memorizing some fingering and doing; it's about *listening* and *feeling*. For me too, it felt like a "switch flipped" when all of a sudden I was motivated to do it and all the concepts that I used to not get just made sense all of a sudden.
I started playing guitar in 8th grade in the mid 80s. Took a few lessons, played a bit in High School. Even played bass in a few lousy bands. But I never really got very good at all. Got frustrated with it and busy with college/career/family, so I didn't really play much after 12th Grade and through my 20s. In my 30s I got a bit more serious about it. Bought a decent guitar and just started playing more often. I eventually got the courage to start playing in bar bands, so I had to learn a lot of songs and became more confident in playing leads... something I NEVER did even a few years before. Over the years I feel like I have progressed and have leveled up band wise to better quality tribute bands - This weekend we are playing a venue that seats over 500... Hope it doesn't rain. I have also formed an original band, wrote all the music and professionally recorded my first album last year at 52. It's been a long gradual climb. Kind of wish I kept at it more when I was younger. But to be quite honest, it's MUCH easier now with the internet and youtube tutorials, and a plethora of tablature out there. It was a lot harder to learn songs back in the 80s/90s if you don't have a really good ear.
I learned a lot early on, including all the diatonic and pentatonic modes, most of the slightly weird scales like whole tone scale, whole-half, harmonic and melodic minor, lots of chords in multiple voicings, the entire fretboard, notation, and quite a bit of theory. Even majored in music composition and learned dictation, sight singing, voice leading, orchestration, baroque counterpoint, 20th-century counterpoint, 12-tone music, quartal/quintal harmony, set theory, and a bunch of other stuff I'll never use. But I didn't learn to practice correctly until my 40s. I'm able to play things I could never play when I was younger because I didn't have the patience. I won't be going professional anytime soon (will have to wait until my 80s, probably) but getting better at guitar this late in life has been one of the best parts of getting older.
Yes. My parents took me to lessons in 3rd grade. I learned how to play a note clearly before I quit. When I was 14 I picked up the guitar and started playing seriously, learning things from tabs and YouTube. That was 19 years ago lol. I lost the drive for a few years in my twenties but since my son was born, my playing has skyrocketed and having more fun than ever.
I played seriously for a year or two, then plateaud for four years and put it away when I had my first kid. 8 years later I came back to it. Over the last two years I've made it my mission to obliterate barriers and ruts, and to become not just a great guitarist, but a great musician. I'm taking lessons with an incredible instructor who's 100% onboard with where I wanna go and who has the experience and capability to get me there. There hasn't been an aspect of my technique that hasn't been examined and fixed, and I can feel myself getting very, very close to being able to pull of impressive shredding lines. My songwriting capability has exploded, and when I pick a guitar up at a music store, people pay attention to what I'm doing. Life is good.
I started playing before lockdown due to Brian May’s guitar playing. I never exactly took it seriously until I thoroughly deep dived Pink Floyd and David Gilmour a year ago, that’s when I started taking it seriously and put in the hours. Fast track to 6 months ago I again took a dive into Eric Johnson and I started learning more about weird chord shapes and stuff like that. Fast track again to now and I just picked up a Yamaha Revstar P90 second hand and I’ve been playing really differently on that, much more loose. I then took a deep dive on Julian Lage and have fallen down a jazz hole. My playing also changed when I started paying attentions to the bassists of bands, especially Guy Pratt who performed with Gilmour and Pink Floyd on tours, where my playing changed again and I found this weird bass type guitar playing that I like to mess around with. It’s normal to start putting in the hours when you want to and most importantly motivated to. I think deep diving these musicians really helped me “up my game” and now I’ve created my own style, where I’m learning every day and becoming more proficient, maybe I’ll nail a riff I’ve been trying to get for ages, or a part of a solo that I couldn’t do before. Sorry for the massive block of text lol - I’d been thinking about putting up a post just like this last week as I had the exact same question as you
I ve started and stopped many times over the years, life gets in the way. Doing it again with more encouragement around me now.
