Sorry for the rant, it started out with my music experience then devolved into some bitterness.
Don't apologise fren, I love a good rant when I can't sleep or have had a few drinks and they always end up being concluded with some kind of cynicism and bitterness.
Things have been a bit shit here so this has been a good thread to keep my mind of things and rant about something different with anon frens than gear and whether it's a sensible life choice to buy Yngwie donuts.
It's always interesting to read about different peoples backgrounds and developments of why and how they got into music and like what drives that musical 'tism.
Regarding the influence thing, being an Aussie kid, while I was never huge on AC/DC, every Aussie kid learned their chops on some Acca/Dacca a lot of musos will say your rhythm reminds me of Malcolm, but like on meth and that's ig combined with the influence of Rory Gallagher and Swede indie rock like The Hellacopters for my more heavier indie rock. My main material is like ambient dreamy/escapist surf/psych rock of tones I've mostly created myself and is just my own progressions and licks, that would be harder to pick out a certain artist of what inspired. It's Honk and I'm dang proud of it, it's not the most advanced or technical shit ever, but it's me.
I started acoustic guitar quite young, around 8, and I'm almost as old as men Cotton killed, my grandpa played country and western professionally post war in dance halls and had a cheap 3/4 size nylon string my mums brothers fiddled around with but never committed to, while I wrote a song inspired by Billy Joel for Soleil Moon Frye - Punky Brewster, proposing my love and marriage. Unfortunately I was never able to get the 3 page handwritten letter with the song sent in the post and move to burgerland to meet my tv crush and social media wasn't exactly a thing in the early 80's. Primary school music was mostly playing recorder, tambourine and singing along to puff the magic dragon. Few of my friends also played and we did classical/electric lessons at a local music shop/school. I'd say we would have been 10/11 just before high school. I recall being in the soundproof room, with all this rackmount stuff, gear and cabs, the teacher had one of those og headless steinbergers, could play like a boss, had a saab turbo and a really hot gf and we thought he was cool af and thinking fuck yeah this is what I wanna do, fortunately not be a low rent music teacher with some thot with teased hair and hoop earrings called Debbie but it like triggered something, fortunately not an enthusiasm in trainsets but audio tech and guitar.
I got my first electric at around 12 when I decided I was convinced I wanted to be Ace Frehley or the 5th member of KISS or get ripped and swole and wear a codpiece and join Manowar and wanted a Poison tattoo. We all had denim jackets with patches, acid wash jeans, bmx bikes and the formation of our glorious long metal hair.
My high/tech school had a big music/media program and was like the production studio for a local community UHF tv station. For the school brass band I wanted to do sax, since my friends sister was quite skilled and he had experience, he got it, I got my 2nd choice, trumpet. In the first days/weeks of high school 7th grade there was like an aptitude test, where you chose your elective subjects etc, me and my friend devised a plan to deliberately fail it so we got put in special English and Maths avoid the double English and Math classes on the timetable, and get put in with the tard kids seeing we were gonna be in the school band we could spend more time in the music auditorium, studio etc, but it didn't really pan out, we did tard English and tard maths playing tard Apple IIe math games until the teachers realised for year 8 in we weren't in fact retarded, just shitheads. We were both above average students, I especially excelled in English, was always spoiled with educational material and a voracious reader as a kid, so mum and nan were kinda pissed when they found out I'd been put in tard English and Maths for the first year of high school, my grandfather thought it was hilarious when I explained why. They weren't so enthused when I bought the school trumpet home, so home practice was confined to the backyard which just made our dog and all the neighborhood dogs bark their heads off.
High school, music was clearly the first elective and this is around when Metallica were at their peak with And Justice, basically the main clique at high school was metal heads, some, punks, hippies, skaters and sports jocks, we all mostly got along we had basically a gang of like 40-50 from all year levels where a majority played an instrument, some lesser non guitarist ones like bassists and drummers and wannabe lead singers, we'd go to open age gigs and international acts and and would hangout at certain parts of the school, smoke cigs, weed and be in constant trouble for doing shit like melting the sprinklers on the school football/cricket pitch with magnesium, firecrackers, leaving the gas taps on in the science labs and having the main building of school evacuated, there were usually a few bomb threats a year when some Uncle Ted wannabe rang the school from a public phone, by 9th and 10th grade we were bringing booze to school and having "detention competitions" to see who could rack up the most or get suspended for something for time off school from making a teacher have a full meltdown, cause they couldn't do shit. If we didn't have music/media classes or the fun trade electives for the day we just ditched and when mum got us our own place and worked long hours, my place was pmuch like one of those 80's/early 90's fratboy party houses. We'd make recordings with this jerry rigged karaoke machine, I got from a pawn store. I basically removed the speaker from it, inserted a four channel mixer with a fly lead to mixer output to the karaoke input so we could record 4 inputs at once. Like a miced amps from diff rooms, 2 guitars and a bass or 1 guitar and old step sequencer but have to record on one track in one take. We'd make parody songs off kiss and metal songs or raw punk making fun of lesser talented kids at school or how the teachers were pedos. Our punk band "Born in a Crowded Taxi" should have become an Australian household name instead of Silverchair.
Something like this but butchered by a 16 year old kid. I used these sheets of metal and screws to hold the mixer in place and a lot of silicone.
At school we used to get those old school printouts of sheet music or tabs where the ink would get you high when they were freshly printed, stuff like stairway to heaven, smoke on the water and whatever music the teachers would get.
In music class as a general elective, it was a lot of theory or if we were unruly, we'd just raid the instrument room for the guitars and keyboards and it was a cacophony. Band classes were a lot more formal and structured, private classes just on your specific instrument, I recall the 3 of us on trumpet who would spend a whole class just blowing through the mouth piece like a kazoo as like breathing/technique exercises and then full brass band classes and prac. I mostly focused on guitar post high school, to this day the sound of big band - brass grates on me.
In Uni I was much more responsible and focused, most of my 20's I practiced 6-8 hours a day, for uni post grad my goal was a masters of music therapy and a doctor of music philosophy, as well as some various bands and other gigs like playing latin in a restuarant I mostly have a lot of stagetech/cabling experience and then got into telco/networking because muh shekels.
