I picked up my first guitar a little over 2 years ago at age 44. I started going through the Core Learning courses that Christopher Schlegel gives here on GT. Oddly enough, he's my age and attended a rival high school here in St. Louis, and it's possible we may have run into each other at parties back then. Or maybe he played at some of the parties that I attended. I thought he looked familiar, but those years a little fuzzy, if you know what I mean. :o

In any event, while going through those courses, I became distracted by other things in life a few times and stopped practicing for a few months at a time. I will also say that I was at first having trouble getting in good practice time because of my fingers getting sore from trying to learn on a cheap guitar. I ended up buying a couple of guitars that were easier to fret and it made a world of difference.

I did eventually get through the Core Learning 1 and 2 courses, but I was having trouble making the jump to the next levels. Some of us older folks can't spend all day in our bedroom with no other responsibilities and find it hard to set aside the time. Especially, when we don't feel like we're making much progress. I was getting a little impatient to hear something coming from my fingers that sounded more complex than "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but wasn't quite ready to jump into more complex strumming and hammer on and pull offs etc.

Later my interest started to peak again and I ended up finding this guy online who didn't do the Core stuff so much, but was very effective for me in getting strumming patterns and such down with cord progressions that sounded melodic and similar to to well known songs. Being able to hear melodic cord progressions has kept it interesting while practicing cord changes rather than just simple down strokes on each beat. Now, I'm at a point where I think I can start trying some of the simpler songs on GT so I came back because, I can tell that there are some really good instructors here, I just wasn't ready for in an online setting before.

Are you too old to be a rock star? Probably... Are you too old to follow a dream and have fun learning something and hearing music come from your hands that you may have thought you couldn't do? Never!

Enjoy!