7 years ago I played my first live gig and then life got in the way and I had to sell all my guitar equipment. This year I bought a guitar from a local luthier who is a friend and watched me play all those years ago. I also grabbed a used pedal and practice amp, and now have sore fingers again. I’m really excited about getting stuck in again and hope to be able to get to a standard where I can play live again.
The gig was at a local pub and one of the songs we played was especially for the singer/keyboard player’s partner. (Not Ready To Make Nice - Dixie Chicks). The evening was a blast and I hope to do it again. There’s nothing like that feeling of playing in front of a live audience.
At the moment I’m back at the beginner stage, but am finding that my brain and fingers are remembering more with each practice session. I think it will take at least a year, probably more, to reach a standard where I’ll be happy. This time I want to push myself harder and become a lot better than when I played the gig
Sorry about the grainy picture, but it was taken with a cell phone by a member of the audience.
Hi Carl,
Played 7 years ago in a live setting?, well that won’t take a year to get back to that level…not even close to a year,…
Have fun,…
Greetings,Rogier
Hey Carl, welcome to the community. I’m sure you’ll be back to your former best in no time at all. My best friend from my late teens and early 20s was a Hackman. He was taken far too early. And still missed on a regular basis. Look forward to hearing more from you.
Sorry to hear about your best friend, I hope you have some great memories to hold onto. I’m looking forward to the journey and fighting through soft fingers. I want to be able to play ‘The Loner’ by Gary Moore again. He was a huge reason I took up the guitar in the first place. He is a great loss to music. I’m 61 now so have nothing but time and can practice whenever I please. This site is really good for laying out a practice routine and watching Justin’s videos. I even went back to module one to make sure I don’t rush and pick up bad habits that would be difficult to get rid of later.
Hello Carl and welcome to the community, it’s great to hear that you’ve restarted your guitar journey - happy days ahead and looking forward to the day when you play “The Loner”
Thank you, started work on the first few bars, just need to get the 6/8 time nailed so I can get the rhythm down before I even look at the faster parts down the road (months of work ahead there I think)
I’m sure you’ll be finding your old groove and more in no time by the sounds of your enthusiasm. I took long hiatus’ on my journey as well and at first its very oddly familiar and difficult to get your hands and fingers to do what your mind is willing them. A little patience and persistence goes a long way to restoring calluses and all the good that goes with them.
Having a great time relearning and fingers are no longer sore, unless I push it really hard
I now have 2 guitars from a local Luthier who has moved here from Canada and it is great to hook up to my Boss ME-25 and plug in a one of a kind guitar to practice.
I’m busy practicing scales, chords and inversions, all of which are allowing me to learn the neck because I don’t stick to a single position and have found that I can get the same result just by exploring the neck within a key.
This morning I was playing around with the Am pentatonic scale (I know, it’s an easy scale, but it’s helping me learn the neck ) and I played a couple of diads which sounded nice. I jumped onto the interweb thingy and found that what I thought was a 4 chord is actually an inversion of a 5 power chord and it suddenly made sense why it sounded good. The D4 I thought I was playing is actually an inversion of a G5, but with a D in the base, so it became a G5/D. This was a bit of a revelation and made me explore more. I could play an A5 on the 6th string and also a A5/E on the 5th string with the E in the base. Exploring this was a lot of fun and I’m sure I learned a lot just by playing around with a 1, 4, 5 A minor progression, by playing with my discovery (Am, Dm, Em which became A5, D5 and E5 but with inversions thrown it to push my learning of the neck and scale deeper).
Anyway I’ve attached a photo of my 2 babies and wanted to let you know that this journey has become way more fascinating than I remember.
I just wanted to say Happy New Year everyone and I hope your musical journey takes you where you want to go this year
Welcome aboard, Carl.
It’s so cool to see folks’ unbridled enthusiasm on (re)discovering guitar and music in general
Good on you for going back and starting from the beginning again, but you are going to be flying way past wherever you were in no time.
Enjoy the journey and don’t forget to send musical postcards…
Hello Carl and welcome to the community.
I too gave up playing in a live band some years ago.
My oh my, things do get rusty in no time. Kudos and good vibes to you on going back to learn it all over again.
If you previously played Gary Moore you were clearly no slouch back then. It’ll all come good for you soon, I’m sure.
Cheers
Richard
Thanks, Richard. I could never play a full Gary Moore song, but I could get quite a way into it before it got too fast. I’ve also been watching and listening to Joe Bonamassa a lot, so as you can see, blues rock is where my musical mind settles. My goal this time is to learn more rhythm as well as try to get over that speed hump. Being stuck over here I’ve still got to rely on self teaching. I have all the tools I need (I think), but that extra speed has always been my nemesis LOL.
I’m having a blast learning and I’m afraid I have GAS now. I started with a little VOX Pathfinder, a ME-25 and a Ricky look alike (with double humbuckers).
But now things have reached a whole new level.
I have:
A Ricky lookalike
A Strat style custom with gold foil pickups, very P90 ish
A Reverend Trickshot
An Ibanex S621QM Dragon Eye Burst
A Boss ME-25
A Boss SD-1
A Sonicake Noise Gate
A Sonicake Reverb
A Joyo D-Seed Delay/Modulation
A Joyo Zombie MKII
A 1 x 12 Cab
The Joyo amp has allowed me to use tube tone, and put the delay and reverb in the effects loop. I have the SD-1 into the front of the amp.
Hi Carl, welcome to the community. Yes, take advantage of all the lessons to fill any voids you may have in your guitar skills. Because the way you learnt before, you may excel in some aspects but could probably lack fluency with others. The advantage is that you look to be aware of your shortcomings; therefore, it can be easier to device a plan to improve on those. If you find it convenient there is a subsection here called learning logs where you can create a topic for your personal log of progress or lack of it, gear and other stuff related to your learning. The dynamic of that subsection is somewhat different than this one, but your log will be read and encouragement and advice will be provided as needed.
P.S. You may include in the learning log a link to this “Introduce Yourself” topic.
Just a quick follow up. I’m having a blast and seem to have a serious case of GAS. Along with the hardware, I’ve been playing around with Cakewalk and grabbed the S Gear plugin, so I don’t have to hook up my amp and pedalboard when I want to have a quick practice session. All in all I’m in guitar heaven at the moment and am learning steadily.
Here are a couple of photos of my gear as it stands at the moment. I honestly can’t see me buying anything else in the near future because I’ve got all bases covered. There are obviously a lot of Wants on my list of gear, but no actual necessary items; unless of course you guys can think of anything
