I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I'm 45 and rediscovering music in a sense. (Anybody local looking to jam? :))
I started out as a drummer at the tender age of 7. Dad was a musician (something of a local celeb), so me getting real drums at that age didn't seem odd to me at all. By the age of 9 I was in a band with a bunch of 12 year olds. Guess the pickin's were slim for drummers their own age heheh.
I remained a dedicated drummer until about 20 and I couldn't play guitar chord if you asked me! At about that time I moved into the city and became too hampered by mobility factors to stay with my old band and a couple tries at new bands just didn't work out. Yet I still needed a musical outlet of some sort, so I got my first guitar for my birthday. 'Twas a Vantage acoustic that I still have to this day.
Boy, I banged away on that sucker. Self taught, I learned all kinds of bad habits and bad form. I bluffed and faked my way thru things that I could and avoided the rest. Became pretty good and wrote a bunch of songs and all that stuff. I was a regular Neil Diamond! (Ok not so much. ::))
Round about 30, I am not sure what happened. Workin' for the man, day to day humdrum, boredom, whatever... Somehow I just stopped playing.
So now, 15 years later and right out of the blue, I picked up that old Vantage and started playing. Can you say "rusty"!? Right away I was tearing my fingers apart, so I thought maybe I would start with the electric until those calouses built up. I have an old Hagstrom II and a Peavey amp, but I never really played it. I think the electrical requirements didn't fit my style back then.
So I started on playing electric guitar, which really is a very different instrument (to me at least). And it's to the exclusion of the acoustic, interestingly enough. My 6 & 12 strings are packed away in their cases while I have "upstairs and downstairs" electrics. (I recently acquired a Gibson L6 which I use to play on and I keep my Hag downstairs for finger exercises while watching the tube.)
I have picked this up (again) as a love and as a hobby rather than with dreams of rockstardom. I floated several websites and settled on GuitarTricks after much consideration. I'm reaching toward being a half decent lead player, so I'm really trying to focus on the details of what is being taught, trying to learn where scales fit an all the rest.
So, there I am. I'm a confliction of some musical experience and total newb-ness at the same time.
Good luck to everyone, and if you have the music, don't ever let go!
...so ever since then, I always hang on to the buckle.
