57 years old, female, life long music lover (literally, my parents both professional musicians), but somehow playing an instrument myself escaped me (other than the requisite early childhood piano lessons and high school band clarinet).
Love music of all kinds but grew up on the diverse music of the 70's - from folk to classic rock and everything in between (disco, funk, soul, punk...the 70's really had it all!) :)
About 10 years ago was inspired by my admiration for John Mayer's playing to take up guitar myself - bought a new and relatively inexpensive Epiphone acoustic dreadnought, and was immediately discouraged by a) the size of my guitar in relation to the size of my hands, and b) a teacher who spent most of my lessons basically demonstrating to me what an *awesome* player he was. Long story short, I gave up quickly, and my Epiphone has made a lovely wall hanging for the past 10 years.
Fast forward to 2015 - again inspired by a favourite musician (Ed Sheeran), and an AMAZING trip to Nashville in September, I asked myself just how hard it could be to play guitar (at least semi-proficiently) - you only get out of it what you put into, right? Soooo, on a visit to a local music store with my boyfriend (who plays guitar) I fell in love with Ed Sheeran's X Signature Edition (little) Martin - and lucky me, the BF surprised me with it for Christmas! I love love LOVE it, it's the perfect size for me, and sounds fantastic (even got a little practice amp to play it with!)
THIS time, I am determined to learn this wonderful instrument!! With a few basic lessons from my BF and some YouTube videos of basic chords for favourite songs, I was already way farther ahead after about a day than I was with my efforts 10 years ago - and THEN (!) I saw an ad for GT on YouTube, and here I am!
I've been working my way through Lisa's beginner lessons and I have to say this site is FANTASTIC. Other than the lack of personal feedback (but even that isn't a major issue because she somehow magically addresses questions without you asking them), I've been thoroughly enjoying Ms. McCormick's clear, concise, and relatable style of teaching - my goal is to maybe someday play as effortlessly and beautifully as she does! I can hardly wait to leave work at the end of the day, plug in and sit down with my guitar and my GT lessons. Thanks for the wonderful site, guys - currently on free trial but I don't think there's any question that I'll be signing up for full access.
I even just bought a new set of strings for my old Epiphone and I'm actually going to start showing it some love too - it's not nearly as mystifying/frustrating to me as it used to be!
And that's my story! :)