How many years have you played?

  • Thread starter Thread starter matt_barlow
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27 years of playing guitar
20 years on bass
15 years on the drums

Been singing and writing songs since I could speak... and I'm almost 40.

...and I'm still the epitome of mediocrity! :D
 
26 yrs of guitar discovery--with only a few leaps and bounds--1) the realization that "attutude" goes a long way...2) the realization that gimicks are golden...3) how to compose without really trying--barrow a few chords from an old Beatles song and play them without "thinking" too much...4) getting out of the standard tuning...5) playing the parts no one can hear...
(20 yrs of piano, 9 yrs of violin)
 
For 20 years I have been involved in playing music, 18 of them include guitar. My first seven years included training as a brass player in the school band program, giving me a strong musical foundation..

Cy
 
30 years...dam! 30 more and I'll be good..Swear it!


Don
 
Close to thrity years now... and wondering why I still can't play even remotely like Allan Holdsworth or Pat Martino or Paco de Lucia...
 
5 years on drums (main instrument)
5 years on guitar
Jammed on friend's basses over the years....I've got one of my friend's bass right now (and he ain't gettin' it back either :D).
Just kinda starting to pick up keyboards (I really need to start practicing more tho....)

20 years old, so I've still got plenty of time to learn how to actually play these things..... :D

-tkr
 
one thing I have noticed, is that it is NOT how many years you have played, but rather WHAT you practice, and how much you play EACH day. I know several guitar players who have played at least 30 years, and they still kinda suck, if you know what I mean....same pentatonic scales, lousy amp tone, out of tune, etc, etc. However, I have witnessed guitar players that after a year or so of heavy playing (like 8 hours a day, min), started to become very accomplished players. I saw a fair amount of this when I was at Berklee, in Boston, Ma. Especially foreign students. After a couple of years, they were starting to become monsters on their instruments. You see a major difference in CHOPS, in the player who has spent at least a year or two and played every day for at least 8 hours+. ....and those that constantly jammed with their friends, day after day after day...their ear developed quickly too. ...and then there where those that exceeded this, and were basically completely unfriggen unbelievable at their instruments...at least to me.
 
I started lessons when I was eight.
I'm fifty three now.

~ pondering, carrying the one, or do I subtract ~

I don't know, you figure it out.

----------------------
Originally posted by Track Rat
Thirty-eight years. That doesn't speak too highly of my abilities does it? I should be a friggin' guitar genius by now. Where did I go wrong?
---------------------
Same goes here.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the 60s and 70s, though. I'm sure of that.
 
I Still can't play properly...

I only use 2 fingers on the fretboard.... I can do about 3 proper chords.... I obtain, a finished song with a few layers of guitar in order to make the chord...:eek:
 
34 years...and I am going to keep going until I get it right!!!
 
ive been playing guitar for a year and have only played a bass a couple of times
 
32 years; 10 of 'em were pretty dry... now trying to make up for lost time.
 
Got a German Hofner for my 11th. Birthday, 46 years back. Still play everyday, owned 28 guitars since then ,if I had possessed half a brain I would have got a Fender strat and 4x10 Bassman first and saved a whole lotta cash in between.
It's taken me round the world, caused me more trouble and grief than I care to talk about but I love it.
I play by first choice R&B, Rock'n'Roll, Blues, Standards. Have just started looking at country, mainly because of where I live is so vast that if you travel for 6 hours to the next town and find that they want country it saves a lot of embarrassment and you still can have a ok night.
 
11 years already... doesn't sound like it though!
Isn't it frustrating that the little boy next door or your little cousin recently got a $ 1200 axe+amp for thanksgiving last year and already can play all Yngwie songs with his eyes closed and one finger in his nose? I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one just foolin' around. Playing it makes me happy, that's all that matters to me.

BTW I also play the piano, for wich I DID have some formal education, but that was years ago. Last year I decided to give it a shot and I bought a keyboard, and it's so much fun also. Never will give up the guitar, though!

Dirk Demon
 
Sometimes I think....
It's been too many years...
Sometimes I think...
Not enough......

It all sorta depends on what your goal is....
if there is such a thing in music.

How "well" you play versus how "long" you've played for...
Is just too subjective........

Been playing for 26 years and I am still a rookie...in my opinion anyways. Practice makes perfect though....ya know?
 
tdukex said:
I play for twenty.

I sound like two.
Click to expand...

Ditto for me. Guitar the whole time, bass in the last year.

I played drums for a while a long time ago, but haven't touched a kit in about 16 years or so.
 
Around 20 years or so.

Not a lot of live gigging, but I've had some success doing sessions. It's fun and it pays well, but it's hard to find musical satisfaction when you spend all day playing for 30 second radio ID's.

One of my life-goals is to tour w/ a band. Another is to wade in the waters of each of the world's 3 greatest rivers.

I think I can...I think I can...I think I can....

Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
8~10 years, don't remember.

when i got my first electric, boss practice amp and Sears distortion pedal, I played 8 hours a day for the first 2 years.
Ended up playing the same pentatonic and aolian chops over and over again. (Little did I know that if you pulled the master volume knob on the amp, it triggered the distortion .. oh well)

My playing mellowed out to about 2 hours a day for the next 4 years and was in the same rut.

Got into assembly language and graphics prog'ing and basically dropped the guitar until last year when I did the stupid mistake of ''forgetting' my guitar (yamaha rg something) in the local pawn shop past the 30 day 'loan' period. .. and well .. lost my guitar.

This totally freaked me out .. so I blew all my money on my new Ibanez JS and borrowed a Paul Gilbert Video, Malmsteen Video, George Lynch Video, and some dream theater books and learnt some theory and and forced myself to learn more chords and well ...

.. I still don't play 8 hours a day, i can't afford the luxury , but i do put in at least 8~12 hours a week and don't play the same stale chops anymore.

I'm slowly getting there.
 
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