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Like Father/Like Son???

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 Cat
(@cat)
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Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 1224
Topic starter  

Wondering if there are many dads out there in Guitar Noise Land trying to instill the same sorts of lifestyle into their kid.

Here I am at the computer reviewing this site...and...wafting on the air...is one of my boys cycling through a TOUGH set of cordings I wrote for him. What do I hear? Good, good, good, good...then...ouch! He's 14...but I'm smilin'!

Question for the pops out there: how do you "point him the right way" without being overbearing???

Cat

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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(@trguitar)
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Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 3709
 

I bought my son a guitar when he was way too young. I envisioned us jamming. I eventually conceded he was not going to be a musician. Well, on his own, later on when he was 15 he asks me to teach him to play the bass guitar. I never pushed him, only encouraged him. Now he teaches me stuff. :lol: Check out Hear here for a clip of us playing together.

https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=40795

"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --


   
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 Cat
(@cat)
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Topic starter  

TR...

THANX for that...gotta get the middle kid...the bassist...to hear it.

Cat

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Bought my youngest daughter an acoustic guitar when she was about 10 - her best friend at the time had just got one, so of course she had to have one, too! I hadn't played for a few years, so I was rusty as hell - but I soon picked up a few chords again. Trouble was, Kayleigh and her friend didn't want to put the time in - too busy playing outside at that age. Guitar ended up being mine by default. As did the keyboard I got her a couple of years later when the same friend took up piano!

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@dogbite)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 6348
 

I don't have any kids myself, nut I helped raise a young guy; a close friends son. I babysat and played guitar. he banged things.
then he started playing drums, then bass, and now guitar. 18 years old and he is coming over on sunday and ere going to jam.
his mom and I always gave him space to decide and support his choices and opportunity arose. he grew up with music of all kinds around. his dad is jamaican, moms from Michigan, and I play post WWII pedal steel guitar music on the CD player.

I think the arts in general are important for kids. introducing them to art and creative activities encourages strong and well balanced growth. they can be exposed to all kinds of cultures, ideas which makes for a broader and richer understanding of the community and world. it makes a life more interesting.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=644552
http://www.soundclick.com/couleerockinvaders


   
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(@wes-inman)
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Joined: 20 years ago
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My 6 year old son is sitting right behind me as I write this practicing piano. He has been taking lessons maybe 8 months and is getting pretty good. He is not that interested in guitar, but my 9 year old daughter who has been playing piano about 3 years now (she is really good) wants an acoustic guitar. Her mom bought her a cheap one a few months ago but a neighbor boy broke it. I will probably get them both one for Christmas.

My son has actually gotten me back into piano. I played about 14 years ago and was getting pretty good, then got divorced and the piano was sold. So, I pretty much forgot everything I learned. But the last 2 months or so I have been helping him with his lessons. I am amazed, but he really seems to enjoy practicing with me more than playing by himself. So we will sit together and play his lessons. He used to rush through his lessons, now we will practice about an hour at a time. His teacher said he sees a big improvement since I've been practicing with him and wants us to continue. It's great for me too, I am learning to sight-read again.

So, I dunno if they will ever get into guitar, but I love that they both play piano and that my son enjoys practicing with me, I certainly enjoy practicing with him. :D

As far as your question, I don't know how to answer it. I think I am just kind of lucky that my kids do not mind me helping them with their music. They both like when I play guitar, maybe that encourages them?? I am actually kind of tough on them, I am always reminding my daughter to keep good time. One night I was a little tough and almost made her cry. When I saw that I gave her a big hug and told her she was a great player. She is. So, I worry about being overbearing too. With my son, it kinda works both ways. He will tell me when I make a mistake, and I will point out a passage that gives him trouble.

Both their mom and I always tell the kids how proud we are of them. And I like to think that both my kids see how seriously I take music, and how I will practice a part over and over to get it right, and hope that encourages them to do their best as well.

If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis


   
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 Cat
(@cat)
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Topic starter  

Ya know...I was a bit reticent about first posting that "like father/like son" bit the other day...but...hey...it's GREAT to hear from you folks about it. It's funny...and rather poignant...to see the long years we've been on this planet not all that wasted, after all!

Three sons:

one doing a bach at Griffith University (Queensland) in Modern Music/Digital Recording Enginerering. I had to take a Community College course (14 months) to REALLY get the hang of Protools and the ancillary stuff. He tagged along...and took it from there.

second...has a bass but prefers Playstation 3. He's a good lookin' kid so (hopefully) he'll get by in life "on his looks".

third...truly gifted and progressing rapidly. Just 14. I gave him (at 12) the very SAME solid body six my own dad gave me when I was 12...in 1963...a Harmony two pickup.

Two out of three? (Yes...Meatloaf was quite right...that ain't too bad!)

Cat

(PS: THANKS everybody!)

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Three daughters.....

