Thanks to the time at home in 2020 I decided to take up my old dream of making my own music.
I was a hobby DJ since my youth but never attempted to learn an instrument (cost and commitment doubts).
I started making electronic music with keyboards, but couldn’t wrap my head around playing the keys really well.
Fast forward to October 2022: Surfing for music gear on Thomann I noticed super cheap guitars that seem to be ok and was inspired to just try learning guitar.
Went to buy my first guitar at a local shop anyway and settled for a budget choice, but not at the lowest end: Yamaha Pacifica 112v.
Thanks to Justin’s site I really had a nice structure to learn and no initial costs, which was great as I was jobless and couldn’t afford to spend much.
Turns out this course is gold
I now have around 20 Songs memorized. At first, I thought it would be almost impossible, but the push in the first 2 Modules to have a repertoire really put me over this hurdle and now I love learning new songs. Buying a used acoustic to go out and play on the road helped to really get into the campfire song mentality
The last song I added to my campfire songs was Good Riddance - Green Day
One of the developers is More than Words - Extreme
And a dreamer Song of mine is Misirlou - Dick Dale
(right hand needs to get faster and more precise)
Here is an excerpt of my playing on UG if you want to see a relative newby working on a campfire song: Good Riddance - Green Day
And if you like to hear some of my electronic productions you’d be very welcome to check out one of my last EPs tunes: Masooter - Just Alive
Any feedback is welcome.
Sending out love to all you guitar and music lovers. Keep on keeping on!
Cheers
Marcel
PS: If anybody needs some mixing or wants to collab for learning together some production. I’d be open to it.
I’m not that good at writing but I can produce a song to some extent and add some layers and effects if needed. It tends to be a bit more electronic than rock production, but I’d be open for anything.
I could use some training in mixing and producing other writers’ songs.
NO guarantees or commitments (or costs). It would just be to learn together and put out music.
You’re DJing experience surely will help you along the guitar journey as well, but vice versa will improve and maybe also change a little during you ability to play guitar? All is possible - haha!
Welcome to the forum and glad to have you. I did the same thing in 2020 and found Justin guitar. It made more sense than self pity for being stuck inside. I would love to collaborate some time English or German songs. I’ve been to Der Schweiz years ago when I lived in Germany- such a beautiful country you have. I did that song you mentioned by Green Day and posted here in January. That’s my fav type of music and love posting songs here. Keep at it and looking forward to hearing more from you. I have to say Justin guitar has been an awesome experience for me. Best of luck and welcome.
I feel I’m pretty good at rhythm thanks to DJing, but bad at harmonies as I always was more about the rhythm than harmonics.
So now I kind got to start from scratch and rethink my songwriting process. Still haven’t made a song on guitar. But thanks to the alternative chord lessons and music theory course the pallette grows and playing songs slowly evolves the ear for chord progressions. Next step is then incorporating melodies into the progressions.
So yes learning the guitar has a huge impact on understanding music from a player’s perspective (instead of remixer/producer).
I wish you too a lot of good times in your playing journey.
Awesome, hit me up if you have an idea for a project you’d like to do.
I like Pop/Rock/Funk/Rn’B/Blues/Latin from the 20th century mostly. Love surf, jazz, fusion, classic and world music, but think it’s still a way to go to get into playing those genres.
As DJ and producer I am mostly influenced by Breakbeats/BigBeats/Drum’n’Bass/Techno/House/New Wave/Synthwave.
I only learned 1 Song in German (Über den Wolken) and 3 in SwissGerman (which probably are not even very intelligible to German speakers, but those are something I wish to translate and record some day).
So if you think we could musically match I’d love to collab with you sometime.
To start maybe have a look at some of my videos when you have a chance and see what you think. Mostly what I play is 1990s - 2000 rock music. I’ve been wanting to add some more flavor to my videos to improve the experience and quality. Background effects. usw. Hopefully you have some ideas. If you have any music you’ve done I’d love to hear it. The technology piece is not my strength and most of my music is just raw guitar sound. Zum beispiel, Ich habe doch Aerosmith und Linkin Park Gespielt am u tube.I also played Die Toten Hosen aber Ich denke ganz schlect.
I am picturing this one with good production and background. Maybe the Motley Crue one or boulevards of broken dreams song I did needs a producer’s touch.
… I can confirm that Schwitzerdütsch is almost a complete mystery to me despite my native language being German
For some reason I ended up listening to several songs of Lo & Leduc yesterday, and was amazed that you can actually make good songs while singing in Swiss German. I always thought that would not be a language offering itself to singing. Prejudices, prejudices
Accordingly, I would be delighted if you could use Schwitzerdütsch, if you should decide to upload any of these three songs to this platform
Looking forward to a possible collaboration between you and @SDKissFan. Perhaps " Über den Wolken" might be a feasible choice after all. There are already quite many different versions of that song. So why not go without Reinhard Mey’s fingerstyle and make it an electro - electric guitar combination? Could be fascinating…
… I can confirm that Schwitzerdütsch is almost a complete mystery to me despite my native language being German
For some reason I ended up listening to several songs of Lo & Leduc yesterday, and was amazed that you can actually make good songs while singing in Swiss German. I always thought that would not be a language offering itself to singing. Prejudices, prejudices
Honestly I too think that it’s hard to fit Swiss Dialects to music. When trying to come up with Swiss German versions of English songs I feel it’s almost impossible to find a good flow.
In the end there are people who find a way and a palette. It’s just much easier to use English (Rock Pop) or German (Schlager) to reach a bigger audience here. So there is not as much expierence how to use it well imo.
I only learned Mani Matter songs, which are in the Bernese dialect (like Lo&Leduc) which I think lends itself much better to songs than my Zurich dialect.
why not go without Reinhard Mey’s fingerstyle and make it an electro - electric guitar combination? Could be fascinating…
Good idea! We would need to work on being able to play some sweet leads to integrate the electric guitar tastefully. Which I think is pretty advanced. I’m just starting to learn to bend
Glad to give you and @SDKissFan ideas, if something should be coming out of that idea
Just thought that the song might more or less offer itself to such combo with the plane starting and landing again. Perhaps there could be such electro intro and outro where you would hear an assumed sound of a plane landing and starting hovering in the background, then there could be the melody exaggerated with electric guitar and the singing could transform to a more monotone version… All the beauty of the experience of flying above the clouds would be in the synergy created by the different styles of music.
My imagination is running away with me and I have way too little knowledge of these things…
Marcel, welcome to the community forum. If you have 20 songs memorized, including lyrics, then you are at least 15 songs ahead of me, and I’ve been on the site almost a year. I look forward to hearing more of your videos. I saw from your first video above that you have been playing an acoustic as well as the Yamaha Pacifica. Play both and you can have the best of both worlds of guitar. Have fun.
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