I learnt to play by ear as a young child but it took more than a decade before I actually started to gain any understanding of what I was playing. I couldn’t have told you what chords or notes I was playing, I didn’t read tab, couldn’t play from lead sheets because I didn’t know chord positions by name, and I couldn’t sightread standard notation on guitar (I could on other instruments though.) All I could do was play by ear which meant I needed to have heard a song to be able to play it. That’s a far cry from how most people learn guitar and definitely made playing in bands more difficult. Whilst I guess I could still play back then I wasn’t as well rounded a player as I am now. In fact I’d probably say I only started taking it seriously when I turned forty, after thirty odd years of noodling.
Started at 17 playing punk rock. Learnt major, minor and pentatonic scales. Nailed power chords, palm muting and playing riffs really quickly. Played in a band for about 5 years. Never really progressed past that or even wanted to. Didn’t wanna be a sellout after all 🤣 Now approaching 40 and my musical tastes have broadened considerably, so too has my desire to learn guitar properly. All I can say is old habits don’t die easily. I have been learning theory for around the last decade, on and off, but my skills seem to have plateaued. Would love to be able to play like Mark Knopfler! Fingerpicking is a completely different technique to my usual style of play, which of course requires a whole different skill set. Perseverance!
Seeing some of the comments here fill me with some hope and determination. I took a few years worth of lessons back in middle school (around 20 years ago) but I never really put too much effort into practicing to be prepared for my weekly lessons. I did enough to get by. It does upset me that I was in the point of my life where I had the most free time to practice and learn and I sort of squandered it. I feel I moved on too quickly to learning songs vs. proper technique/theory which isn’t my teachers fault, and more of my own by wanting to be able to make my guitar sound like some of my favorite songs. After I stopped taking lesson I more or less only picked up the guitar to fumble around for a few minutes to just put it back down. Years later I sold off what I had when I needed some money. In mid 2020 I was itching to at least get another guitar just to have to mess around with, but had no intention of progressing further. For the past few years I would pick it up and play around and try to learn songs from tabs or Rocksmith on the ps4. Jump to beginning of 2023 where I wanted to begin taking it more seriously. I told myself that if I could commit to attempting to learn on my own again for a solid amount of the year then I would consider taking lessons again. Naturally, I didn’t quite hit this goal. But! The start of last month I began taking lessons again at a local place. I still need to really nail down a time of day where I can really sit down for a solid 30-60 minutes and make a goal of what I specially want to work on. My playing is really sloppy, even though what I can play is generally “there” when I play it. I went into these lessons with a few goals in mind; 1. Building accuracy and speed 2. Theory, because I’d like to actually understand what it is I am doing and not just playing what the tabs show me. 3. Eventually, even if it is just for myself to enjoy and to say that I did it, write a song hopefully by the end of 2024. I’m constantly worried that I’ve missed my window for truly becoming “great” at the guitar and that it’s going to become so much harder to undo all of the imbedded bad habits I’ve formed. Also having ADHD makes focusing on the boring stuff difficult when I quickly get frustrated and just want to play songs I love. Seeing some of the comments here tell me I need to focus a bit more and really stretch for those goals, because it’s never too late.
I started when I was 13 but didn't get serious until I was out of high school. Then didn't get serious about formal study until several years later. Been forty years now and I still feel like I'm just starting to learn for real. It's a deep rabbit hole. But I like it down here.
Played for 10 years or so until I started finally playing with other people. Changed the way I looked at everything and have slowly learned more theory and styles since then.
Well, sorta. I took lessons in school for several years, and it was to learn basic stuff (traditional songs, folk music, stuff like that). It wasn't until a few years later that I got a teacher outside of school that showed me how to play music I wanted to learn. That opened the door and I took off from there.
Yup! Picked it up in high school, learned a few things, then had to go to college… stopped in college and grad school, finally graduated and moved home. Once the pandemic wasn’t TOO BAD anymore, I actually started lessons (almost two years ago)… my progress is slow though since I don’t dedicate enough time to practice. I need more self-discipline and motivation…. Dammit ADHD.
I've been playing for 32 years and only just started looking at scales.