Happy Atheist Forum

Hey, I've been playing guitar for about 5 years now, and its been one of the coolest things I've ever done.

I play a style many of you may not be fond of, to say the least, but I'll go ahead and ahow you anyway :D
http://www.myspace.com/malodorousmetal (http://www.myspace.com/malodorousmetal)

and you can see some vids of me playing on my youtube channel
http://youtube.com/user/leftyguitarjoe (http://youtube.com/user/leftyguitarjoe)

and my unnecessary number of guitars can be viewed on my myspace
http://www.myspace.com/leftyguitarjoe (http://www.myspace.com/leftyguitarjoe)

AND here is a little acoustic project a buddy of mine and I did.
http://www.myspace.com/pitcherandwhiteyrock (http://www.myspace.com/pitcherandwhiteyrock)

I was learning on guitar but my teacher moved out of state.I played drums for a bit but my parents got sick of hearing it and dad sold it while I was at school.Talk about  :D  Played for 2 years.I never learned to read music but learned to play but numbers..I count in my head the chords and such.

Thanks for the links. You guys have a great sound.  :shock:  Crazy skills Joe!

As for me, I'm more on the classical side, I play clarinet and bass clarinet, and I'm teaching myself the flute. I picked up bass guitar once and played a bit of jazz with it, but I had to stop when my school's marching season started. I'm a band nerd, I'll admit it  

Concert and jazz pianist, but it's really only a hobby.

That's pretty decent death metal, lefty.

Quote from: "Willravel"Concert and jazz pianist, but it's really only a hobby.

That's pretty decent death metal, lefty.

Piano is something I've never had the patience to learn. I commend you

Quote from: "leftyguitarjoe"Piano is something I've never had the patience to learn. I commend you

I have a really good friend I went to high school with who played bass in several death metal bands. He was pretty damn good. I taught him basic piano in less than 6 weeks.

I'm willing to bet that the time in developing your guitar skills can give you a leg up in learning piano. If you're so inclined, seek out a decent teacher. You won't regret it.

Quote from: "Willravel"

Quote from: "leftyguitarjoe"Piano is something I've never had the patience to learn. I commend you

I have a really good friend I went to high school with who played bass in several death metal bands. He was pretty damn good. I taught him basic piano in less than 6 weeks.

I'm willing to bet that the time in developing your guitar skills can give you a leg up in learning piano. If you're so inclined, seek out a decent teacher. You won't regret it.

Cool!

Actually, I'd like to learn to play Violin. A good friend of mine has been playing for 7 years, so she could easily teach me.

But, I've yet to see a lefty violin anywhere haha!!

I rock out a lot on the guitar. I've been playing for a little over ten years now. My effects include a little distortion on my Fender D90 amp (a la Radiohead) and a lot of echo. I use a line 6 echo park for spacy echo effects, also a line 6 tremolo, a digiverb pedal for my 'verb, and a boss mega distortion for my fuzz. I love the Boss mega distortion, but only on a dirty channel. It throws out such a delicious meaty sound.

I like to play a lot of stuff, like Cracker's "Down" which is a pretty trippy song, I also do a pretty awesome version of the Shins' New Slang, some Elliot Smith, a lot of Wilco. I do Tom Petty, the Kinks, and other various music. When I'm rocking it hardcore, I'll bust some System of a Down. I love that folk metal sound they have (had). I'll have to post you guys some stuff at some point.

I'm writing a song right now about conservative assholes. It's called "See You in Hell". Here's what I've got so far:

You thank the troops, they've done so well
From your newspaper shell
Please convince me sir of how
You wish to free the foreign minds
To think for themselves
Or is there something else?

Sir, you think your self so wise
Why don't you open up your eyes
And let them weep and cry
For the blood spilled on your account
For the souls that you cast down
To the hell that you perceive

And if it's true I'll tell you
I'll see you in Hell.

Well, I'm a singer (Lyric Baritone range with a bit of Bass).

I tried to learn piano, but it didn't stick.

Just got a guitar, so I'm learning the frets and notes now (acoustic).

Props to all of you with the patience and skills to learn!
JoeActor

Quote from: "joeactor"Well, I'm a singer (Lyric Baritone range with a bit of Bass).

