I’m very proud to say that I’m officially starting to learn electric guitar. I originally started playing guitar back in late January/early February of this year. My main reason for picking up the guitar is to help accompany myself when I’m not in a band situation. I was mainly inspired by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s solo on Heartbreaker. When I first heard that solo, I was blown away by how simple but effective it was. I also was into slide guitar and dobro playing from all the country music I listened to as a kid, especially Emily Strayer of The (Dixie) Chicks and more recently, Duane Allman from the Allman Brothers Band. All three of them are influential in my guitar playing style, even though I don’t play slide all that much.
On February 18th, I picked up a guitar from a pawn shop with the money I saved up. It was a Silvertone Revolver Doublecut in the color Blue.
As a guitar, I felt like it played a lot better than my stepdad’s Epiphone DR100 acoustic and thought it was more of my league. I did a lot of “doodling around” (as what my friend, Todd, would say) on it both with the slide and without it. But as I went further down the guitar player rabbit hole, the guitar’s tone started to suck. It sounded way too thick for me and it still sounded that way when I changed the strings to D’Addarios from Slinkies.
Fast foward to near the end of July where one of my friends asked me if I wanted to learn guitar and said that I could borrow his Sterling by Music Man Silhouette for no charge. I took the offer and I just got it a few days ago.
It played just like a dream. I found something that sounded and played better than the old Silvertone. This really gave me to chance to start learning guitar again. I’ve been using the JustinGuitar website to learn guitar and all the details he provides are very clear and understandable. Don’t worry! I’m not giving up on the harmonica anytime soon. I’m just using the guitar to accompany myself and to write songs with