First song you learned...

[Rain]

My older cousin used to babysit me, she was a bit of a singer and had learned a few things on the guitar, so, officially, the first thing I learned was a one finger/one note at a time version of Twist and Shout. On a cheap, toy acoustic guitar.

That guitar was destroyed by a friend of the family, but a few years later, I finally got a cheap electric to replace it. 

By then, I was into heavy metal, but it soon downed on me that I would never be able to play Eruption unless I went back, and back, and back to where it began.

I started with my old friends Elvis and Scotty Moore and tried to orient myself from there.

Eventually I found this record in my parents' collection.

It is the first guitar solo I tried to teach myself. I still remember... I really earned every single note, one at a time...

Kids today have NO idea.

I remember playing the first bit of that song for friends in my grandparents backyard when I was 13. Everybody's wearing Iron Maiden and Saxon t-shirts - including myself - but I am making a point - although no one seemed to get it. 🤣

But I knew I was right. This is where it all came from.

What's YOUR story?

[T Boog]

 The first guitar solo I learned (minus the harmony part) was Bonnie Tyler's "It's a Heartache". I learned it from my big sister's 45" single. I still remember being very proud of myself when I figured it out. 

The second solo I learned was a basic version of Willie Nelson's Blue eyes crying in the Rain from my mom's record. I still remember having trouble figuring out the double stops( I prob scratched that record to sh*t). But it was good early ear training. Those are some good memories.

Cheers 👍

[Shane_B.]

The first song I learned to play without having my Complete Beatles book in front of me for the chords was Misery by the Beatles.

The first solo I learned to play was Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain by Willie Nelson. That was the song that changed my life. The very first time I heard the needle set down on the record player at home and I heard him do his trademark hammer from the A to B note, it triggered something in me as a child and I've had a guitar in my hands almost every single day since.

I used to sneak in to my brother's bedroom and practice on his guitar, but it didn't feel right. He plays right handed, and I'm right handed, but I cannot play guitar right handed. So I learned to play backwards on his right handed Ovation until he caught me and got mad. He bought me a an actual left handed guitar for my birthday that year and I had to relearn playing all over again with the low E on top.

But Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain did something to me. It triggered something in my brain as a child and I've had music running in my head 24/7 ever since. The flip side of the 45 was Remember Me. Both of those songs are very old. His versions were remakes and he left a verse out in Blue Eyes to fit the time limit back then and add a lead.

I can play that lead note for note with his slides and all. You can't hear me playing along I can emulate it so closely. We just blend together. If you listen really close you can hear he double track the first few notes, but only those. If I had to guess, I'd have to say he did multiple takes and left those first few notes as timing markers? I don't know, but I always thought it was odd that just the first few notes were double tracked.

I have about 15 different versions of Blue Eyes. Conway Twitty,, Hank Sr., Marvin Rainwater, Hank Snow, Roy Acuff, just to name a few.

That album was very well recorded. All of his recordings sound really good even if you don't like his music. 

I still have the very first recording I ever made. 12 year old me playing and singing Bungalo Bill and Strawberry Fields Forever. Fake British accent and all.

Sorry if there are a lot of typos. On my cell and the screen is cracked and changes stuff I type and I don't have my glasses. Lol.

[T Boog]

1 hour ago, Shane_B. said:

I'm right handed, but I cannot play guitar right handed

Mark Knopfler is left handed, but he cannot play guitar left handed. That, of course, means you're his evil twin  🧑‍🤝‍🧑    

[hockeyjx]

3 hours ago, T Boog said:

Mark Knopfler is left handed, but he cannot play guitar left handed.

That's me as well.

[mettelus]

I grew up with piano and I didn't take up guitar till I was 18, but learning guitar taught me more about piano/music theory than doing anything with piano ever did (pretty much like studying a foreign language teaches you more about English than you learn in English class). I had borrowed an acoustic with a pretty bowed neck from my Little Brother's aunt, then a friend sold me his old electric setup pretty cheap. I always liked the acoustic intro to Tesla's Love Song, so started with that, then when I got the electric I sat down to figure out the solo. One weird thing that happened with that is the intro has a Bm in it, but most of it is intervals, so I played that Bm with my pinky across the F# and B and do that about half the time to this day. My left pinky has  noticeable hook in it because of that... one of the perils of teaching yourself.

