What age did you start learning to play? And what was your influence or reason?

[64Guitars]

and a pitch pipe (has anyone EVER got a guitar in tune with one of those things?).

I've still got my pitch pipe from the mid-sixties. It's a Kent No. 178 A440 Spanish Guitar Tuner. Made in Germany. I also have a tuning fork somewhere, though I can't find it at the moment. I used them both a lot back in the day. There were no electronic tuners then, so pitch pipes and tuning forks were essential. I didn't use all six notes of the pitch pipe though. I'd just get the E string in tune with the pitch pipe, then tune the rest of the strings to each other.



     

It's not too clear in the photos, but the ends are stamped with the note names. On one side, there's E, A, and D. Then you flip it around and there's G, B, and E on the other side. I think there were other pitch pipes available back then that only played one note, which was really all you needed. It just provided a reference so you'd be in tune with other instruments. Also important when trying to learn songs from records.

[Hook]

Not sure why but I have a small collection of pitch pipes also. Never used any of them, I think a few of my nukes came with them.

[kenny mac]

Pitch pipe Fest ? 

[alfstone]

At 14.

My father bought me an acoustic guitar...a Carmelo Catania. Price: 10000 Italian Lire (5 Euro today); it's still at my mom's house.

I asked a guitar since I went madly in love with:

- Beach Boys - Barbara Ann
- the intro of Happy Together (Turtles)

Never had any guitar or music lesson.

I'm a self-made man.  

Alfredo

[cuthbert]

I have always loved music, for as far back as I can remember.

My parents had a half-decent portable phonograph, and they had a fair number LPs when I was 2 or 3 years old. One day in late '64, my mother brought home 'Meet The Beatles' (the USA version of 'With The Beatles'), and she remembers that I was very, very excited by their songs, and would always ask to hear the LP. I remember this as well (and I still have that LP) - it was an awakening moment, I think. Not sure if I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show that year, though - if I did (and that's possible), I don't remember it now. Anyway, my parents never bought another Beatles album, but that one did get quite a few listens in the house, along with some Calypso music, Kingston Trio, and 50s rock and roll compilation albums - so there was always music at home, as well as the radio. My grandmother gave me my own transistor radio when I was 6, and then I was on my way listening to popular music.

Unfortunately, there were no musical instruments in our house, although I had and uncle who I didn't see very often who played some guitar, and one of my grandfather's brothers on the opposite side of the family played a ukulele professionally, but I didn't have much interest in the ukulele at that time. I do have fond memories of mother singing everyday while doing housework, even when I was a young child. That must have been an influence.

Anyway, after a childhood filled with listening to popular music, I finally got my first guitar for Christmas when I was 15. I had wanted an electric guitar very badly since listening to Kiss, Sabbath, Zeppelin, and Rush over the last year or so, and I wanted to play guitar like these heroes of mine. Didn't have much interest in The Beatles at this point (that wouldn't come back until a few years later. But I had high hopes for a guitar and the fun that lay ahead, until I opened the box on Xmas morn and found a classical guitar, made in Korea.  I plunked around with it a little bit, but lost interest pretty quickly because it just wasn't the type of guitar I wanted. Spoiled brat.  And I bought 'Never Mind The Bollocks' that next spring, and that was the permanent end of my interest in that guitar.

About a year later, our family moved to Maine and I took $65 dollars I had saved up from working a paper route and bought a "Cobra" Telecaster-style electric guitar, made in Japan. It was a nice-looking guitar with a sunburst finish, but oh, it had some very high action and I knew nothing about anything like a set up. I also got a Silvertone amp from my uncle, spent a few dollars more on a strap, a cable, and a pick, plugged in and started to play. I monkeyed around with it on and off for a few months, learning to pick out melodies on a single string. I tried to learn a few chords, but it was seriously uncomfortable to due to the poor setup, and once again I lost interest. About a year later, I decided I wanted to play bass, and I got a Fender Music Master base which I also plunked around with for a few more months on the Silvertone amp - but it's not much fun playing bass alone. Then came school and work, and I didn't play any guitar again for about five years.

