The second track off the album "May I Be Excused."

Jonny Cheat

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!

Music lover foremost. All kinds, analog preferred. Quality recordings are important. Also dedicated to the preservation of (and alas collecting of)  mono and two channel audio equipment from the 50s, 60s,and 70s.. Long Live Vinyl!! 

Trampled Under Foot, three time Blues Music Award nominees, winners of the 2011 Blues Blast Music Award's Blues Band of the Year and Sean Costello Rising Star Award Winners. Winners of the 2008 International Blues Challenge and the Albert King Award for most promising guitarist. Trampled Under Foot is like no other band you will ever see or hear. All sibling, left handed power trio. Danielle is an amazing blues singer and an excellent bassist. Kris fires right in the pocket on the drums and sings as well. Nick is a strong singer and an accomplished guitarist.

Creative catalyst &  concert host at Stanstead House Concerts Network - SHCN.

Be well. Practice big medicine.
Hal

Song writer, guitarist and vocalist, Formally a bassist in a number of semi-pro rock bands in 70s.   The first serious band I was ever in was with this guy: https://soundcloud.com/paulkrainbird 
Gemini's biggest highlight was playing Windsor Free Festival on the same billing as Hawkwind. We played a bit of soccer with them before the show - lol. Another band and another highlight was cutting "Shoot the Butler" at Abbey Road and, yes, we did walk the zebra crossing :-p 
I played bass on demo tracks by Dave Jackson "Van Ser Graaf Generator" too.
 Long live Rock!

If you like what's on offer here, my tracks can be downloaded on my website, gerrysongs.net.  Drop me an email if you can't find a particular song.  I was born in 1954 and learnt to play guitar during the 60s blues boom.  I used to be a total blues nut but I've mellowed to the point where I can appreciate other music of black origin.  My favourite guitar players are Johnny Winter, Rory Gallagher and Pete Haycock from the Climax Blues Band (the most under rated band of all time) but I have listened to an awful lot of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green and of course BB King.  Favourite singers would include Sam Cooke, Bill Withers and Ray Charles.  For the girls, let's have Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan.  Songwriters, Paul Simon and Carole King, not forgetting Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry.  I started writing songs as soon as I had the basic chords down and joined a band so that I could sneak some of my compositions into their repertoire.  There were many bands and I occasionally managed to persuade some of them to record, but that used to run expensive.  Nowadays, with modern home recording equipment, I'm working through my whole back catalogue.  I play as many of the instruments as I can myself and it's a lot of fun.  Discovering Soundcloud has been really great; listening to other people's music is inspirational and energising.  Thankyou to everyone who has taken the time to listen to my efforts and mega thanks to anybody who clicked on "like".  Words cannot express how wonderful it is for me to see those little hearts.