I know I have mentioned this before, but the coolest learning experience starting out was the power went out one night. I learned more from playing in the darkness in a few hours than I had in the 6 months prior... at least I got the dependency of playing with my eyes out of the way early on, so I am thankful for that.

Quick edit: I had to chuckle... I didn't think this song was ever posted online. My room mate first year had let me borrow a copy of a band called Babylon A.D., so when I got the electric the first lick I taught myself was the lead in on "Bang Go the Bells" (and I just kept playing it for probably 20 minutes). Greg was next door then, poked his head in and said, " I USED to like that song." LOL... funny how when the rest of the song is missing, parts are only interesting to the person playing them!

 

Edited November 1 by mettelus

[57Gregy]

My brother Mike was only 11 months older than me and was teaching himself to play guitar (with help from our 2 older brothers). He was left-handed but we only had right-handed guitars in the house, so he had to learn that way.
He would teach me bass lines to 1968's popular songs, and he would play along. Probably the first song chords I learned was Bad Moon Rising or other CCR song.

 

[craigb]

I think it was either Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or the Alphabet Song... 😁

[Amberwolf]

I've never learned to really play anything, including my own stuff, because my brain doesn't work like that, but I think the first thing I "learned" while poking around at a cheap "toy" keyboard way back when (1980s) was an accidental recreation of the main part of the "conversation" between the humans and aliens in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. 

The next one I think was the basic end theme notes of Buckaroo Banzai, again, an accident that I recognized the initial note pattern and kept poking until I figured out the next and the next.   

At some point I figured out the first few notes of the main Star Wars theme, but that's all. 

Beyond that I don't think there's much I could just intentionally sit there and play, beyond the variations of this one "theme" I've played mostly on piano for a couple of decades; it's never the same twice, just variating / improvising on a chord pattern and some notes.    Oddly, it's the one piece I've never really turned into a recorded "finished" song....

 

(I'm the only one in my family taht was not given music lessons, but I'm the only one that actually "plays" any instrument (if you can call it that) or creates any form of music, and am the one with the widest artistic interests / implementations by far (my younger brother is the only other artistic one, but he doens't ever play his guitars even though he actually knows how, and won't help me with the stuff I make (or listen to it, most of the time))). 

Edited November 2 by Amberwolf

[mark skinner]

I believe my first was "The Man from Uncle" then I worked my way up to "Secret Agent Man". 

 It sure felt like I was going to be a killer guitarist then get all the girls ..       ms

[DeeringAmps]

Like @Rain; one finger, one string riff from Pretty Woman. On a Silvertone, copy of a 335?
It was a double cut hollow body, did they have a block?

t

[57Gregy]

The first thing Mike taught me was the bass to Peter Gunn. do do do do do do do do.

[Tony Carpenter]

Morning town train.

[bitman]

26 miles across the sea.

My older sister was accomplished on the piano, but apparently knew this song and the chords for this song on the  guitar. I was a drummer - ish kid as at 6 years old it was accessible.  I was dickin around with an acoustic guitar that was in the house and be sister said here, I'll teach you an easy song on guitar. And it was easy more or less. She had to show me where to put my fingers to make the chords but yeah, I was prolly 7 or so and I mostly never looked back,

Being distracted these days by other "hobbies", my calluses are gone I am  back to stumming my steel string acoustic until they come back. This tune included. :-)

 

[Bass Guitar]

Im surprised nobody said Wipeout yet! 
I guess I must have been around 8 or 9 and that’s 1962 . 
But when I was probably about 5 I could play all the nursery rhythms on my little toy xylophone. That toy Xylophone embedded the C major scale in my brain forever! 
 

My older brother bought a cheap electric guitar and I would sneak into his room and play it. Everything I played was only on the low E string so Wipeout. walk don’t run and other various surf instrumentals. I could even do that riff in Pipeline. 
 

I don’t think I played any chords for at least 2 years and I was even playing in bands even though I didn’t know nothing!. I guess without realizing it I was the lead guitar player. 
 

And my first chords were of course power chords. It might have been 3 years later that I was taught cowboy chords. By then I was playing mostly bass anyway.

I still suck at fancy chords. Who needs them anyway. I play only Bluegrass, Country and Real Rock and Roll. I don’t think Buddy Holly knew how to play a Caug9 either. 

Edited Sunday at 01:40 AM by Bass Guitar