A follow up on Alone in the crowd.  Still working on this one though, this recording was only an example of how far I was working on this song. Some errors and a major software glitch make it "raw stuff"

Back in the crowd (work in progress)

I love the blues and became determined to learn to play when I found my beautiful Eastman archtop guitar up for sale, second hand for a bargain price, in Jan 2012. As soon as I touched it I fell in love.

I first tried playing guitar several decades ago: with unrealistic teenaged enthusiasm I fully expected to sound like Hendrix within a month or two while practising just thirty minutes a week. I gave up when I still struggled to tune my guitar and the cowboy chords I'd learnt sounded really rough when I literally banged on them. Girls were much more interesting.

In my late thirties I had a mid-life crisis(!), so I  bought a US Strat and a Gibson LP Pro, determined to learn to be an ageing 'bedroom rock star'. I was working long and hard hours so only practised on odd weekends, always wondering why following tab and listening to CD lessons was not working. I decided I was tone deaf and incompetent, so yet again, I gave up, still unable to master bar chords, convinced I would never be able to play.

As an early retiree, I decided to give it a final attempt when I found my black beauty: the first few years were a journey of discovery, discipline and sore fingers. I practised most days (except when arthritis in my joints and a trapped nerve in my shoulder 'froze' my fretting pinkie and sent my thumb totally numb). Back then, I trawled YouTube and bought a DVD course of lessons, and plugged away. It was worth it as I really enjoyed the fairly limited range of things I could play.

When I first arrived on Soundcloud, I was not expecting to find such a talented and helpful community. I just wanted to upload a jam track for my friends to hear, then I found the amazing wealth of creativity here. 

Sadly, my frozen shoulder, trapped nerve and related problems have pretty much stopped my guitar ambitions since 2016.

However, I still have a blast exploring all the fabulous originals and covers so many relatively unknown, but hugely talented, musicians have conjured up for the SC community. In my first five weeks on here I downloaded c100 tracks and 'liked' hundreds more, and since then I have created many playlists that I regularly listen to depending on my mood...

Simon Cowell and his ilk (overpaid gatekeepers/brand creators/ubercapitalists) have, until now, throttled mass talent for the sake of creating a relative handful of extremely wealthy 'cash cow' celebs.

Who needs these supposedly 'professional talent spotters' and their artificially enhanced 'celebrities'? The internet rocks!

NB If you too suffer from joint pain, RSI or trapped nerves I highly recommend this free DIY pain relief site: it is not just for guitar related injuries but pain anywhere in the body pretty much, and the techniques used really do work - although for me, they provide just temporary relief. Good luck!

At the age of ~12 me and my parents were told in a local music store that since I'm left handed, I couldn't play the guitar (Yes they believed it). The result was I didn't get a guitar. In stead I got an accordion. I actually had lessons for2 or 3 years.
Afterwards I sold the accordion and bought me a right handed guitar. At first I tried to play right handed but that didn't work for me. I changed the string order to lefty and there it started.

When I was in my 30's I finally bought me my first real left handed guitar, A used ' 83 Tokai goldstar Strat. That was the time I started making real progression.

I still have and love the Tokai Goldstar. 

Back in the crowd (work in progress)

HalfBlindLefty