What/who inspired you to play guitar?

KISSINGTHESHADOW

KISSINGTHESHADOW
Sep 18, 2004
58
13
8
35
ARIZONA
I thought it would be cool to hear how yall got into playing. For me it was in 2003, I was getting into the metal genre. I started listening to static-x, godsmack, disturbed, cradle of filth ect...one morning i woke up and turned my tv to a cable metal channel and heard Sixpounder. That day I bought fallow the reaper and hatebreeder. I never had an interest or payed much attention to guitarnuntil I heard the sixpounder solos. Still my favorite song to this day. A week later I went and bought my first guitar and the rest is history. I know it sounds pretty trademark that I started playing cuz of alexi...but it's the truth. Jason Becker was also a big influence. I heard about him getting ALS and listened to raspberry jams and the perspective album...fuck he was a great guitarist. So what about you guys??
 
My school music teacher. I messed about on keyboards back then and he was playing Teenage Dirtbag in a clean tone. The moment he stepped on the distortion pedal my life changed forever, I went home that day and asked for a guitar for Christmas and I've been playing ever since.
 
I started playing piano when I was 5 but always wasn't really into it. if I remember right, the first time I thought about guitar playing was when I was 15 or 16 in the rehearsel place of one of my friends (he was guitarist in a local punk/rock band). Yeah, he played this normal d, e and c chords and I though wow, this sounds really cool with all this big amps and stuff. Half year later or so I bought my first accoustic guitar and then all I learned about guitar playing was self-teaching (of course, 10 years pf piano playing helps me a lot!).
 
Guitar has probably changed all of our lives. I know it has for me. Any time I play it's an escape from everything. The greatest thing in my life.
 
For me, growing up I'd always been interested in metal and whatnot and never really thought of learning guitar, but I'd always loved the sound of it. When I first started playing I was interested in bands like Metallica and Megadeth, which is pretty typical. Then it went on to progressively more technical bands until I found Bodom. I was hooked on melodeath for awhile. My first guitar was just a shitty acoustic a friend of mine had left at my house, but I was trying to learn songs like Master of Puppets, Downfall, and Yngwie stuff on it. It built my finger strength up pretty well because of the higher tension and when I finally got an electric it felt very natural to me. I don't practice nearly as much as I used to because of all the things I have to do that comes with age, but I still play enough to where I don't let myself go toooooo much lol...

Now days I'm more interested in tech-death and post rock, but I still get excited everytime a song like Black Widow or the Tokyo Warhearts version of Touch Like Angel of Death come on :)
 
I grew up on rock and roll. My dad was a huge Zepplin, Sabbath, and Zappa fan. So all I knew was classic rock. Then as I got into middle school I heard Metallica and Slayer. Well I had a buddy in middle school who played guitar and his dad was in a local band that we would go watch on Sundays at the bar. That really got me wanting to play. So my dad got me a cheap strat copy(Samick) and a cheap amp. I probably played every minute I could. Then after a year of me playing and my parents seeing I wasn't giving this up my dad got me guitar lessons.

My guitar teacher introduced me to sooo many different types of music and players. I remember the first time he started playing Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing by Satch....my views on guitar playing changed at that very moment. Then I went to my 1st concert....G3 with Vai, Satch, and Kenny Wayne Shepard. They made it look so easy. I made it a point to actually learn techniques and perfecting licks and runs, not just playing fast and dicking around. And because of this I feel like I am more of a perfectionist in other areas of my life, not just guitar playing.

I am by no means done learning this wonderful instrument, but because of the inspiration I had in the beginning I feel it helped me learn very fast and I love my parents for supporting me in my younger years with this. I sometimes wonder how I would be now if I didn't start playing guitar 15 years ago.
 
If think it started when i was about 16 and first time heard Bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park. I began to like the Music.

First Time ever playin Guitar i was maybe 18. I played a lil bit System Of A Down on my Cousins Guitar. Then finally Bodom made me buyin a E-Guitar. Now i play for about 4,5 years.
 
Before actually playing guitar, I mainly listened to some rock bands like ZZ Top and Van Halen. I thought they were pretty cool but never wanted to play like them, it just didn't 'touch' me in the right direction, if you know what I mean.

So, I think it was back in 2007, when one of my friends showed me some Emperor live footage of Ihsahn playing I Am The Black Wizzards and it hit me big time, the next day I started saving money and soon after bought my first guitar, a really cheap and crappy one, but I was happy.
 
It's funny somehow but it was Children Of Bodom! :D Not so long ago, last month I started playing guitar. I'm a beginner and playing is difficult for me but I believe that someday I'll become as quite good as many typical guitar players just to play my favourite songs...
 
I grew up on rock and roll. My dad was a huge Zepplin, Sabbath, and Zappa fan. So all I knew was classic rock. Then as I got into middle school I heard Metallica and Slayer. Well I had a buddy in middle school who played guitar and his dad was in a local band that we would go watch on Sundays at the bar. That really got me wanting to play. So my dad got me a cheap strat copy(Samick) and a cheap amp. I probably played every minute I could. Then after a year of me playing and my parents seeing I wasn't giving this up my dad got me guitar lessons.

My guitar teacher introduced me to sooo many different types of music and players. I remember the first time he started playing Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing by Satch....my views on guitar playing changed at that very moment. Then I went to my 1st concert....G3 with Vai, Satch, and Kenny Wayne Shepard. They made it look so easy. I made it a point to actually learn techniques and perfecting licks and runs, not just playing fast and dicking around. And because of this I feel like I am more of a perfectionist in other areas of my life, not just guitar playing.

I am by no means done learning this wonderful instrument, but because of the inspiration I had in the beginning I feel it helped me learn very fast and I love my parents for supporting me in my younger years with this. I sometimes wonder how I would be now if I didn't start playing guitar 15 years ago.

We still need to jam lol. We've only lived in the same area forever now and only actually ran into each other at a show once.
 
Honestly, it was hearing Green Day on mtv. Then after playing that kind of stuff for a couple years I heard Primal Concrete Sledge and it was like getting my fucking teeth kicked in. So Green Day got me started, and Dime got me serious about playing.
 
For me, it was also hearing Green Day when I was 14 or so, and my best friend at the time who started to play guitar. He quit a year after but I kept going. Anyways, I heard Green Day, then I started playing their songs. But as far as getting into more heavy guitar, metal shredding sort of stuff it had to be hearing Blinded In Chains by Avenged Sevenfold when I was 15, and being amazed that anyone could play a guitar like that. It was so fast, and the solos...I didn't even know that people played music like that. It was weird. Then I started listening to Metallica (which I think everyone to some degree started on), and then Bodom in my senior high school years, and then now I think I'm at this weird Djent/Progressive/Death phase. One other thing that's happened to me after all this time is I've also become extremely open minded about other styles of music which has definitely helped me appreciate and understand the wonders of music in general.
 
I STARTED to play guitar mostly because of Megadeth, but I didn't take it that seriously until I heard bands like Death, Suffocation, Morbid Angel etc...