[macalpine88]

Originally Posted by aldog1330

Parents rarely understand....except for my mother who when I lived at home would yell at me to turn it up louder, stating she couldn't hear what I was playing.

wow my mom flips out when she hears anything above 1 hundred trillionth of decibal. thats why i bought a px4

[Toshiro]

My mom was a Santana freak, listened to him the whole time she was pregnant and the whole time I was really little. Distorted guitar? She loves it. :p

[Elysian]

Originally Posted by macalpine88

wow my mom flips out when she hears anything above 1 hundred trillionth of decibal. thats why i bought a px4

heh my mom is a total metal head... she's been to every Bodom show thats been thru dallas, she goes to hellfest every year in new york(last year was in New Jersey), she's nuts, i'm sure if i still lived at home she wouldn't care lol

[Vince]

Sounds like most of you guys lucked out. My parents hated the fact that I was so musically inclined. They originally got me piano lessons when I was a little kid, and I took so well to music, I didn't develop into the person they wanted me to be. Life as a teenager was hard with them. They were some of the most unsupportive parents anyone could ever have.

I'm 26 now, and my parents still resent the fact that I play music. They wanted me to be a doctor, a neurosurgeon. They wanted the status of saying their son was a doctor, and when I didn't choose that path, they basically lost interest in me.

Count your blessings.

[rx]

Originally Posted by Elysian

heh my mom is a total metal head... she's been to every Bodom show thats been thru dallas, she goes to hellfest every year in new york(last year was in New Jersey), she's nuts, i'm sure if i still lived at home she wouldn't care lol

Coolness ^ 100000.

[bobthemerciful]

Nice axe (s)

[macalpine88]

Originally Posted by desertdweller

Sounds like most of you guys lucked out. My parents hated the fact that I was so musically inclined. They originally got me piano lessons when I was a little kid, and I took so well to music, I didn't develop into the person they wanted me to be. Life as a teenager was hard with them. They were some of the most unsupportive parents anyone could ever have.

I'm 26 now, and my parents still resent the fact that I play music. They wanted me to be a doctor, a neurosurgeon. They wanted the status of saying their son was a doctor, and when I didn't choose that path, they basically lost interest in me.

Count your blessings.

same here, although i could care less what my parents think. they have a fist fight over who is going to take me to lessons. the phrase"work now play later" is a hunk of crap. i worked my ass of for 5 years on music(all on my own, i just started taking lessons a few weeks ago) and its not even close to paying off

[Drew]

God, a day doesn't go by when I don't count them, man.

My dad was a more-or-less selftaught classical pianist (took lessons as a kid, but never really got into serious music and hadn't really even heard classical until he caught a concert in college, which floored him) who played a bit of folk guitar on the side (he's got this gorgeous old beat-all-to-hell acoustic gibson that's still one of the best sounding guitars I've ever played- it just screams delta blues), and an uncle of mine was a slightly more serious guitar. My mom had an auto-harp (tough to descripe- lap held instrument with lots of strings, like a harp, that you pushed buttons to mute all the strings that weren't involved in a given chord, and strummed), but that was about the extent of her musicality.

My dad tried to teach me some piano as a kid, which I thought was fun but was never serious about (i regret that now), and essentially I grew up in a household where there was always a guitar around (that aforememtnioned uncle bought my brother and I each a half-scale acoustic guitar one christmas- an absolute peice of crap, I'd imagine, but it did the trick, and I'd casually bang around on it a lot) and there was always great music on the stereo/radio/etc. It was probably inevidable that I'd eventually pick a guitar up, but watching a buddy play Jimi's "Voodoo Child" and then first hearing Nirvana's "Unplugged in New York" was the catalyst that finally did it. Never really looked back from then- my dad loaned me his acoustic on a more-or-less permanent basis at first, then my uncle loaned me his electric that he wasn't really playing anymore now that he had kids, then my parents bought me my first electric, a Yamaha Pacifica 112, one year for christmas.

The nice part is that it's sort of come full circle lately- watching me get completely hooked on guitar inspired my dad to start playing a bit more seriously again (he was always playing the piano, but rarely picked up his acoustic when I was growing up), and when I got into recording, he thought it was so cool that he eventually bought a Korg D-8 and started multitracking on his own, and has since become quite the prolific songwriter.

It was always sort of a family running joke starting from my days in Little League baseball that my dad "taught me everything I know." Just a bit of family mock-sarcasm, really, and while it's definitely not true when it comes to music, it may as well be; he didn't teach me everything I know, but he taught me everything I needed to know to teach myself the rest. We've branched off into pretty different musical areas, but he's at least indirectly my greatest influence as a musician.

desert- I don't know if it'll do you any good, but mention to your parents sometime that you know this 23-year-old kid who comes from a long line of doctors, and frankly, his doctor father is releived I have no inclination to follow the family profession. There are different forms of prestige, after all.

-D

[aldog1330]

Drew, thats great that you came from a musical family. Having supportive parents makes starting out on any instrument that much easier. And of course, many would be glad to know that their kids are spending their free time learning their instruments, not out spending their money on drugs and whatnot.

[Drew]

I always joke about that- I grew up in a small town in the Northern Berkshires. It was guitar or heroin, and while my chosen poison isn't much cheaper, it's slightly less likely to kill me...