First Hello

Hello:

I started guitar lessons a hear and a half ago, and about a year after my son, Alex, (13 now) started. We are both mostly interested in classic rock and blues, but I am also interested in folk, blue grass, classical and selective country. My interest came about when my son started. I couldn't resist picking up his $100 Montana everyday to learn a chord and play around with them. I was working big hours at the time and found that it helped me decompress from work, relieve stress, and keep me away from the TV. Once my busy season was over I started lessons.

Alex proved his commitment by sticking with it on the Montana despite how rough it was on his small hands. So, we got him an Alvarez RD20 which was much easier for him to play. Eventually he put in enough time on the acoustics to "earn his right" to justify the cost of a decent electric. We got him an Ibanez Artcore semi-hollow, with a pair of humbuckers and a tail piece. Very nice guitar for a decent price. He gets a great sound out of it and still likes it a lot. He has been learning blues lately and has been working on improvised leads. Part of this is to help introduce him to theory. He just started learning Red House to take a break from the theory and improvised leads.

I started on the Alvarez but soon took a chance and purchased a used Taylor Big Baby. This turned out to be a great decision. We love this guitar. Eventually I got anxious about an electric, so I recently purchased an American Fender Telecaster. It's a bit of an overkill given my current ability, but I can visualize some day calling this my trusty old friend. It's also a good alternative for both of us to the Ibanez sound. We also have a Crate 30 watt practice amp and a VOX AD50VT. despite the nice electric guitars the Taylor never sits long enough to collect dust.

My work over the past few months has been focused on music theory by means of composing my own piece with the assistance of our Berklee alum instructor. He is a bit of theory geek, but does not insist on exact replication of music. He loves to explore variations to everything as long as it sounds good and is interesting. Alex's improvised leads for instance can be what he wants as long as it stays in the same mode and keeps to the basic structure. A lot of the instructor's variations are just to make some things accessible to us, or to emphasize something in particular he thinks we should know at the time. Very recently I started learning Born to Run to get a break from the theory lessons. Both Alex and I find it more satisfying to learn to play guitar as opposed to learning a bunch of songs, if that make sense to anyone out there.

The next step is for me to learn to back Alex up so he can practice his blues leads. He needs a blues backing track in B to practice with, and that has been impossible to find, so its going to be up to me to provide the backing. It will be good to start learning to play together. However, my next post will be to see if someone knows where I can find a good blues backing track in B.

This is where Guitar Noise comes in. This is a fantastic supplement to the lessons we are taking, and if we suddenly went without the lessons, we are confident that we would continue to progress at a respectable pace with GN alone. We find that when David posts a song lesson, for example, it isn't so much about the song as it is about becoming a good guitar player. There is only so much I can take in over a half hour lesson, so being able to come to GN to review and get more details is a great help. Alex seems to take all of it in with no effort, but he is 41 years younger.