Hey folks, sorry to "necro" such an old thread, but during a google search, this one leaped off the page at me.

I'm a 2 1/2 year sober recovering alcoholic, and it was *strongly* suggested that I pick up the guitar again (insurance against getting bored, which is extremely dangerous for people like me, at this stage of recovery.)

I had a Strat-plus and a Fender Twin reverb when I more or less quit at age 35-ish... two things happened simultaneously: I had stumbled across Steve Vai, and was listening to "For the Love of God," and realized that I was never going to be able to get anywhere near that level of playing, and I bought my first PC, and then got more or less hooked on computer gaming... and that was it. They gathered dust for years, and I finally sold it all off; guitar, amp, pedals, everything, and bought a better computer. Idiot.

Life happened, and so did alcoholism (again; this was round two... quit on my own the first time, and *couldn't* this time), and now I'm 66 and trying to remember the things I knew how to play over thirty years ago. Man, either my current guitar (Epiphone SG wanna-be) is an anvil, or I've lost a LOT of physical conditioning in my hands; bending notes on this thing is outright painful. Nothing like the Strat I remember, not even close.

Anyway, I'm blessed/cursed with a really good ear, musically; I can listen to a song for awhile, and in a very short time, I'm playing it... typically learn the "hook" note per note, and play just that part generally. Knew a whole bunch of "hooks," but precious few full songs. I thought this was a good thing, and always sneered at learning "correctly" how to play; who needs to, when I can just pick it up on my own, right? Wrong. It carries you pretty far, but then there's this wall; if you want to learn more, like theory, or talk to other players who DO know their instruments and music in general, you're just stuck, and feel like an idiot when you have to show them hand positioning and such in a kind of "show and tell" to get what you're trying to say across ("showing" and "telling" them how little I actually know, in reality).

I decided that since my life may literally be on the line here, I'm going to do things "right" this time, and take the time to learn to walk instead of trying to run all on my own as i did before. I'll have to learn to "park" this ear and just work through it by the lesson. I found this thread, and did some digging around, and this site comes highly recommended, so I'm ready to give it a serious go! Thanks for a great site and I really look forward to meeting people and learning things here.