A 'mature guy' with his first Guitar - First day

Hi and welcome

I am a 42 year old father of three and a grandfather of a 18 month old , picked up the guitar last November ( 2004 ) can't play but learning something new nearly every week . When I first started thinking about playing a guitar I was about 7 but I wanted to play Rugby League for Australia so from then until I was 30 Rugby League took over my life , my family always supported me in my belief that one day I would make it , it might have happened if I was blessed with the talent . Now I am constant pain from injuries from my playing days and the guitar gives me such enjoyment and it now has consumed my life like Rugby League used to . You will get some great advise from the very many wonderfully talented people who live in this musical mad house :wink:

be nice :!:
hilch

HI Hilch,

Sorry with the lateness of the reply. I'm a tad bit older than you I think. I refuse to make those calculations any longer. :roll: I remember watching a team of American against a team of British playing Rugby in Hitler's Berlin Stadium way back in the West Berlin days. Cloudy day as I recall, and the ground was a bit damp. I remember thinking how scary rough that game looked. All the mud and blood and raw power of people clearly having a great time while bashing the devil out of themselves and each other. Never for an instant wanting to play at all. But I can well understand the passion for the game I saw there and I can see how you could take that passion and transfer it to guitar. When you say you can't play guitar and that you didn't have the talent to play Rugby at the highest level you aspired to I am reminded of the man who sold my my Blueridge when I said that clearly he must be a guitarist. This was before he had picked up a variety of guitars to play for me. He shook his head and said he didn't know about that, it was others to judge. I heard him play and I would say he's very good at playing. I'm thinking you were a pretty good Rugby player and have taken that energy to your guitar playing. Must be good at that as well. Thanks for the kind words Hilch.

You came to the right place friend. If you've been reading here, you know this is the best guitar forum on the net.

Thanks TwistedFingers,

I can't say I've been to every guitar place on the net but you know, once you stumble on a site that has smart, knowledgable and patient folks you don't really need to keep looking.

Gadlaw,
Welcome to guitarnoise :) Great introductory post bud. You'll enjoy the pain after a while ;) . Really, it's a great instrument, it takes a lot of work, which you obviously already know. And maybe in a little less than a year you can be jamming with your kids eh? Gotta get them to learn some blues piano.

Welcome again.

Thanks Taso,

I think one of the reasons I felt able to start with the guitar is because my oldest is off to University. I feel less self conscious. And while he hasn't discovered blues yet he is fascinated by the scores to movies and the musical components of video games. I hadn't really thought about playing with the boys later one. Something to think about. :)

Wat so special in Chris_c :roll:

Ask Nils about the advice he got from Chris :D :D :D :D :D :D
The advice I got from Chris_C was quite lengthy but very informative and accurate. Very much like gadlaws opening comments.

And that is a good thing.

Welcome aboard, everytime I read an account of one's beginning, I am fascinated. Besides being a source of inspiration, the stories always remind me of how I got started with the same apprehensions.

You have overcome the hardest hurdle; you have gotten started. Give yourself time, practice with focus and sincerity, the reward is bound to be extraordinary.

Cheers
Vic

Wat so special in Chris_c :roll:

Ask Nils about the advice he got from Chris :D :D :D :D :D :D
The advice I got from Chris_C was quite lengthy but very informative and accurate. Very much like gadlaws opening comments.

And that is a good thing.

I wasn't criticizing Chris, I love reading his posts (same sense of humour), and I am looking forward to gadlaws

I wasn't criticizing Chris, I love reading his posts (same sense of humour), and I am looking forward to gadlaws
I knew that :lol: and I agree

Geez guys..... :oops:

Hi Gadlaw and welcome to GN,

Sorry it's taken so long to say hi, but it's been a busy few days.

You are clearly a man who puts a great deal of effort and intensity into whatever you do and I believe that you'll love the guitar. It has many aspects that seem tailor made for you.

The guitar, and music itself, can be deeply complex or soothingly simple. The musical journey can seem tough and unfair at times, yet unbelievably rewarding when it comes together. It can be cold or hot, chaotic or serene, secular or sacred.

As others have said, your age is not factor. At times you might think "gee, this is hard, maybe I left it a bit late". But all that's happened is that you've hit the difficulties that every singe player hits along the way, regardless of when they start.

90% of all difficulties are sorted out by practice, practice and practice and the other 10% is mostly finding out what motivates you to keep practising when the going gets lumpy or interest flags. I started in my late 50's and am already wildly successful. Well, wild anyway. Maybe more like half way between atrocious and mediocre but accelerating rapidly upwards with every strum.

Enjoy your journey and have a good time here at GN. :D
I do it to please only myself and to retain a visable beacon into the world

It's good for guitar too..... :wink: :wink: .. and one day you'll have the great joy of discovering that your playing has started to please others as well. 8)

Cheers, Chris

Geez guys..... :oops:

Hi Gadlaw and welcome to GN,

Sorry it's taken so long to say hi, but it's been a busy few days.

You are clearly a man who puts a great deal of effort and intensity into whatever you do and I believe that you'll love the guitar. It has many aspects that seem tailor made for you.

