Did you all start music lessons on Guitar or other instrument?

[Birchtop]

Originally Posted by jpd

Flutophones and Tonettes

[Fishermike]

Trumpet from 4th grade on. By the time I was in junior high, I could get by on any brass instrument with valves (no trombone!). Played through high school.

Took till I got to college to realize that it was a heckuva lot easier to talk to girls while playing guitar than blowing on a horn!

[fishwatcher]

I started piano lessons in 2nd grade and stopped around high school. I can still play parts of a few songs I learned or can poke our songs by ear and finding some of the right notes or chords on a keyboard.

My, at the time, 9 year old daughter, wanted to learn guitar so I bought her one and started lessons with her when I was 45 years old. It’s been 4 years now and we’re still taking lessons together.

I learn a little on my own through YouTube channels as well. She’s not as into it anymore, but when we get good on certain songs.. it’s just awesome.

My son plays drums and at times (begrudgingly for my daughter), we all rock out together.

[RustyAxe]

Piano, age 6. Piano accordion, age 7. Both until about age 15. Acoustic guitar and bass guitar, age 13 (both self taught).

[egordon99]

Started piano lessons when I was six. Got my first guitar when I was 10 and pretty much self-taught myself the guitar. Being able to read music helped in that journey.

[JonPR]

My first music lessons (at least the first ones I remember) were in high school, aged 11. I wasn't interested in music at that point, but everybody took the classes. (I wasn't interested in Chemistry either but we all had classes in that too...) We learned to read music, and to play the recorder (badly).

After a couple of years we had the choice of Music or Geography, and I liked drawing maps, so chose the latter.

A couple of years after that I was heavily into pop music, especially guitar instrumentals (this was around 1963-64). My closest friends in school all happened to be amateur musicians. (A couple of them had even played at the famous Ealing Club, aged 14, where the Stones had formed two years before.) I decided learning guitar would be a cool thing to do, and my parents bought me a cheap acoustic and a book (I was 16 by then).

I had no lessons (lessons??? on pop/folk guitar??? what a totally bizarre concept... Our music teacher had once informed us, solemnly, that "all pop music is rubbish", so I knew where I stood with lessons) - but the notation I'd learned in school came in very useful, because I could learn songs from songbooks (there was no tab in those days). My friends asked me to join their band. Did my first gig less than a year after first picking up a guitar.

I also taught myself piano at the same time (as well as banjo, mandolin, bass, etc).

Lessons? Pah. "Lessons" meant "school", and music for us was the diametric opposite to school. School wasn't going to tell us how to wear our hair or how to dress, so it certainly wasn't going to tell us how to play the guitar (and I'd have refused even if it had).

[Su_H.]

I took private guitar lessons for 3 months from a guy who was a phenomenal guitarist but a horrible teacher. Aside from being a horrible teacher, he lacked the knowledge of how to teach new guitarists. I later heard he eventually lost all his students. Anyway, at the same time, I was also taking a guitar class in high school. This instructor actually knew what he was doing. He taught all the basic fingerpicking fundamentals which I neglected to practice. Almost 30 years later, I am practicing those fundamentals and my right hand feels stronger and more in control than ever.

[rick-slo]

Started piano age 5, banjo age 15, guitar 16, flute and harmonica early twenties.