[Iron1]

I always find these stories interesting. For me, we moved when I was in the 2nd grade and the kids I got in with at the new school were huge KISS fans (mid-70s KISS, not the weird, wannabe hair metal KISS of the 80s or 90s). They needed an "ACE" in the group and told me I should be that guy. Fast forward a hot minute and all I wanted to do in life was be the guy playing guitar in the next version of KISS ALIVE II but with my own band. Funny side-note, of the dozens of guitars I've owned over the years, never once have I had a Les Paul, Ace's signature guitar.

In high school, I got a guitar and tried to join a band, but the bass player heard me sing and was like "dude, you're the singer, don't waste your time playing guitar..." a year later I was in my first legit band, then by 19 I was in IronChrist and the rest is history...

How about you?

 

[budda]

I think watching kid shows with people playing guitar (Fred Penner, Sharon Lois and Bram), plus seeing the live band at my uncle's wedding (apparently they let me loose on the drum kit at some point) stoked my interest in music. My parents veto'd the drum kit, I showed I wouldn't quit after a week and here I am 21 years later :lol:.

 

[Josh]

I played cello starting in 3rd grade, and my mom was always taking us to Broadway musicals whenever they came to town. In terms of what inspired me to switch from classical to guitar and stuff, definitely crossover albums that combined metal with those elements, like Metallica's S&M, Savatage's Dead Winter Dead, and TSO's Beethoven's Last Night.

 

[Chris]

Nikki Sixx. I saw the Looks that Kill video on MTV, with the spinning pentagrams and his legs on fire. Thought it was the coolest thing ever back then. Still do. I didn't there was a difference between bass guitars and regular guitars, so I asked my parents for a guitar. And like 35 years later (holy shit), here we all are.

:mods:

 

[Oogadee Boogadee]

first, my big brother was a dabbling church drummer back in the late 80s. that got me interested in the pots and pans. as far as direction and what appealed to me personally - discovering Rust In Peace around the 7th grade... 1991. Dave Mustaine was a huge hero to me.

 

[jacksonplayer]

I was kind of a nerdy and awkward kid at 14, and I was growing out of my kid hobbies (model planes and such) but getting into metal as a listener. Tony Iommi circa 1982 seemed like the most badass dude on the planet, and so when my parents got me an acoustic for Christmas 1981, I pretty much went all-in once I could start taking lessons the following summer. I never looked back.

 

[honez]

The sound of Eric Clapton's guitar and vibrato with Cream.

 

[Naren]

A friend of mine in high school had an Ibanez RG that he wanted to sell and he asked if I was interested in buying it. I was really into rock, especially alternative rock, punk, classic rock, and some metal (I didn't become a huge metalhead until after I started playing guitar), so the idea sounded cool to me. I decided to buy it, but a few weeks later he changed his mind and decided he wanted to keep it, so I made him take me to some used music shops and help me find a guitar to get (and I ended up getting this really shitty Teisco sunburst). At the time, the main guys I saw as guitar inspirations were Kurt Cobain and Jimmy Page (I didn't think Kurt Cobain was an amazing guitar god or anything, but his songs were catchy and they seemed like things I could learn to play pretty quickly, and I was 100% right about that. Nirvana songs were actually the songs I used to learn to play guitar and sing at the same time). There were a ton more, but they were more bands than specific guitarists (for example, I loved At the Drive-In and AFI, but I didn't really nail down Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Jade Puget as the guitarists I admired at the time).

 

[Überschall]

I started playing guitar in the summer before fourth grade. I don't know specifically what drew me to the instrument, and it was a nylon string 3/4 size. I took lessons from a local mom who taught out of her family room. I think that fall I discovered Kiss and Iron Maiden. The rest is history.

 

[budda]

Brb, telling all my drummer friends they play the pots and pans :lol:

 

[GentleHands McCoy]

Iron Maiden/Steve Harris.

