What age did you start guitar?

axisus · May 2017

My mum bough a family acoustic when I was 17. Noodled around with it, learned some simple things, bought a crappy LP copy a couple of years later. I don't think I really got going until early 20s though. I say 'really got going' it was a slow unstructured process of noodling about for years. That's what I still do mostly.

guitars4you · May 2017

14 - had played trumpet for 8 years so had some sound basic classical training and understanding of notes, scales, melody, tunes etc

underdog · May 2017

I think I got my first guitar at about 14, didn't really learn much then over the years I had a few formative period where I learned and progressed, the first big one www Oasis What's the story. The tab book taught me chords and it was the first time I could play actual songs instead of just bits of lead lines I'd worked out.

Then a huge break from learning I'd say until my late 20s or even early 30s, with YouTube and the internet it became so much easier to learn and I got interested again.

eSully · May 2017

I was around 11 I think. My parents had an old Spanish guitar missing strings in the spare room and I started messing around with it. Initially just playing up and down the low E string. Pretty sure Negative creep by nirvana was the first song I tried to figure out.

thumpingrug · May 2017

22

EricTheWeary · May 2017

There was a battered acoustic in the house but I didn't really learn anything on it. I persuaded my parents to buy me a used strat copy when I was about 15 but I learned nothing on that which was followed by a bass which I learned bits on over the years. I think I was 26 when as an impulse buy I got an acoustic and a teach yourself book (handily I had a tuner from my bass exploits although I had sold all the other gear as I was up to my eye balls in debt)from which I learned a bunch of open position chords and basic shuffles. So, not clear but really 26 and plenty of big gaps since.

ROOG · May 2017

Early 20's, then again in my late 40's, much harder the second time for me, should have stuck with it the first time around!

richardhomer · May 2017

8.

I should be a lot better than I am by now....

djspecialist · May 2017

14. Played quite a bit (including in bands) until 18 - then pretty much stopped until about 3 years ago. (I'm 39 now).

Cue acute GAS - and now I'm back in a band, occasionally gigging and loving it. Some regret that I didn't keep up playing, but no point in looking back, just enjoying the here and now.

hotpot · May 2017

50 :oI I bought myself a Epi LP on my 50th birthday to learn to play as decades of lying on cold concrete floors running/maintaining/repairing old cars was taking it's toll on my knackered back.

ThePrettyDamned · May 2017

14.

I learnt very fast, was a metal head and taught myself a lot of shred, Steve vai, satch.

Then I just sort of stopped playing that and discovered the clean channel could do more than just be super crystal clean. So I started noodling.

At 26, I'm still a noodler. I really enjoy it though, I don't have visions of being a musical master, I just really enjoy playing. I did enjoy gigging so perhaps one day I'll do that again.

thermionic · May 2017

14 I think. A friend from across the road had started playing his mum's old nylon string acoustic (I think all students in the 60s had to have one, by law). He started writing songs (he's now a music professor) and I joined in on cardboard box drums - we recorded about 4 songs on cassette. We were going to form a band and I switched when I saw how much a drum kit cost. Borrowed his mum's crappier guitar (they had two lying around) and we trawled the classifieds every week for months for affordable electric guitars. Couldn't afford the ubiquitous Columbus black Les Paul Custom copies for £80 but eventually found a crappy Satellite Strat-type (in the loosest possible sense of the word) in a pawn shop for £25. It was months before I had an amp, but I figured out how to plug into the tape in/out DIN socket on my parents' radiogram.

MtB · May 2017

41 - after visiting a friends house and having a strum on a cheapo strat copy. I'm afraid that progress has not been as good / fast as I hoped, as having a hectic job and working away get in the way. One of the best motivators has been starting a band as this focuses the mind and makes me find the time for practice.