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Picking up my Guitar

2022-12-29

Just kidding, I don't have a guitar. I borrowed my sisters acoustic guitar, so that's the one I am picking up.

I am not new to the guitar, it's just that when I discovered triathlon in the earliest 90'ies I immediately got real serious about that and stopped playing, it completely took over my life, in a good way, for some years. And now, about 30 years and a lot of triathlon training and racing later, I feel quite done with that.

Now I miss a creative outlet. I miss playing an instrument.

I was considering learning some new instrument, keyboard, bass guitar, violin, and the Chapman Stick was considered, but then my 13 year old daughter scored a cheap electric guitar and wanted to play Metallica, AC/DC, that sort of stuff. Pretty much what I wanted to play when I started, and we've had a lot of fun together with that. So I got pulled in.

I started playing when I was 15 or 16, getting real serious about it, dreaming about becoming a professional musician, even. I was mostly into metal, and had a big revelation when I heard Yngwie Malmsteen. Knowing and loving classical music, and especially J. S. Bach, suddenly combined with metal and Malmsteen's Jimi Hendrix influence like that, was a big deal for me.

At 17 I moved to Aalborg and found a guitar teacher that taught me to play some of the music I liked, including Malmsteen, but also turned me on to Allan Holdsworth. And then Steve Vai released the, still, mind-blowing Passion and Warfare album in 1990, but by then my ambitions was waning. I had trouble finding a band, it seemed everywhere everyone just wanted to play blues-rock, and I have always found that incredibly uninspiring. And I moved around a lot in those years, which was not helping either.

Anyway, I'm now picking up where I left, kind of. Money being really tight at the moment I haven't got an electric guitar setup, just my sisters Spanish guitar, and it's pretty frustrating. But I have bought some books on music theory and transcriptions of Steve Vai songs, and is re-learning and re-realizing a lot of things about music, and I'm loving it.

Also, a LOT has happened in the last 30 years, integrating computers into learning and creating music, it makes my head spin sometimes. It's fantastic! Looking very much forward to hooking a guitar and keyboard up to the computer, and start composing and learning. There are also good resources for play-along music for practice. It's so much better being a guitarist in 2022 than in 1989, that's for sure.

When I listen to Steve Vai's For the Love of God I get the feels. I want to learn to play that song, and the notes and tabs are in one of the books I bought, complete with a downloadable MP3 to play along with. I reckon it'll take me at least 3 years to learn, counted from when I get a suitable guitar and setup for playing it.

Wish me luck. :-)