Originally Posted by: icebreaker1588haha absolutely no reason to apologize. I can talk about guitar/music stuff all day. It drives my girlfriend nuts. Listening to lots of music is a learning tool I use all the time. Glad you shared your stuff!

How long have you been playing?

Cool...I can talk guitar all day also :). I've been playing for a little over 30 years. The first 15 years was mainly rhythm. In 2000 I got a nice guitar (American Std. Strat) and took lessons for about a year and worked on soloing. Learned some songs and the pentatonic scales. That took me to a new level. Then a little over 2 years ago I signed up here to refocus again. Lessons and advice here from instructors (mostly Anders since he does the blues stuff which was my focus) and also fellow students took me to yet another level. Focusing on phrasing is what got me where I am now.

So when I say I've been playing for 30 years, it's not with constant progress LOL.

You are smart to include listening to other players to help your learning. I'm strictly a pentatonic player at this point, so what you heard me play in those solos was all from the pentatonic scale. Nothing fancy going on in there scale-wise. It was listening and watching Anders Moridsen here that made me realize how much unlocked potential there was in the scale for me!!

At the moment I'm learning songs and pushing my improvisational skills to see what I can do with them. I've done some funk and some pop that is outside my normal genre, which has forced me to branch out of my comfort zone, which is blues or blues based rock. Sometimes some amazing things happen! Speed isn't my thing either so I've learned to play to my strengths.

The journey continues...

Did you start learning guitar here? What genres and areas are you working on? What sort of player do you want to be when you grow up?