Introducing Myself

[Desert Jim]

• How did you start playing, and what has your journey looked like so far?

I come from a very musical family.  My mother was a music and piano teacher and school choir and theater director and my father also played piano a little guitar.  I took piano lessons and then took up alto sax in elementary school.  When I was in the 5th grade my father came home one evening with a beautiful Spanish nylon string guitar, regular classical guitar scale with a premium hard-shell case that he bought from a hippie on  the street.  I learned a few basic chords and accompanied Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Already Gone by The Eagles.  In high school I took that same guitar to school and signed up for beginning guitar class as an elective my Junior and Senior years.  There I asked a nice girl to teach me songs by BTO and as a talented guitar player, she taught me.  Then in high school I took up electric bass guitar which I played more like rhythm guitar through a substantial Peveay bass amp.  I mostly played alone but did jam a couple of times with garage players.  I stayed with that into my second year of college.  Then that same year I switched to electric guitar--A 1979 Peavey T-60 which I used to play along with Rush, Kiss and Led Zeppelin songs.  Then I finished College and went to the Air Force and stopped playing for a long time.  After the Air Force while in grad school earning my MBA I bought first guitar since the Peavey-- a used Yamaha acoustic-electric nylon string guitar with a relatively narrow neck and "smaller" nut width, and thinner body and an oval-elliptical sound hole.  I loved how super handy that guitar was. The electric function was broken on the Yamaha so I just played acoustically. Later in the early 2000's I bought a couple of Ovation guitars and a Gibson SG and a double cut-away Les Paul, and started re-teaching myself guitar and was eventually good enough to sing a bit and play for friends in the backyard.  Songs like Linger and Zombie by the Cranberries, Rhinoceros, Disarm and Cherub Rock by the Pumpkins, and The World I Know by Collective Soul, and Blurry by Puddle of Mudd, and Wonderwall by Oasis, etc. (Footnote: Zombie and Disarm are almost the same song on the guitar).  I invested in several more electric guitars in the teens and started relearning with Guitar Freedom Formula program which is allowing me to delve into crude lead guitar playing for the first time in my life, learning keys, major, minor and pentatonic scales, and scale modes, and playing primitive leads to backing tracks.

• If we could wave a magic wand, what would you LOVE to be able to do on guitar?

I'd love to be able to play by ear, smoothly and tirelessly, not just rock and pop, but weird stuff like EDM or even classic 60's adult contemporary or 80's alternative/new-wave.

• What does your ultimate dream look like?

Playing a set at an open mic and getting recruited by a band as a result.  Teaching guitar for the big bucks.  Becoming proficient on keyboard and synth too.

[Fred Soukup]

@Desert JimWelcome to the Forum. Classic 60's wasn't "Classic" when I was learning guitar. 🤣

Fred 🎸