How long have you been playing music?

[rfurtkamp]

I started with good stuff courtesy friends who had moved from metal to jazz.

Hideous cosmetics but fine guitars, I was handed a Hamer USA Standard with a Kahler and Judas Priest stripes and told to rock on.

Yes, it included a lesson on how to do the guitar wave before I was taught to even play a single note.

[wafl]

Ha, some of you guys have been playing longer than I've been alive.(Sorry if that makes you feel old, just say you're experienced)
15 years for me. Started playing piano at 5. Clarinet at school at 10. Started teaching myself guitar at 12. Bass guitar at not that long ago but it's just a big guitar you play with your fingers.
I can't remember ever not making music.

[rfurtkamp]

Keep in mind I didn't start until i was almost old enough to drink and that still applies. ;0

[Mudfuzz]

22 years of actual obsession… I started when I was 13… I play on instruments before that but that was just playing….

[Obulus]

Guitar for about 10 years I think (started when I was 12-13). Me and my brother got a crappy Cort for christmas and I didn't like playing that much. Only really got into it when my brother upgraded to an Epiphone Les Paul and I started liking the sound and playing the instrument itself. Then I started saving up and bought a Japanese Fender Jaguar and after that it didn't take long before I turned into the gear hoarder I am now. Started my first (and current) band when I was about 17.

I played the trumpet as a kid but kind of hated it, so I dropped that as soon as I had some more or less decent guitar skills.

[zRobertez]

Ignoring band class in school, I played tenor saxophone. it was fun 7-8 years ago. Whole story incoming...

I took bass lessons in middle school for a couple months and then started a punkish band with some friends in high school. I started playing guitar a year or two later when one of my mom's boyfriend brought this crappy electric over from when he was younger but never really played. So I learned that and started liking more than bass because I could tweedily meetily with 6 strings. Then this dude who I went to his last concert before he moved away, he gave me his acoustic because he couldn't take it. Then he moved back and my mom and that other guy broke up and they both wanted their guitars back so I was just at bass again for a few months. Then, Im like 15 now I saw a stratocaster at the local music store. I had to put all of the money I had for them to hold it until I could buy it, like $60. So I sold my xbox 360 for the money to pay off the rest of the strat. I later found out that it was manufactured in 1993, which is awesome because so was I. So its a for sure keeper. And that's when I got into a real amps, pedals, writing "better" music, all that. And now its now, still using that same guitar and I still have the first pedal I got in my closet, a DS-1