I started fairly late on guitar when I was 18. But that is all in people's heads. I now know that it really doesn't matter what age you start. But when I was young I thought it did matter.
I will tell you a secret. This is what impresses people.
PLAYING A SONG FROM BEGINNING TO END IS WHAT IMPRESSES PEOPLE.
Yep. That's it.
I ran into a young fellow once with his girlfriend playing guitar. He was attending some fancy guitar college. I've never even had a lesson. He was just noodling, playing all sorts of exotic scales and all these trick speed exercises. It was obvious he could play. He was much faster than me, and probably knows way more about music than me.
But he never actually played a song.
So, I asked if I could play his guitar. I played about 4 or 5 songs that I have known for years and sang to them. Now honestly, I knew I had these songs down and even sounded fairly well on the singing. But it was nothing fancy at all. Very simple songs really.
But the young fellow and especially his girlfriend were blown away. His girlfriend kept saying, "Wow, he's great!" I was laughing inside. I am pretty good, I should be. I've been playing over 30 years. But what I played was something anybody playing one year could easily do.
I am not writing this to brag about myself. I am a fairly good player, but no Steve Vai for certain.
Playing hyper fast scales and doing tapping does not impress people. Not for long anyway. But playing songs is what impresses people. This is what you practice scales and chord progressions for. Not to show off, BUT TO PLAY SONGS.
Take someone like Jimmy Buffet. He just gets up there and strums his 6 string. Any fairly good guitarist can do what he does on guitar. But he writes great songs and sings them pretty darn good too.
Good enough to make millions of dollars and be able to live as a professional musician his whole life.
Want to impress people? Learn to play complete songs. They don't have to be complicated, people don't care about that. But noodling does not impress people.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
You make an interesting point Wes.
I impressed myself and other people after 2 months of playing. That's when I could play a song right through. Actually, I could play the song before I even practiced scales and chord progressions. Come to think of it, I could play a song before I even knew there was such as thing as a scale.
Now what would really impress me, and probably other people is if I finally got the fingering, rhythm and strumming to Smells Like Teen Spirit down.
