Hello from Niagara. Canada

[dodgechargerfan]

Hi,

I'm Dave.

• How did you start playing, and what has your journey looked like so far?
  • I inherited my older brother's guitar when I was a teenager. I goofed around. I took some lessons - a few different times. Then I stopped playing for years with a few instances of having a guitar kicking around. I started playing again with more earnest when my daughter wanted to take lessons. Excessive noodling and another round of lessons later and I still don't know what I'm doing but I can fake it real good (for a short while).
• If we could wave a magic wand, what would you LOVE to be able to do on guitar?
  • Know what I am doing. I can play stuff. Here. There. However, there's no linkage between the stuff I can do. I have a lot of the mechanics down. So, it appears that I know how to play, but I can't string things together. I struggle to know what is going on in a song. I'd wave a magic wand and solve all of that, if I could.
• What does your ultimate dream look like?
  • A studio on my property (and some property) where I can help friends get their music projects complete. It would have proper studio space and allow for big jam sessions. Then , ultimately, I'd like to be good enough to sit-in and/or contribute to the projects.

My "big moment" story is fun, I think.

I have friends that have a band. The guitarist was a long-time family friend. The singer/front man was a high school acquaintance of my wife. We saw an ad for a charity event touting the debut of a brand new band and recognized them. We went and they've all become great friends since.

Anyway, they found out that I play guitar and always asked me to get up and play a song with them at one of their gigs.

I always said, "Sure. Some day." Well, one day I was at a house party of a friend and the singer was there and he basically voluntold me that I'd be playing "this song" in two weeks at "this gig". All in fun, of course, but I agreed and all of our mutual friends were there to witness it.

So, I learned the song in 2 weeks. I already had a song book that came with a CD of backing tracks. So, what I learned was pretty darn faithful to the original. Which is good because that's what these guys do - try to recreate the original as much a possible within the context of their band.

I showed up late with my guitar... I know.

At the first break, the guitarist told me when I'd be up - "third song into the set", right after Pink Floyd and The Cult. Yeah, no pressure...

He actually signaled me to get up there during the Cult song so as to shorten any gap in playing. So, I got up there and strapped on my guitar and played along unplugged wondering how we were both going to plug into his rig and play together.

Yeah, no. He unplugged and picked up the tambourine. At least he stayed up there with me and covered the backing vocals.

So here's the "big" part:

• It was my first time on stage with a band.
• It was the first time playing for people. At home, I'd stop playing if someone walked in the room. Even family. I'd never played with friends. Nothing.
  • Well, to be honest there was that one time when I faked playing bass with my high school friend's band but we were just jamming and I had no idea what I was doing. That lasted one afternoon.... LOL
• We didn't rehearse the song together.
• The band had never even heard me play.
• It was my first time playing at stage volume levels. That really threw me as it sounded like my playing was coming out somewhere else (I was hearing my playing coming out the other guitar player's monitor and bouncing off the back wall) but once I moved, things shifted into place for me. That was an enlightening moment for me.

I did it! It went well! My only big flub was when we were done, I totally tuned out what the singer was saying and walked off stage. LOL I missed the big bow.

 

The band must have been happy because they asked me up again the next night at a different gig. I've payed with them about 20 times. Always the same song though. They keep pushing me to learn more songs. So, yeah that's another thing on my wish list.

 

Oh, and Hi everyone!

[Daisy]

Hi Dave, 

I love your story! It seems like you have quite the passion and the drive to really put yourself out there. 

I can't wait to see you learn all the songs you want! 

Keep rocking. 

[Shaan]

Hey Dave. What a great story and intro. Love it. My first stage performance was when I was at college and I played oxygene. It was supposed to be played on clean tone and the guitarist before me left the amp on distortion. I had no idea what distortion was or how to work the amp and basically screwed up the whole song. It was totally humiliating but it taught me about how to be a better musician and was a great learning experience. It also provides the fuel to achieve musical mastery and control. Look forward to seeing your successes as you go through the course👍🎸