I tried to learn piano, but it didn't stick.

Just got a guitar, so I'm learning the frets and notes now (acoustic).

Props to all of you with the patience and skills to learn!
JoeActor

Way to go. Who's your musical inspiration?

Quote from: "joeactor"Well, I'm a singer (Lyric Baritone range with a bit of Bass).

I tried to learn piano, but it didn't stick.

Just got a guitar, so I'm learning the frets and notes now (acoustic).

Props to all of you with the patience and skills to learn!
JoeActor

Joe has a awesome voice!

I play the guitar, but I cant call myself a mucisian. I do it out of hobby and Im still a bit clumpsy at it

Acoustic guitar and percussion x 35 years. My kind of guitar doesn't quite fall into the death metal category.  :D

afreethinker30: Thanks! ;-)  I still do a bit of singing in Improv, but haven't done a "real" show for a while...

myleviathan:  Inspiration?  Hmmmm....  Well, I was raised on a combo of MoTown and Classical, with a bit of ethnic Lebanese music thrown in.  I listen to almost everything except rap and country... (ok, maybe a little country)

It's funny, but I have a real problem with people who mumble, sing off-key, etc.  Yet, there are some that have such unique voices (Dylan and Petty, for example), that I end up listening just to immitate them!  Go figure.

Oh, and I can't stand overblown, full of themselves, "listen to how great my voice is" singers...

And IIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEIIIIIIIIII wil always love YOOOOOUUUUUUUIIIIIUUUUUIIIIUUUUUUU!,
JoeActor

Yeah, I've played piano for about 6 years, and percussion for about 2 years. I would like to learn electric guitar in the future, though.

Well, death metal isn't ALL I play

I have a 12 string acoustic I love to mess around with. I do alot of fingerpicking and acoustic ballads and such.

I've been playing flute for a few years, can get by on a piano, and am learning acoustic guitar. I currently suck beyond belief.    Thanks for the links, by the way!!!

Quote from: "leftyguitarjoe"Well, death metal isn't ALL I play

I have a 12 string acoustic I love to mess around with. I do alot of fingerpicking and acoustic ballads and such.

Ahhh, you make me miss my baby.My 12-string acoustic....(sigh). What a beauty. And I'm very happy to know you play a wider variety of musical styles. It helps with creativity and broadens your musical world.

I'm in a psychedelic rock band.  :D

i adore music and play the guitar. i have only been learning for one year but am a very very eager student luckily my dad used to be a guitar teacher so i get lessons whenever i want.

what songs do you guys like playing?

Quote from: "Dreamer"i adore music and play the guitar. i have only been learning for one year but am a very very eager student luckily my dad used to be a guitar teacher so i get lessons whenever i want.

what songs do you guys like playing?

Layla and Tears in Heaven on piano, Welcome to the Jungle on drums, those are two main ones.

Quote from: "Dreamer"i adore music and play the guitar. i have only been learning for one year but am a very very eager student :banna:

Its probably a little hard for you right now, but its a beautiful song and a great challenge.

Here is the a good version. Clapton never recorded this song, but whatever XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55A9H-PqOvY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55A9H-PqOvY)

Quote from: "pjkeeley"I'm in a psychedelic rock band.  :D

PJ, I look forward to those postings. But where did that name come from?  :D

Quote from: "Dreamer"i adore music and play the guitar. i have only been learning for one year but am a very very eager student luckily my dad used to be a guitar teacher so i get lessons whenever i want.

what songs do you guys like playing?

Funny that I love playing two songs that others here like to play. "Tears in Heaven" and "Classical Gas" are two of my old standards and I love them. I enjoy playing "Blackbird", "Canon in D", "Mrs. Robinson", and about every protest song ever written from the '60s and '70s. Really.

Quote from: "McQ"But where did that name come from? :D

It's actually "Microdot", but at one point we were discussing how amusing it would be if we went onstage and pretended to be from Sweden and it just sort of stuck, hence the current ridiculous spelling and myriad omlauts. I think the official pronounciation is "Mee-crow-doot", but if we ever do perform I'm not sure we'd go with the whole prentending to be Swedish thing, since we are a pretentious lot and kind of want to be taken seriously. Other names have included "The Alfie Badger Musical Collective" and "K.I.T.E.S." which stood for "K.I.T.E.S. in the Endless Sky" -- we loved the idea of having an acronym within that very same acronym, creating a never-ending chain of acronyms. I guess we are just a little bit
 

hey McQ i also really love playing Mrs Robinson. and i play a lot of beatles songs, but Blackbird is too difficult for me right now.
and i love playing protest songs too. i play a lot of Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel.
i also like playing rock'n'roll songs by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.

