@cambraca my #FirstDabble was an mystifying encounter with a DX7.

I was 16 I'd moved to Wales to live with my dad and most of his friends were musos. I'd said I wanted to learn keys, mostly cos back then A-ha and Peter Gabriel were big favs.

So, a friend of his lent me his DX7 and I could not do anything with it completely defeated.

Luckily my Dad had a couple of Nylon Stringed guitars and the Complete Guitarist book laying about. Over the next couple of years I taught myself the basics.

#FirstDabble-
My friends needed a bass player for their metal band... at church. So, I spent my three summers saved pay to buy a Fender Precision and a Sunn Coliseum (BIG LEAP). We got kicked out of the church when the guitar player was caught banging out JGeilsBand-Love Stinks on the piano in the sanctuary.

We quickly moved up to local clubs... opening for & co-headlining with Poison and Slayer... back when Slayer only played Iron Maiden covers.

Then, I was out playing biker rallies... Fun!

@cambraca so my #firstdabble was with a very early version of Cubase back in the early 90s, using an old Casio keyboard as my main instrument that was later replaced by a Yamaha CS-2X. I used to record onto minidisc via a Fostex 4 track mixer! My gear nowadays is totally different.

#FirstDabble
When I was about 12 I hassled my dad into buying me a guitar. Almost immediately I felt regret and intimidation. I had no frame of reference for how to play. Took a couple months of lessons, but it felt too much like school and my heart wasn't really in it.
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I started learning music as a kid, maybe 6 years old. Not that I was particularly interested at the time, my family was not even really into music, but that was one of the few activities for kids in my village. I learnt a bit of singing and played the saxophone for a few years but I wasn't particularly enthusiastic and I finally stopped.

Fast forward 6 years or so, I had a few musician friends in high school, got a guitar as a christmas present.

#FirstDabble

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#FirstDabble My first dabble into music was with my father's turntable. I liked it so much that he bought me my own and gave me a few old records without messing up his nicer records and turntable.

Thanks to the ones who responded with your beautiful #FirstDabble stories. They all resonated in some way and I was reminded of many things from my own childhood.

🎵 Keep 'em coming!

#FirstDabble

this is going to start off a bit negative, because that's honestly how i feel about a lot of my early music-related memories...

so i played recorder in primary school, but i didn't really think of that as 'making music', it was just something i did.

in middle school i briefly did group violin lessons, but the (classical-style) music we played was incredibly dull. i didn't know what music i liked at that point, but i knew it wasn't that.

(cont)

@cambraca #FirstDabble #MusicRecording
Wow, there was a lot of childhood playing with the #RadioShack cassette recorder. #Sang in church, took #violin & #piano in grade school, started learning #guitar at 13.

Guess my first serious attempt at recording was when I was 15, saved & bought a #Tascam 8track recorder, taught myself how to layer & bounce tracks from articles in Gig magazine. I filled in all the parts but #percussion. On some instruments I have #rhythm for days, but beats? Nope! Lol

@cambraca I had started taking piano and violin lessons around age 4 or 5 and was exposed to a lot of music by my parents, who were both in the music department at our local university.

But my #FirstDabble into actually making music was when my friend Brad and I wrote some lyrics and accompanied ourselves by banging on couch cushions. Pretty sure we recorded it on my fisher price tape deck.

#FirstDabble I had a drum kit when I was 10 but it broke and I stopped playing.

When I was 12 I got an acoustic guitar for Christmas. I picked it up left-handed, as it felt the most natural to me. But when I tried to play the chords in the Mel Bay book they sounded terrible! I figured I just had no knack for it and quit.

But at 14 I read about #JimiHendrix being LEFT-HANDED and changing the stringing. I had no idea there was left and right handed! Changed my strings and never looked back!

I sang in a hair metal band in Tacoma, WA. We did a battle of the bands. We did two songs, the second was Two Minutes To Midnight by Iron Maiden, which at the time I was not able to pull off well. The next band came on and their first song was Two Minutes To Midnight. They crushed it.

#FirstDabble

@cambraca Now I use Logic and Arturia V Collection. #FirstDabble

I was 5 years old and my family's living room basically doubled as rehearsal space for my dad's bands. I remember it as a happy time, which I think was for everyone (even mom, sans living room!)

Dad bought this awesome drum machine, which also had bass notes (and a couple of other instruments), the ability to change the pitch of notes, and a rudimentary sequencer. AND I was lucky enough that he let me use it! I know its sounds and demo songs by heart: https://youtu.be/7ydbk_oCl9A

#FirstDabble

Let's try something today. What's the story of when you first dabbled in music-making?

Let's use the hashtag #FirstDabble to find all of your stories.

I'll go first.

#musician #prompt