Name Something That's Made You Want to Quit Music

[dwasifar]

Originally Posted by semolinapilcher

Losing the top of my singing range. Rats!

Yes, but didn't you gain a few notes at the bottom in the process?

[duluthdan]

Multiple Sclerosis sidelined me for more than 20 years I slowly came back into guitar at the urging of some old friends. I can't play like I used to, but I finally came to grips with not dwelling on what I could no longer do, and focusing instead on what I could do. I'm a happy hack. Smile Fierce !!!

[ricklt]

That video of Tommy Emanuel. Thanks for showing that by the way.

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by j.blay

Living in the horrors of addiction, I lost my way with many things. After playing nearly every day since 1976, I put down my guitar around 1998. Thereafter, I picked up my guitar only a few times a year until 2012. With 10 years clean, and regular participation in a 12 step program, I found my way back to my love for playing and song writing. Now, with 15 year clean, I have a good job I love. I have been able to buy/sell many fine guitars and finally traded for my dream guitar; a Jake Robinson SJ Brazilian/Bearclaw Sitka beauty I found right here on AGF. Now I'm about to purchase my ultimate plug and play open mic guitar and start putting my songs out on stage in my community. Who knows, I may even start getting some gigs and pursue my dreams even further.

Congrats on sobriety, and play that guitar in good health.

[silverswirl]

'Neil Young.'

[BoneDigger]

I go through periods of intense frustration, but I never give up completely.

[HAMFIST]

Seeing Yngwie Malmsteen play live with Alkatrazz in about 1983.

It was traumatic, There I was, pressed against the stage, as this pissed off Swedish guy rips my face off with little gnat notes. Behind his head. Behind his back. It was like he was looking RIGHT AT ME and saying ... IN YOUR FACE, YOU STUPID RUBE!

The band I was in at the time was covering The Cars and Judas Priest and stuff. I was pretty demoralized for a while after that. I kid you not.

[YamahaGuy]

Bad sound guys: by bad I mean they do one or more of the following:
1) create feedback when my rig is not prone to feedback
2) will not run a wedge monitor or let me run one
3) use more reverb than anyone would ever want or need
4) cut all the bass from my vocals
5) cut all the mid from my guitar (I know many people like to scoop the mids, but my ART equipped Yamaha guitars sound excellent plugged in)
6) offer sorry excuse for a boom mic stand - especially ones with a wobbly base
7) don't give you anything in the monitor
8) give you a great mic check and turn down the FOH when you play so no one hears you

[marty bradbury]

Originally Posted by duluthdan

Multiple Sclerosis sidelined me for more than 20 years I slowly came back into guitar at the urging of some old friends. I can't play like I used to, but I finally came to grips with not dwelling on what I could no longer do, and focusing instead on what I could do. I'm a happy hack. Smile Fierce !!!

I was going to give my reason , but after reading yours, mine is pale in comparison. Quite the undertaking, Good for you!

[Hasbro]

Originally Posted by RP

Seeing Tommy E. play guitar. He makes the near impossible look so effortless...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV1e-iSo5As

Holy smokes, ive grown cold to the blues improve type stuff for a while now, that warmed me up again.

[mjudd]

I can't say that I've experienced anything that has made me want to "quit music." I mostly play for my own personal enjoyment and not for others. However, over the years, I've had my share of frustrating experiences, as well.

One that comes to mind that happened very, very early in life, occurred when I was a freshman in High School (9th grade). This would have been in the early/mid 1970s. There was some sort of small fundraiser type of event at the school, and the school custodian, who happens to be a guitar player, was asked to provide some music if he could find a couple of other guys. Somehow, he found out I played, and there was another guy who played, as well. I agreed and we got together to "practice". This "practice" essentially turned into finding out if there were any songs that all of us knew and could play.

As it turned out, as a 14 or 15 year old kid, I was the "expert musician" of the three of us. The school custodian knew some old country music, but nothing that was going to interest teens in the 1970s. The other kid was a beginner and could play G, C and D chords, and could follow a song if it was slow and you gave him time to change chords.

By this stage in my life, I had been playing since the age of 9, and most of that playing guitar took up a good portion of my spare time. (I played two to three hours most days, longer some days). I could play (in a passable manner) some music by John Denver and a few other similar artists of the time.

After two practice sessions, the custodian bowed out of the gig and left me and "beginner kid" to play. Unfortunately, at that time, I only had an acoustic and "beginner kid" was playing a Fender Strat through a small Amp. So I played and sang as best I could, while trying to ignore the noise next to me that was occasionally drowning me out.

A few kids attending the fundraiser were sympathetic to what was going on, and gave me a couple of requests, which allowed me to play some things we hadn't practiced, forcing "beginner kid" to bow out for part of the gig.

To this day, I've never agreed to another gig without either going solo or knowing that I would be playing with some musicians that had some idea of what was going on (musically). Not every gig that I've agreed to turned out to be as professional as I'd always would want them to be, but none was ever this bad, again, either.

[Dano999]

I would say it was Disco

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by dwasifar

I did a gig for a roomful of kids at my work's Bring Your Kid day. I was paired up with a woman who had completely different ideas about what we should be doing, and I let her pick the material, none of which I was familiar with. I learned it and got through it, but I was uncomfortable and nervous, and flubbed a song in front of an audience of staring children. When it was over, one parent told me "don't quit your day job."

How gracious of them.

Nothing has ever made me want to quit playing music. It's one of things I'm simply compelled to do. But I did have one intimidating experience when I went to hear Lester Flatt's band when I was twenty two or so.

I started late as a musician - I didn't get my first instrument, a mountain dulcimer, until I was twenty years old. I got fairly good at it, and then took up mandolin. I was making progress, learning the chords and the scales, and actually making money gigging out. Then went to see a free concert by Lester Flatt and his band put on by the Kansas City Parks Department north of the river somewhere in north Kansas City (which was terra incognita for those of us in Jackson County.)

Anyway, if you're not familiar with Lester Flatt, he and Earl Scruggs formed Flatt & Scruggs after both left Bill Monroe's band. By the time I saw Lester Flatt in 1975 or 76, he and Scruggs had parted ways and Lester was fronting his own band.

Which featured a tiny little kid on mandolin named Marty Stuart, who was twelve at the time but looked more like he was seven or eight. And he was a blistering mandolin player!

That put me off mandolin for a few years, it really did. My reaction was kind of like "What's the point?" Fortunately, later I pulled my head out of my backside and went back to work on my mandolin playing, but it took years....

As one of my friends later said: "No matter how good you are, there's always somebody else somewhere who's better - and he's only ten years old!"


Wade Hampton Miller

[oldgitplayer]

I probably will never quit because I learned how to lower my expectations of myself....

[greenshoe]

About 15 years ago, I recorded a demo of songs, and about to sign a contract with a label (that went belly up as I was signing it... another story).

Anyhow, a very close friend at the time calls me up and tells me flat out "for your own good, you shouldn't be singing." And continued in a way as if he was staging an intervention.

Sometimes the cruelest things are said by those who think they are being well intentioned. And this friend was a corporate guy, has no creative background in anything (not a writer, musician, etc).

I didn't quit right away, but it certainly sowed the seeds of discouraging me from pursuing it seriously as a career, and made me unsure of myself for some time.