Quote from: "pjkeeley"

Quote from: "McQ"But where did that name come from? :D

It's actually "Microdot", but at one point we were discussing how amusing it would be if we went onstage and pretended to be from Sweden and it just sort of stuck, hence the current ridiculous spelling and myriad omlauts. I think the official pronounciation is "Mee-crow-doot", but if we ever do perform I'm not sure we'd go with the whole prentending to be Swedish thing, since we are a pretentious lot and kind of want to be taken seriously. Other names have included "The Alfie Badger Musical Collective" and "K.I.T.E.S." which stood for "K.I.T.E.S. in the Endless Sky" -- we loved the idea of having an acronym within that very same acronym, creating a never-ending chain of acronyms. I guess we are just a little bit
 

Very clever. And very funny. I love it. I really love the acronym within an acronym idea too.

Quote from: "Dreamer"hey McQ i also really love playing Mrs Robinson. and i play a lot of beatles songs, but Blackbird is too difficult for me right now.
and i love playing protest songs too. i play a lot of Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel.
i also like playing rock'n'roll songs by Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.

Nice. All good stuff. Blackbird can be tricky, but I learned it decades ago when I was more nimble-fingered and before my brain forgot how to learn!  
It's really a matter of being taught it by someone who knows it. Not as hard as you may think.

Quote from: "pjkeeley"

Quote from: "McQ"But where did that name come from? :D

It's actually "Microdot", but at one point we were discussing how amusing it would be if we went onstage and pretended to be from Sweden and it just sort of stuck, hence the current ridiculous spelling and myriad omlauts. I think the official pronounciation is "Mee-crow-doot", but if we ever do perform I'm not sure we'd go with the whole prentending to be Swedish thing, since we are a pretentious lot and kind of want to be taken seriously. Other names have included "The Alfie Badger Musical Collective" and "K.I.T.E.S." which stood for "K.I.T.E.S. in the Endless Sky" -- we loved the idea of having an acronym within that very same acronym, creating a never-ending chain of acronyms. I guess we are just a little bit
 

That's awesome. There's such a lack of creativity in band names. Try thinking about endless acronyms on mushrooms and you would probably go insane.

I would also classify my music as psychedelic. Too bad I don't have time to form a band. One day I will though. And we will rock.

I played violin for 5 years. And although I can't play the piano, I know which notes are which. Nowadays, I stick to singing mostly.

I have zero musical talent but admire those that do and we appear to have a few new members who are musicians, so I bumped this thread!!

Hi Guys,

Just joined the forum yesterday. I play the guitar & wish I could sing... but I can't  

Cheers,

John.

My whole family wish I could sing, trouble is I can't, but that never stopped me!  

I've always wanted to play the drums. Problem is: don't have the money or the space for it.

Synthesizers.  

I've been playing guitar for 30+ years.  I play blues, jazz, and hard rock/metal, and general fingerpicking, but blues is really my true love.  I play both acoustic and electric, and fool around with a slide sometimes too.  My favorite players are Albert King, Mike Bloomfield, SRV, Wes Montgomery, Tony Iommi, Randy Rhoads, and about 800 others.  My last paying gig was playing bass in a blues band, which ended last year when our guitarist pulled a major flake-job on us.  Right now I'm trying to get a sort of "guitar circle" thing going on here, meetups in my back yard with good barbecue, good beer, and players of all levels just sitting down and sharing licks.

My electric rig is an Epiphone SG through a Peavey Valveking 212.  My acoustic is a Takamine GS330, a decent budget guitar that sounds great, on which I'll do open-mike nights.  My bass rig is a Warwick Corvette 5str through a Peavey 200w.