Finally, when I was 22 and was working at a TV station, good friend also working there who was a few years older than me and had been playing in bands since he was 14 convinced me to try the guitar again. I bought a new, inexpensive Fender Squire Bullet electric guitar - entry-level, but it was pretty good workhorse for learning and it came set up with action low enough that I could actually play chords without much discomfort. And I began to learn a few chords, simple shuffles and melodies, and I was on my way.

So I think I got a late start playing my own music. Many times, I wish I knew somebody back when I was a teenager who could have helped point me in the right direction, but alas it did not happen that way.

Well, better late than never!

[ODH]

Brilliant thread, very interesting to hear everyone's story.  Here's mine.

I hated music in school and I gave it up as soon as I could, after the second year.  That same summer (1979) I started yearning to play the music I was listening to (Clash, Pistols, Buzzcocks, Ramones) on guitar, and I had my mum buy me a cheap acoustic for Xmas.  All I had to play music on was crappy Sharp cassette player and I used to play along to the Ramones It's Alive album and the Clash first album, picking out the bass lines to figure out the song structure.  I had a book which was trying to teach me how to play 'On Top of Old Smokey', and I guess I learned some chords from that.

I had a really cheap Les Paul copy a couple of years later, don't remember the brand.  I took it apart and painted it blue a few years later.  It never played another note.

The first band I was in at school was a band that did synth pop covers - Depeche Mode and OMD, and I played bass (on my guitar).  This is around 1980/81.

My musical influences as well as the above came from songs I heard on the John Peel show and from my mother's record collection - she had some Zeppelin, some Sabbath, a lot of early 70's electronic music and also some punk, the first Sham 69 album, I remember.

Then in the 80's in college I tried to listen to music I could learn guitar from, so a lot of Van Halen and other rock bands, but also a lot of Indie music, a lot of the Smiths.  Also started listening to Jazz a lot then.  I was in a band at the time which was in a kind of Gang of Four / dance-indie style.  Then I saw Wilko Johnson in concert in 1986, sold my guitar for a Telecaster and that was that.

Kept writing and recording through the 90's, had a long break through the first decade of this century, then picked it up again in 2010.

The rest is history.  And the future.

[Pete C]

I think I started wanting to play guitar around the age of 11 after watching bands like Rod Stewart and the Faces, T.Rex, Slade, Sweet, David Bowie, Roxy Music etc on Top of the Pops, which was the only music programme at the time apart from The Old Grey Whistle Test which was on too late.
I finally got my first guitar for my 14th birthday but was allowed to have it a few weeks early as a TV series Play Guitar with Ulf Goran was due to start at the beginning of the school holidays in July 74. So I got my book and vinyl record to go with the programme, a set of pitch pipes and we went and bought my guitar from Boots the Chemist of all places. As my parents had no faith in me learning to play, I got the cheapest one - a classical guitar shape, I think it was called a folk guitar.  We took it home, tuned it up and the top started to peel away from the sides!. We took it back to Boots and after disappearing for a while, the assistant came back with another box, lifted the top and asked if this would do. A quick glance revealed it was their more expensive Jumbo model - so we agreed and hurried away.
I spent the next few years learning the typical guitar book stuff, then when the Punk movement started, I'd play along to the Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, the Jam. At 18 I got my first electric - a Satellite, very loosely based on a Strat. with cheese-grater action and a tremelo that would snap the strings if used to vigourously.
That's when I started my first band with some friends (in the hope of attracting girls as well as hoping to become a guitar hero) - probably the worst and most unsuccessful band ever playing about 3 youth club gigs in the 3 years we were together. We used to do mainly Clash and Ska covers. After a few months with the Satellite I saw the Clash live and decided i wanted a Les Paul.  I got a cheap bolt-on neck Les Paul copy which, after the Satellite, looked like a real guitar and had a nice low action. I eventually took it apart to discover it had single coils in humbucker covers, a plywood body and the carved maple cap was actually a plastic moulding.
After the band split, I carried on playing guitar at home and after i got married, then in about 1996 started a band with some workmates, left them for a year to play in a semi-pro Soul band, then went back to the old band which now had a new singer and drummer. We carried on playing and doing a few pub gigs till 2004 when the singer left. We never managed to replace her so it sort of fizzled out after that. Got my BR600 on 2007 but it took a while to get to grips with it. Then I joined Songcrafters in 2010 - something I've been grateful for ever since !