I was also lucky enough to have the whole "actually rebellious" aspect, I think you are lucky if you get that, that's why so many kids of rockstars are absolutely fucking awful. I am from an extremely musical family, many of which are professional musicians, who were classical music snobs who considered electric instruments an abomination. I didn't know anything about any sort of music other than classical until I was 13. In 6th grade when middle school rolled around you had to enroll in either orchestra, choir, or band. I begged my parents/grandparents to enroll in orchestra playing the violin and they were like, "you have no innate musical talent and you don't have the discipline to stick with an instrument, you have to do choir". I got into non classical music when I was like 13 and started wanting to play an instrument even more then.

They actually never OK'd it. I kept asking for the next 3-4 years. They wouldn't even let me get a guitar with my own money. I had to order a bass in secret and arrange delivery when no one was home. Eventually I got tired of all the secrecy and wanted to practice amplified when others were home and spilled the beans. By then it was time to apply for colleges and I was like, "oh, and BTW, I also want to go to school for music to learn technical music theory".

Anyways, did all that. As anyone who actually knows music theory will tell you, there is no such thing as innate musicality. The locations of the notes in Western harmony were arbitrarily picked by humans and have changed over the centuries. As anyone who understands how guitar intonation works realizes, Tonality is just a bunch of workable approximations we consider acceptable that we have sublimated into the collective social subconscious through gestalt psychology. Anyone who tells you they have perfect pitch knows fuck all about how music actually works.

So due to the way I started playing instruments and an interest in the history of music theory and music in general, I don't actually consider anyone a musician or a "musical person". I never became a musician, I just got so into music I realized "musician" is a useless distinction. I think it's an elitist distinction that actually hampers creativity. When someone in this hemisphere of the world says they are a musician or were always a musical person or have a natural ear, all they mean is that they are proficient in following a system of rules that has existed since the middle ages. The rules are just negotiated approximations that were considered "close enough to be acceptable". I'm not a delusional enough to think of myself as a musician, but I think anyone doesn't know what concepts like equal temperament, just temperament, schismatic temperament, Pythagorean tuning,etc. are who won't shut the fuck up about their musical sensibilities is even more delusional.

Robert Fripp actually touches on a lot of those ideas in his excellent 1986 interview. https://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_Robert_Fripp_in_Guitar_Player_(1986)

 

[jacksonplayer]

Anyways, did all that. As anyone who actually knows music theory will tell you, there is no such thing as innate musicality.

I don't know that I agree with this. However, I see it more artistically than technically. There do seem to be people who are just more in touch with their artistic selves, regardless of the medium in which they work. Reaching and fulfilling that part of themselves just seems to come easier for them.

As humans, we tend to layer on a lot of bullshit over our basic selves. The ability to tap into the basic part of us that responds to non-verbal audio and visual stimulation is a gift that some have more than others. The tools that you use to do this are culturally defined, but the underlying process is personal.

 

[bigdave]

Tommy, not the Who record, the kid that kicked everyones ass in my apartment complex. Me and my friend heard someone playing guitar one day and followed the sound to Tommys apt... normally we never went around there much because of location and the fact he may decide to punch us at any given time, but this time we slowly walked up and there was Tommy playing AC/DC riffs on a SG copy...and doing it well. He nodded at us and continued on. That was like Fonzi playing guitar, soon enough I got the family guitar and started learning riffs. There where a few other contributing facters but Tommy showed me the path.

 

[Toshiro]

1990. A friend handed me a homamade tape with Death's Spiritual Healing on one side and Kreator's Coma of Souls on the other. That Within The Mind intro was it for me, I had to have a guitar.

 

[honez]

I don't know that I agree with this. However, I see it more artistically than technically. There do seem to be people who are just more in touch with their artistic selves, regardless of the medium in which they work. Reaching and fulfilling that part of themselves just seems to come easier for them.

