How we used to learn to play music
Pre-internet was very different than today, it took a lot more work to get good information.
In the way back time1 when you were learning to play an instrument, say guitar, you had a few options. You could take lessons. You could read books. You could jam with friends.
I took the first and second mostly. My lessons were from a fellow Atarian, Vernon Anderson, who ran a BBS called “The Rat’s Nest”, and that was how we connected. I learned a lot, and pretty quickly became proficient.
But, you know what didn’t exist in the 1980’s? The Internet.
Thus, if you wanted to learn some Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd, and you don’t have a developed ear or struggle to learn from recordings, you bought books. And there were lots of books, mostly using tablature.
I spent lots of time at music stores browsing the racks of music books, and buying many of them.
Additionally, there were tons of magazines, Guitar World, and the one that I read every month, Guitar for the Practicing Musician. Each month there were interviews, tutorials, exercises, and several full transcriptions.
GFTPM in particular had a column where they explained how the guitarist obtained their sound. The signal chain, and the effects were most fun to read, mostly because I was pretty poor, and couldn’t duplicate their rigs (turns out that was OK, because without a lot of amplification most of those tones were impossible to replicate. It would take until the modeling era and Line 6 to get good sounds without serious damage to your hearing.)
Nope, back then it was the dark ages, we shared tablature scrawled on steno pads, poorly recorded cassettes from Panasonic portable players, and a lot of ingenuity.
Today, there are endless tutorials, videos, computer programs, YouTube, vimeo, and other platforms, as well as dedicated sites like Ultimate Guitar, Guitar Pro, and tons and tons of high quality tabs.
Nope, if you’re starting today, the world is your oyster, the resources are bountiful, the beginner’s instruments are amazing, and you can pretty quickly feel like you are gaining proficiency.
The 1980’s and 1990’s in particular
RIP, Randy Rhoads. :bows head:
Playing the guitar always intimidated me. It seemed so foreign to me as a flautist, and then there's the whole left-handed thing too. Do you think some needed skills were better served learning to play by ear, viz., trying to figure out a solo by playing and replaying pieces and putting them together versus all the tools you mentioned?
(Are you familiar with the Professor of Rock YouTube channel?)
I started taking lessons on guitar the beginning of last year. I have no idea how hard it must’ve been to learn pre-internet. God bless Justin Sandercoe and most especially Ivor Sorefingers and all the others who put up such great YouTube tutorials.