Eldest two, I split up with their mother when they were 3 and 1. Didn't get to see them much after that, they moved away...still don't seem to want to make contact. Not much I can do about that, but they seem a mercenary pair, like their mother, only interested in what they can get....last time I saw them was at my mother's funeral, well they had to turn up, they'd been left money....

Youngest daughter, I split up with her mother when she was just turned 2 - I was a single parent for almost 10 years. Granted, I had a fair bit of help from my mother - she'd have her at weekends, then I could get a couple of days work in and earn a few quid. I did all sorts of rubbishy stay at home jobs - mailing envelopes, peeling (yeeeeuch! The SMELL!) shrimps, you name it, I did it, just to put more than the bare minimum (beans on toast!) on the table. Maybe that's why me and Kayleigh are so close - she knows I'd do anything for her, and during the last year or so, she's gone out of her way to help me when I've been really down.

I still have hopes Kayleigh'll pick up a guitar one of these days - she did try for a while, even went as far as registering as a GN member - but she's actually got a life, and starts a new job on Monday. Hope it works out for her - I've got my fingers crossed, anyway, but I know she'll work hard at it.

The other two? Well, it's up to them - they know where I live. And I bet they'd be round here like a shot if I won the lottery tomorrow.....

Ah well, one out of three ain't bad!

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@bluezoldy)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 329
 

I mentioned in a thread a few weeks ago that my son who had started learning bass when when he was 13 or so gave it away when he was 15 and seriously discovering girls. :P

Anyway, I added his bass to my guitar collection. :wink:

He's 18 now and moved to Sydney earlier this year for his first job. I was really happy yesterday when he rang to say he's going to give bass another go and has arranged for a friend to collect his gear.

My guitar collection just dropped by one. :? :lol:

Now if only I can get my 14yo daughter interested again ... she had a year's worth of lesson and I had a feeling she was a 'natural' (at least to a respectable playing level) but she got bored.

Oh how I wish now at 59 that I had gone further than half a dozen lessons at 13! :cry:

♪♫ Ron ♪♫

http://www.myspace.com/bluemountainsblues


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Oh how I wish now at 59 that I had gone further than half a dozen lessons at 13!

Don't all of us over 50's (or over 40's, or 30's, for that matter!) wish we'd given the guitar the same consideration in our youths....I wonder how many of us picked up a guitar, and struggled to learn a few chords, then put it down because life (girls/boys, work, family, etc) got in the way? Or put it down because it didn't come easily and had to be worked at? I wonder how many of us think, "hell, I REALLY wish I'd found the money to keep going to those guitar lessons?" or wish they hadn't sold that guitar when times got hard?

How many of us think, "****, I could have been really good by now if only I'd practised?" I know I do, but then again, life's too short to have regrets....so I'll just carry on doing what I'm doing, and if people like it, that'll give me a buzz - and if they don't, well, no biggie - I'll still enjoy playing, and hopefully learning, and hopefully getting better....

Guitar playing's for enjoyment, whether you're 16 or 66 - as long as you enjoy what you're doing, who gives a toss what the rest of the world thinks?

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

My son has actually gotten me back into piano. I played about 14 years ago and was getting pretty good, then got divorced and the piano was sold. So, I pretty much forgot everything I learned. But the last 2 months or so I have been helping him with his lessons. I am amazed, but he really seems to enjoy practicing with me more than playing by himself. So we will sit together and play his lessons. He used to rush through his lessons, now we will practice about an hour at a time. His teacher said he sees a big improvement since I've been practicing with him and wants us to continue. It's great for me too, I am learning to sight-read again.

So, I dunno if they will ever get into guitar, but I love that they both play piano and that my son enjoys practicing with me, I certainly enjoy practicing with him. :D

Wes, that's terrific to hear, especially where piano is concerned.

Playing music together like that is so much more important than slogging your way grimly up some kind of imaginary 'ladder of difficulty' that makes the whole journey seem like some endless chore. I really believe that the most vital part of music is discovering the simple pleasure of putting one note after another with joy and feeling, not about how complex you can make it. So many students seem to get bogged down in the detail and miss out on the understanding that it can be simple yet still good and still fun. Giving your son that knowledge is a truly valuable gift.

I was reading a post on a piano forum yesterday, where somebody asked "What was the first 'real' piece of music that you played?" Everybody duly trotted out the expected pieces by Beethoven, etc with some saying how how they hated them then, and still hated them years later.... I tried to put the view that ALL music is REAL music, even Baa Baa Black Sheep with one finger, and that if you needed a famous composer's label on it (either ancient or modern) to say it was 'real' then you'd missed the point. But I don't think it went down well. :D

I've noticed, over and over, on the piano forum how stressed out and neurotic about it all many of them are. They slog grimly through some 'curriculum' or other, set piece by set piece, getting tenser and tenser about whether their Chopin piece is up to scratch, or whatever..... and never apparently stepping back and just making some simple music for the fun of it. Part of that is that piano has a long and entrenched history of music pedagogy attached to it that seems to have become a bit fossilised, and also piano is often a very solitary instrument. Not only is it big and hard to move, but because you can play different notes with all ten digits, you can play very complex music all by yourself. So piano students can literally go for years only playing alone, or hearing bits and pieces from a teacher who is way above their standard. So they can miss out on the experience of making simple things sound and feel satisfying and good when you can play in a relaxed and friendly way with someone else.

