[jim1960]

The only music education I had growing up was learning to play the recorder in elementary school and a couple of years of trumpet in junior high. I could read notes but I have no foundation at all in music theory. I started playing guitar when I was 12. Chords at first, then I started experimenting with finger-picking (just two fingers at first) when I was about 14 or 15.

Sometime around age 17 someone gave us a piano. None of us played, my mother just thought it would look good in the living room. I was curious about it so I began trying to apply to the piano what I knew or could decipher from my various song books. That was my self-taught introduction to music theory. I was figuring out what chords actually were by matching the notes in the book or on the fretboard to notes on the piano. Before too long I could accompany myself to some degree. What I was essentially doing was fingerpicking on the piano by doing simple two-handed arpeggiations with chords. I never became a great piano player but I could get by well enough for my own needs and I learned a lot.

Later on in college I took theory courses that taught me much more but the time I spent on the piano was a good foundation.