New Member from Colyford, Devon, UK

[Adrian S]

Hi All,

I have tried to learn guitar since I was 11, I am now in my 60’s. I played in a couple of amateur bands in the late 70’s in SE
London, mainly rhythm guitar. I stopped after a couple of years when work and married life came along.

I had a mid life crisis in my late 40’s and went back to college to study music and do a 2 year BTEC course(Pop/Rock & Jazz). That was a bit of a baptism of fire as I was very rusty, poor rhythm, with little guitar and music knowledge retained.
Learning and performing 3 new songs every other week was truly daunting, and I suffered from nerves when playing live.
I progressed slowly and got to an average level, I was just starting to improvise better and was feeling good.
Then near the end of the course I got problems with my left hand, it was thought this was repetitive strain injury from too much guitar practice, it stopped me playing, a very frustrating and depressing time and I stupidly sold all my gear.

18 months later when things got much worse with my left arm it was found that I had a trapped nerve in my neck, which had caused all the issues in the first place, after an operation to fuse two vertebrae and a years recovery the pain was gone. By then I was busy working and did not think about playing guitar again for about 8 more years.

Recently I retired and a friend of my wife gave me an acoustic guitar, and said why not have another go as you have lots of time to get back into it. After a few weeks I was hooked again and got an Aria Pro II Nashville(Telecaster type) electric, and amp. After a few months I sold some hifi gear and got some money together and purchased my dream guitar a Gibson ES335 Figured in Cherry, which I love. A friend of many years, who plays guitar, sold me a Cornford Harlequin valve amp. I also got a lovely near mint Ibanez EW20WNE-NT electro-acoustic for £150 of off of Facebook, so I am set up now.

I have tried various Guitar Apps some better than others, the Gibson app is quite good but feel I have reached a plateau with it, keep making mistakes and not sure how to overcome them, I have tried various things, slowing individual parts.phrases down and profiting to right and then speeding up, works for a while and then a few days later back to as before. I have also used a couple of other online tutor sites with varying degrees of success.

I am practising most days and gradually things are coming back, I am enjoying playing again, but I am still struggling with aspects, as I did 10 years ago, mainly rhythm/timing, and synchronisation. I have done some video of me trying to pay some songs and this highlighted the problems, realising I need help to iron out bad habits and move forward, I have recently found a good guitar tutor who is also a professional musician, hopefully he will be able to guide me as well.

I listen to loads music from different genres, my favourites are Blues, Blues/Rock, Jazz, Prog and crossovers. Currently I am working on ‘Purple Haze’ – Jimi Hendrix, ‘Wish You Were Here’ – Pink Floyd, ‘Samba Pati’ Santana, ‘The Thrill is Gone’ – Albert King, ‘Let Me Play you the Blues’ – Albert King, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ – Lynyrd Skynyrd(full version which I find very tricky) and few simple finger picking songs. I am also practicing scales regularly and doing rhythm exercises, I can play most of the songs with 80-90% accuracy, excluding ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, but finger accuracy and dexterity lets me down at the moment, as well as keeping accurate tempo.

I am hoping to get good enough to play with along with a few like minded local musicians for fun, if I can get over my nerves as well.

I came across ActiveMelody and tried out the free lessons and found Brian’s presentation on G Minor & Major Pentatonic scales and how to use them in solos excellent! I will looking at the lessons, once I have worked out where is best to start.

Cheers

Adrian

[Martin W]

Hi Adrian , welcome to Active Melody, I would suggest pick a lesson that resonates with you and stick with it and get it to the point where you can play it through comfortably then move on BUT return to it often to maintain the fluency and to pick up any nuances missed and maybe develop further.
Also I can recommend taking part in the monthly challenges as this gives you a goal to work towards ,this months is due to be announced soon .
Happy picking .

Martin
Somerset uk .

[Adrian S]

Thanks Martin, I started on the lead guitar course this afternoon and finding good!

I will look at the Monthly Challenge probably have a go.

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