Wow, not sure how I missed this the first time.  Anyhow, I've played here and there, off and on for about 15 years but only really started seriously playing about 6 years ago.  I've had a couple of wanna be bands and one actual band just did very small, local gigs.  Now I'm hoping to put together another band, it's slow going at the moment with my relocated back to my hometown but I've got a vocalist and a bassist so far.  We're trying to put together a band from the ground up since all of us had been in bands previously but lost or sold all our equipment - the only thing I kept was my software and my Washburn X16.  However, since my folks own a music store (http://www.progressionmusic.net/) (which I did the website for, yay me) I can get some great gear pretty cheap, now I just need the cash!

Anyhow I created a Myspace for the band and I have some (very) rough demo stuff - just guitar at the moment - up to listen to.  Anyhow here it be:

http://www.myspace.com/shotgunvengeance

As for me, the pan flute is my chosen weapon, but I have been playing the Native American flute even longer, since I was 7 years old. My father was Lakota (Sioux), of the Oglala fire, and came from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. While on duty in the army in a tank unit, he met a young German lady, one thing led to another, and 9 months later........BOING! Out jumped little Douglas. When I was 3 months old, before he left for redeployment to Vietnam (where he was KIA), he left his flute with my mother, telling her, "For my son".

I still have my father's flute, and my now 2-year-old son Lucas (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=563163338#!/video/video.php?v=418200058338&ref=mf) will receive it when he is big enough to play it, rather than using it as a chew-toy.

I've played guitar for 5 years, piano for 1, and I've actually heard of your band    

The music I write is more along the lines of Slipknots album Iowa.

I also sing and scream.

P.S. YOU GUYS F*CKING ROCKK

Started drums at 7, guitar at 16, piano at 19 and started to sing about a year ago.

I want to be a composer for a living, hence when I am studying it for the next several years starting next week!

Quote from: "tymygy"I also sing and scream.

Oh! Yeah, I do that too at need. Using a vocoder, mostly.

I've played guitar for 5 years. Drums for 12. I sing and write my own songs. I hate playing covers, but if I do, I add my own style to it. I mainly play guitar and sing/write songs nowa days. Strictly acoustic.  My songs are about drugs, religion, and tongue in cheek put-downs about my ex-wife. 90s music is my inspiration (especially my favorite: blind melon.) I have a few songs on youtube...but nothing worth listening to in my opinion. But I am my own biggest critic.

I write music for a living- not exactly cutting edge but it means I dont have to bag groceries  

Here's some of the stuff I have to hand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cWlAt9mIIE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cWlAt9mIIE)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4xcET7vOsQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4xcET7vOsQ)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcSawqB836g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcSawqB836g)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf3dcL-FP1M (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf3dcL-FP1M)

Quote from: "tubbyman"I write music for a living- not exactly cutting edge but it means I dont have to bag groceries  

Hey... cool stuff... and you get to do what you love for a job (Woo and indeed hoooo ;-)

Any tips on trying to start a music career?

Quote from: "JuggernautJon"Any tips on trying to start a music career?

While building a fan/buyer base, be prepared to work your ass off for nearly nothing. That's the only thing I can say, really...

Quote from: "Asmodean"

Quote from: "JuggernautJon"Any tips on trying to start a music career?

While building a fan/buyer base, be prepared to work your ass off for nearly nothing. That's the only thing I can say, really...

Yeah this - I was poor for longer than I've been well off  

I've played in various local bands for 25 years. (Now retired) I am a blues/jazz/funk guitar player. I'm a 95% finger-picker. The other 5% is for riffs and such that can only be made to sound right with a pick. I also enjoy playing bass and enjoy slappin' the hell out of it. I still play every day and primarily use an electric Washburn guitar, that I've uber customized, which I run through a Mesa Boggie 50 Caliber with two cabinets. Outside of my amp's overdrive, the only effect that I still use is a crybaby wah peddle. I also collect classic guitars. I'm only just now feeling personally satisfied with my playing. Some days however, not so much. I'm my own worst critic.

I love to sing too but I'm the only person who seems to appreciate it. I can't figure that one out.

Played the cornet for probably seven years, but stopped. Was quite good, but had some troubles sight reading music and got frustrated. I would really like to pick it back up. I love playing instruments, even without knowing how, I have relative pitch and can piece together some simple songs on anything. I play the flute and piano as well.