Are You Musically Inclined?

Are You Musically Inclined?

I'm not a professional musician by any means, but the first instrument that I sorta learned how to play was a Ukulele that my mom gave me for Christmas one year (I think I was 7 yrs. old at the time).  My mom knew how to play a little, so she taught me how to tune the Uke and play a few simple tunes.  Although, I lost interest in learning to play the Uke within a few months ...just a typical kid who was more interested in playing baseball and whatnot with his friends ...LOL.

Here's one of my favorite Uke artists, Jake Shimabukuru, with his cover of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".
(I don't own a Uke today, but I can play this on the guitar)

Fast forwarding to my high school days, ca. the early 1970s, I first started learning to play the guitar on a cheap classical guitar that was given to me by my older brother.  My older brother was in the USAF at the time and he was given that guitar by his roommate who was being shipped overseas to Vietnam.  Unfortunately, my bro was tone deaf and uncoordinated ...LOL ...and gave up trying to play, even though his buddy gave him a few lessons.

Anywho, I pretty much taught myself the basics, i.e. how to tune the guitar, how to fret open chords, and some basic strumming patterns.  Needless to say, there was no internet and YouTube back in those days like there is today where you could go online and find all sorts of free guitar lessons.  I pretty much leaned from books, then later while in college from a friend, but more on that later.  I could have taken guitar lessons from a real instructor, but I was a soon-to-be starving college student with little time and money to devote to weekly lessons.

I was in my sophomore year in college when I met a gal in one of my classes.  We became friends and use to hang out together studying, amongst other things ...LOL.  She happened to be a very good fingerstyle guitarist and I learned a lot from her on proper guitar technique, some music theory, as well as fingerstyle guitar.  My old guitar sucked, so with her help and advice, I bought a used Martin acoustic 6-string from a local music shop for a very reasonable price.  Wow, what a difference a good guitar makes ...not only in sound quality, but also with the ease in playing!

My old Martin is long gone, but this is similar to the one I had back then...

My friend also gave me one of her old 12-string acoustic guitars as a gift which was similar to this one.  Unfortunately, it got damage during a recent move and it wasn't worth the cost to repair it...

Well, grad school and then that dirty 4-letter word W-O-R-K started taking up so much of my time that my guitar spent the next few years sitting in my closet collecting dust.  Unfortunately, my Martin 6-string developed a few cracks in the body, since it really needed to be stored under humidified conditions (typically 35-45% RH) which I didn't do.  So when I decided to start playing again in the mid-1990s, I had to shop around for a new guitar.

Now that I had a good paying job, I could afford to splurge a bit and buy something really nice.  I was always a fan of Glen Campbell who played Ovation guitars and I really like the tone of those guitar.  So when I was shopping around at my local music shops, I check out all of the popular brands and decided on an Ovation Elite L718 acoustic/electric.  It set me back close to $2K, but it was well worth the price.  I still have it and it's in mint condition.  It still sounds great too!

Today, I have 3 guitars in my collection including the Ovation Elite L718 acoustic/electric (left), Fender Stratocaster (right), and my latest addition is the Taylor 314CE acoustic/electric (center)...

I will never be nearly as good at playing guitar as some of my favorites artists like Tommy Emmanuel, Lindsey Buckingham, Glen Campbell, Chet Atkins, just to name a few ...but at least I can dream ...LOL.

Here's Tommy playing his version of "Classical Gas".  Awhile back, I went to one of his concerts and he's a phenomenal guitarist...

Playing the guitar is still one of my favorite hobbies, but I mainly play for my own amusement.  I play mostly fingerstyle and it's a continuous learning process.  If you don't play often, you sorta lose your edge and start forgetting stuff ...LOL.  Also when playing and/or learning any musical instrument, that old saying, "Practice Makes Perfect", is absolutely true.

So what style of music do I like to learn/play?  Basically, any good tunes that I like to listen too.  I'm into a variety of music including rock n' roll, country, pop, blues, folk, reggae, and pretty much everything in between.  Although, I'm really not into rap/hip hop.  

Links to some of my favorite guitar products, learning resources, etc...

Guitars:

Taylor Guitars
Ovation Guitars
Fender Guitars

Guitar Equipment & Supplies:

Elixir Guitar Strings
Ernie Ball Electric Guitar Strings
G7th Capos
Line 6: Relay G10-Wireless Guitar System
Fender Guitar Amps
Acoustic (Guitar Amps) Company


Learning Resources:

Justin Guitar  
Justin Sandercoe's online guitar lessons are in my opinion, the best resource on the internet today ...And best of all, most of his lessons are free.  Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or an accomplished guitarist, his site is worth checking out.

JamPlay
JamPlay is a paid online resource for learning acoustic, electric, and bass guitar.  They use state of the art, multi-angle video recording equipment for their online lessons which are both broadcasted live and also recorded for viewing at any time.

They have some very good online instructors and I've used their services in the past.  I've always wanted to learn Travis style picking and Jim Deeming is one of the best instructors on JamPlay for learning this style.  Want to learn how to play the 12-bar blues?  Check out Hawkeye Herman's lessons.  He makes learning the the Blues a very easy process.