How and why did you first begin music?

[feaker66]

I was eleven in 1960 and was visiting my sister in Wisconsin. There was an acoustic there and I taught my self "this ole man he play one..knick knack". Bought a Fender F-65 the next summer from a hitch hicker who need some money ($20)and the rest was history. And...this ole man he plays one......

Paul

[manninghollow]

Violin at 9, guitar at 12,Ventures,Beatles, Kinks, Yardbirds, CREAM!, Hendrix, started doing gigs at 13,recording with bands at 14. I always (and still do) love the music and the gear.

[coachdebra]

Sorry ''Debra'' I have a friend called Debra and I always call her Debbie so I just let it ......slip

Yes the song was directed in response to you and yes its a lovely song. Ray is fantastic.

OK, I'll let you off the hook just this once

And yes, I'm a big fan.

[rickpaul]

My mother claims I was singing nursery tunes at 6 months. I find that hard to believe, but I don't remember any time when I wasn't singing. My parents also got me a little toy piano at a very young age, but my earliest memory of music is actually at the age of three and a half, sitting listing to singles on my Fisher Price record player -- it would have been Disney tunes, like "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" -- while my mother was in the hospital having my youngest brother. My grandparents told me he was a boy, but I wanted a sister, and I was sitting there in my little rocking chair, listening to my music, upset that it was a boy, saying I was going to buy him a dress and call him "Kathy" (the name he would have had if he'd been a girl -- I did eventually get a sister named Kathy).

I know my mother also started teaching me piano lessons at the age of four, and I remember playing Christmas carols for my kindergarten class. I don't remember if I liked piano lessons or not, but I at least stuck with them until about the age of seven.

The first thing that really got me going on music with respect to a desire to make music, though, was when they started having folk masses at the Catholic church my family attended. I'd come home afterward and try to figure out the songs on piano. That was somewhere around the age of seven, which is when I gave up piano lessons and started teaching myself, learning, for example, to read chords based on figuring out commonalities between the chord names and the notes that were written in the sheet music (my mother had a bunch of old popular songs around between Christmas songs and stuff she'd probably learned as a child or teenager). Once I got into school band in the fifth grade, I also got a bee in my bonnet to start creating some simple arrangements. I know I did a few for a small ensemble for a skit in my fifth grade class, and that is also when I wrote my first song, which was extremely simple -- exactly three lines ("I really like to fish/And have a little wish/I wish I'd catch a fish"). I started my first band, a big band-type thing playing a combination of formal arrangements for songs like "Night Train" and "Satin Doll" and "Hey Jude" and stuff I'd worked out from a trumpet solo book (I was playing saxophone in the band, and I had a brother who played trumpet), in the sixth grade.

To that point, I'd mainly been playing a combination of simple classical music, church music, show tunes, big band tunes, and some older popular music. I'd heard the Beatles from records my younger brother had, but I didn't like them back then -- the records seemed pretty harsh (they were some of their early rock and roll records) compared to the stuff I preferred. I did get into some pop music of the day, but mostly just from what I heard on my parents' clock radio as they didn't buy albums at that point. What really sparked my flame for the pop music of the day, though, was when my parents joined the Columbia House Record Club and got their first batch of 8-track tapes. There was a Three Dog Night live album in there, and they were already my favorite modern band at the time, but new to me was an Elton John double album called "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road". That album really bowled me over, and became the start of my buying all Elton's albums for a number of years and learning to play most of his songs (a pop/rock band I had in high school sometimes opened with "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding", and our own arrangement of "Your Sister Can't Twist" was a staple of our live shows).

Somewhere around junior high or early high school I decided I wanted to be "the next Elton John", and I decided, if I was going to do that, I'd have to have original songs. In that sense, my starting on the songwriting side was pretty mercenary. Singing and playing live for an audience was my real passion, and the songwriting seemed like it would be a necessity if I was going to get anywhere with that. Over the years, I did get much more into songwriting, but I still think my biggest motivation for writing songs is to have new, quality songs to sing and play.

At least for me, there's really nothing like performing live for an audience. If I had to guess the "why" of it, I might venture that, having always been extremely shy, being up on stage is the one place I feel safe opening up. However, I really can't remember a time when I wasn't playing and singing.

Rick

[Kelil]

Thanks Rick. Really enjoyed that.

[JanisS]

i think it was when i as 13 or 14
we always had a guitar and i tried to play it sometimes
one day when i was home alone i started playing and realized how much i am into it
i play every day since then