The guitar, and music itself, can be deeply complex or soothingly simple. The musical journey can seem tough and unfair at times, yet unbelievably rewarding when it comes together. It can be cold or hot, chaotic or serene, secular or sacred.

As others have said, your age is not factor. At times you might think "gee, this is hard, maybe I left it a bit late". But all that's happened is that you've hit the difficulties that every singe player hits along the way, regardless of when they start.

90% of all difficulties are sorted out by practice, practice and practice and the other 10% is mostly finding out what motivates you to keep practising when the going gets lumpy or interest flags. I started in my late 50's and am already wildly successful. Well, wild anyway. Maybe more like half way between atrocious and mediocre but accelerating rapidly upwards with every strum.

Enjoy your journey and have a good time here at GN. :D
I do it to please only myself and to retain a visable beacon into the world

It's good for guitar too..... :wink: :wink: .. and one day you'll have the great joy of discovering that your playing has started to please others as well. 8)

Cheers, Chris

Your reputation precedes you sir. Folks around here think most highly of you. Glad to make your acquaintance and thank you for the kind encouraging words. With every fine gentleman who pops up here who started older than me I feel greatly encouraged. I don't think I'm such an ego that I need to be the first one over a mountain but I do like to hear that others have made it up and over and back again to tell the tale. It's especially important when you're introduced to your guitar teacher and he appears to be half your age. Yikes. But I think of it a bit like this, I'm a bike rider as well. Twenty to forty miles at a clip and while I pass many younger riders there's always some wizened geez that zips past me like I'm riding backwards. In other words, it's not age determinate. Of course I suspect that most of those guys are riding shorter distances but that's just my bitterness talking. :lol:

Anyways, I see you found your way over to my site. Thought that quote seemed brilliant. 8) My interests are nothing if not eclectic. Any given day I'll find myself in discussions of law, punishments, photography, parrot raising, art, cycling and so on. Right now I'm having a involved email discussion with a danish graduate student about elements of punishment theory in relation to a french philosopher Michel Foucault. Makes my eyes glaze too.

With this guitar of mine I'm spending time trying to find chords and attempting to abuse my fingers before I have my first actual lesson next Wednesday. I'm fairly certain that if I turn out the lights they will glow a dull red. Right now I'm absolutely convinced that my fingers are unnaturally soft and thick as well. Groggy with sleep. Time to turn the lights out, hold my left hand up and follow the glow to bed. Thanks again

Anyways, I see you found your way over to my site. Thought that quote seemed brilliant. 8) My interests are nothing if not eclectic. Any given day I'll find myself in discussions of law, punishments, photography, parrot raising, art, cycling and so on.

Indeed I did find your site. And a very interesting journey it was too. :) I've never Googled a forum name before, so I've no idea why I did so this time.

I think it was the shape of the word "Gadlaw", I couldn't help wondering if it was an inversion of the German sounding "Waldag", or perhaps "W.Aldag" (Aldag rang a vague bell, which I couldn't place but which I've since realised was because I've seen Ralph Aldag riding in "Le Tour"). Or maybe it represented interests in law and gadding about, or.... what? Anyway, I didn't expect to find what I did. 8)

We have a lot of wild parrots living around our house, so maybe one of them just squawked the Google suggestion in my ear.... :wink:

Cheers, Chris
(Bike owner, bike race watcher, bike admirer, but rarely bike rider...)

Indeed I did find your site. And a very interesting journey it was too. :) I've never Googled a forum name before, so I've no idea why I did so this time.

I think it was the shape of the word "Gadlaw", I couldn't help wondering if it was an inversion of the German sounding "Waldag", or perhaps "W.Aldag" (Aldag rang a vague bell, which I couldn't place but which I've since realised was because I've seen Ralph Aldag riding in "Le Tour"). Or maybe it represented interests in law and gadding about, or.... what? Anyway, I didn't expect to find what I did. 8)

We have a lot of wild parrots living around our house, so maybe one of them just squawked the Google suggestion in my ear.... :wink:

Cheers, Chris
(Bike owner, bike race watcher, bike admirer, but rarely bike rider...)

I thought I felt my ears burning there. Happens every time I'm googled. Nothing too mysterious about the gadlaw tag. It's my initials and my degree. One of my degrees. Gad is not only my initials, it's also one of the twelve tribes of Israel. It's also a bunch of other less interesting things. When I went looking to get a domain my name was gone, my initials was taken but gadlaw was still there so that's that.

As for the "Le Tour" - I'm still waiting for my 6 disk set of dvd's from this last Tour. Lance Armstrong's 7th victory and all. Very exciting to watch. It should be interesting next year.

And all those wild parrots, each would retail at over a thousand dollars in the States, be they rose breasted Cockatoos, Sulfur, etc. Even if you paid that much for one I imagine you'd still hold your ears and give a hearty plea for it to be quiet once in a while. I'm a Macaw kind of guy myself. Greenwing Macaw, loud as anything with two wings.

Cheers

Very late into the game here, but there is this commercial on TV where a coach is talking to his football players and he says:

"There are two kinds of people, those who think it's possible and those who think it's impossible. They are both right."

Welcome to the journey.