It's a bit of a paradox - piano is often said (accurately I think) to be the easiest instrument to begin to learn on, yet it can build up to be super hard too. A child can learn to play a simple tune – say the basic melody line from a nursery rhyme – in a few minutes on a piano, using one finger if needs be. Compare that to a saxophone, for instance, where you might need all your fingers and thumbs to support the instrument and press a combination of buttons and levers, and do something tricky with your mouth, just to get one single note. :shock: Yet that very simplicity of a piano is often neglected in the rush to 'get somewhere' with it. Sad really.

So, after all that waffle.... :oops: ... I think that the very best thing we can do for our kids is to teach them that music can be simple, and that it can be improved and enjoyed by sharing it in an unselfish way by playing with others. The worst thing we can do is try and flog them up some imagined ladder of achievement. Show them the way, by all means. Inspire them if you can. But let them find their own challenges and paths. Get a good simple but solid foundation going first, and leave the hero stuff until they're ready. And then let it be their own hero fantasy not ours... :mrgreen:

Cheers,

Chris


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Joined: 20 years ago
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Couple of years back, I was going through one of those plateaus. I'm thinking to myself, I'll never get any better than this. I'll always be average/mediocre, with maybe a couple of good moments here and there that just aren't enough to make me want to keep playing. I seriously thought about getting rid of all my guitars, till one night the daughter had a couple of friends round. They were having a drink before going out clubbing - and a couple of them wandered into my guitar/computer room to listen to me playing.

I was actually working on one of my own songs at the time - and both the guys who wandered in had no knowledge of guitar whatsoever. But they seemed to like the chords I was trying to put together....then Kayleigh walked in, and the conversation turned to something along the lines of, "thank God she's only my step mum - if she was my real mum, I'd probably want to play the blues like my dad does....."

Something clicked that night, though. Those two lads were quite happy to watch and listen to me struggling to put some chords together, rather than listen to today's music in Kayleigh's room - got me thinking, maybe I have got something after all? One of them asked me what sort of music did I listen to - gave him a quick sample of my WM playlist. I said, "it's only a quick sample, but it'll give you an idea." The playlist is about a hundred songs long, and growing daily - he asked how many of them I could actually play? And the answer was, "most of them!" - I was being honest, too, I've always played along to the WM playlist......favourite songs, the songs you've GOT to learn - I just had no idea it had gotten that big, or that I could jam along to virtually anything on there, I knew the songs so well....

That sort of gave me the kick in the butt I needed to keep playing, at a time when virtually everything else in my life was going wrong....I thought to myself, the hell with it, I've always got the music.....and I still have, and it's still keeping me going through the hard times.........

And as always, I remain optimistic - things can only get better.....

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@bluezoldy)
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Posts: 329
 

Apart from the tuition and wonderful help one gets on this site and forum, it's the sharing and friendship on threads like this that me want to come back to GN every day. :)

♪♫ Ron ♪♫

http://www.myspace.com/bluemountainsblues


   
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(@wes-inman)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5582
 

Chris

Thanks so much. You know, I think you hit the nail on the head. When my son has to practice alone, it seems like work, but when we practice together, it is fun for both of us. Plus, I sing the songs as we go, he doesn't know this, but I do that to help him keep time. :D

As far as playing though, he is better than me. I make more mistakes than him, and have a little tougher time reading the bass staff. Plus, I am also trying to read the lyrics. Many times he will look away from the music, I think he is actually trying to show me how much better he is. I get a chuckle out of that, but then tell him to always read the music.

The songs we play are pretty simple, but not that simple. We are playing both staffs, chords on both, even have to do some reaching techniques (right hand over left) etc... I am loving it. I don't mind the simple tunes either, some of them are very beautiful. We play one called Lil Liza Jane and I just love it. Here it is on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiFpiJQn0-o

We play it a little slower, I really love playing this song. :D

If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis


   
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 Cat
(@cat)
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Topic starter  

In 1969 I attended the screwey festival that drew like 500,000 like-minded weirdos in upstate New York. It's been DIFFICULT to to chase that same vibe these past 40 years. So, hey, looks like this newbie found a great website.

Are we New Age Senstive Guys or what??? http://forums.guitarnoise.com/posting.php?mode=reply&f=9&t=40804 #

Cat

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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