As humans, we tend to layer on a lot of bullshit over our basic selves. The ability to tap into the basic part of us that responds to non-verbal audio and visual stimulation is a gift that some have more than others. The tools that you use to do this are culturally defined, but the underlying process is personal.

I think you guys are talking about two different things.

 

[thrashinbatman]

I was starting to listen to music more and playing Guitar Hero. One day my dad was like, "hey, do you want a guitar?" I said yes, and that's pretty much it. One day I was listening to The Black Album and was like, "this is the type of stuff I want to play". After that I got into more thrash and it was set in stone.

 

[scole]

I can't pin it down to a specific thing like many of you. I'll just guess that, as someone whose formative years coincided with the 80s glory years of metal, it would likely be the riffs and music videos of that time. The guitarists just always seemed to be the coolest guys in all the videos- Sambora, Lynch, EVH, DiMartini...

 

[GentleHands McCoy]

I don't know that I agree with this. However, I see it more artistically than technically. There do seem to be people who are just more in touch with their artistic selves, regardless of the medium in which they work. Reaching and fulfilling that part of themselves just seems to come easier for them.

As humans, we tend to layer on a lot of bullshit over our basic selves. The ability to tap into the basic part of us that responds to non-verbal audio and visual stimulation is a gift that some have more than others. The tools that you use to do this are culturally defined, but the underlying process is personal.

I meant innate musicality in the sense of adhering to a specific tonality. Humans innately connect with music, but what we think sounds "proper and in tune" is culturally sublimated. Sound isn't neatly divided into 12 parts in nature, those are arbitrary locations that are far from perfect.

Thinking there is some natural law that says a specific frequency is naturally musical is BS. Anyone who knows the history of systems of temperament and tonality knows that. The notes themselves aren't in tune with one another. There were earlier temperaments that were more in tune for some keys but more out of tune for others, the one we currently use is pretty good for all keys but nowhere near perfect.

It's like how cultures without a word for blue have trouble recognizing the color blue. People say that, "Oh, that G# is beautiful, really naturally suits the mood of that bit". Then you ask them "What about H?"

They laugh and say, "Hahahahaha, you musical fool. There is no H."

There is in fact an H. In traditional tonality and still in use in some countries B natural is notated as H. This was handy so Bach could spell his name in chord movements. :lol: There had to be an H to do a B-A-C-H. H is absolutely a note in the history of Western Tonality.

Most people can't hear H though, like cultures without a word for the color blue can't see blue, because what they think of as naturally pleasing tonalities is actually socially sublimated. There's no such thing as being born musically talented. Sublimating the adherence to a specific temperament and being good at adhering to that is what people mis-identify as a a "naturally musical ear".

The tonality we use isn't "naturally pleasantly in tune" to other cultures outside of the areas traditionally adhering to Western tertiary harmony. Speaking on a natural level, there is nothing more "in tune" about Western Harmony than there is in microtonal music. Being "in tune" isn't some quantifiable thing like gravity. Certain cultures are just socially evolved to find certain methods of dividing up the unlimited expanse of sound into easier to notate parts pleasing.

 

[GentleHands McCoy]

The socially sublimated component also applies to rhythmic aspects, although it's more commonly cited for the harmonic pitch based aspects.

Ginger Baker touches on it in the fantastic documentaries about him, going to Africa because he found the kind of rhythms they consider natural more fascinating.

There's actually a lot of rhythmic stuff from other cultures you can listen to that gives the impression of "these guys legitimately have no idea what they are doing, this sounds like shit". :lol: Because the ideas of what are naturally pleasing rhythmic patterns are also socially sublimated.

 

[Randy]

Wanted to play music for a long time but never found an outlet. Originally wanted to play drums in the school band, but was in detention too much to actually make it in to take the lessons and they dropped me quickly.

In terms of saying "I need to pickup a guitar and learn to play is at all costs", it was definitely this music video. When the riff comes in and everyone loses their shit I was like "Fuck, I want to do that"