What Was The First Song You Learned?

[DAK]

No Particular Place to Go and, same structure, School Day. Forget the solos... or keeping up with the tempos as recorded. I felt accomplished just having figured out the chords. Was 17, I think.

[Poppatwang]

from "Sunshine of your Love"
You too can be Eric Clapton in
one easy lesson.

[bradintexas]

My first guitar song was 'Raunchy' when I was 10 yrs old.

My first drum song was 'Hound Dog' when I was 6 yrs old.

Glad I learned 'Raunchy' when I was older and decided to stick to pickin' than beatin'

[Sidney Vicious]

A long long time ago I learned a couple of riffs -

Sunshine of Your Love and Dirty Water

- my guitar was too cheap, the action to high, my fingers to soft, my mind too distracted to get through the "chords hurt - I'll never learn this stuff" stage of development.

As an adult many years later I returned and for my first song learned "Have you ever seen the rain?" by CCR.

[Bob Rogers]

If I remember right, In A Gadda Da Vida was first. I bought the bass and amp and as soon as they had the bass strung lefty, I took it to band practice and the guitarist showed me the riff. I think Light My Fire was second. (Can you tell that the guy playing a Doric through a Leslie was the best guy in the band.)

[TeleMark]

Originally Posted by dean

My guitar instructor had me learn "House of the Rising Sun" as my first song. I was 50 years old and had hated that song for 26 years! I learned it, and I still hate it! Don't know why I don't like it - it's just one of those things, I guess.

Dean

That must be a guitar teacher requirement, as I think it was the first song I learned, too.

Either that, or "Little Brown Jug." That might have been on the piano...

TeleMark

[Tony]

Lucky Man

[Adam Waldron]

All Your Love as EC played it on the Beano album.

Note for note....

Cheers,

Adam

[Frank Roberts]

First song I ever figured out on my own was a Jimmy Reed 12 bar blues........ "got me doin' whatcha want me, baby whatcha want me to do......"

Come to think of it, I haven't really progressed much in the ensuing 40 some odd years.

[Skydog]

Kingston Trio (the first album).

[holndav]

must have been

"Heart of Gold" Neil Young

David

[GlennLewis]

then Pipleline, then Wipeout, then HOTRS, then I Walk The Line.

No wonder I can't do chords worth a darn, it was all lead parts until song #4.

[ilpescatore]

But on one string!!!!!

Fish

[tele0053]

satisfaction (one string), or sunshine of your love (one string), or house of the rising sun (arppegio chords).

[stebon]

was the typical Chuck Berry rythym line, but the first "song" was Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, or Day Tripper by you know who. As a matter of fact..... the Day Tripper riff was probably the one that got me interested in playing the guitar in the first place, closely followed by....or preceeded by "Satisfaction"....again you know by who. It was quite a long time ago and I don't know which came first......the chicken or the egg.

[JoeyV]

My first song was Jessies Girl on January 26th 1982 two days after my cousin Sal Baglio of the Stompers gave me my first guitar and taught me to play major, minor and 7th bar chords, the Chuck Berry shuffle thing, the Chuck Berry lick and I was all set..he gave me an Olympic White 1964 Fender Mustang with two real PAF's in it, like an idiot a few months later I had a repair guy at East Coast guitars named Neil Thompson put single coils back in it and make a new pickguard for it..I should of known something was up when he said no charge for the work but i will keep the old humbuckers you had.... I got that guitar for my 18th birthday, Jan 24th 1982, the next song was Maybeline on the 27th then Johnny Winters "Jumpin Jack Flash" on the 28th..then I wrote 10 original songs over the next couple weeks, learned the pentatonic scale and started a band with some guys at school and a minister who just graduated from Berklee and a month later I was gigging the vibrant Boston original rock scene, my first gig was at a club called Jaspers and my second gig was opening for the Stompers at the infamous Channel Club in South Boston .....I never stopped gigging since then and I owe it all to Rick Springfield!!!

[Joe M]

Honky Tonk by Bill Doggett; how's that for being OLD, followed shortly by What'd I Say by Ray Charles.....

Once I learned that Honky Tonk was recorded in the key of F and that it was a LOT easier to play on guitar in E, there was no stopping me..... :D

[Jupiter Beach]

Sunshine of Your Love by Cream

My dad bought me my first guitar on the condition that I learn some Cream songs. Clapton has been my favourite guitarist ever since.

[bgood]

I think it was Heart of Gold (I'm sure I learned other stuff before it that was easier but I can't remember). Learned it on my college roomates old beat up acoustic. Had been playing bass in a working band through school and decided it was time to learn a "real" instrument

[chickenscratch]

from the Mel Bay guitar book my Mom got me!

[dafack01]

First song I learned all the way through was "Sweet Home Alabama". The first song I learned just enough of was "It's Your Love" by Tim McGraw. Cheezy, yeah, but my girlfriend at the time gave me, um, many thanks if you know what I mean!

[beez]

the first whole song I learned. I seem to remember learning a lot of riffs: Iron Man, Crazy Train, Smoke on the Water, Cat Scratch Fever, etc...

[PyroCaster07]

Except maybe Eminem's Lose Yourself (so very easy ). But I don't count that one. I mosly know riffs from "Old Time Rock n Roll" and I know "Smoke on the Water"s intro. I am currently working on learning "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" by Big and Rich. I have some tab of it but not sure if its any good though. But maybe in a couple days I'll find out. Hopefully this will be my first song to learn cuz this song has a rock n roll solo in it that sounds great and its a country song (which I usually hate). It looks easy to me. Hope it is. 8)

[timgreene]

E chord, A chord G chord, back to E chord, then B7 for variety. Very repititous but I still love it. Whats that called Hootchie Boom Jesus left Chicago? :?

[Geo]

Some R&R 1-4-5 instrumental in E that an older teen showed me
in '64. I don't remember the title but it may have been a
Link Ray, Duane Eddy or Bill Black combo song.
It "slided" up into each chord, ie: Eb>E.
I wore it out and then learned more tunes. It reminded me of
a cowboy movie or TV theme.

[mr natural]

Dan Barrett taught it to me when I was 13 on my dad's '69 Yamaha FG-180 which I still have. That F chord was a toughy. First song I ever figured out myself was Wish You Were Here, including the cool lead at the beginning. I spent the next couple of years figuring out Mississippi John Hurt stuff, generic 12 bar blues in E, and slide guitar in open G. I actually wrote the best song I ever wrote IMO when I was 16. Haven't topped it in the 20 or so years since. It's like this finger picking thing in open G with a cool riff using harmonics. I still play it all the time. A fellow student in music school told me that the chords were "harmonically wrong." that's around the time I dropped out of music school.
-Mr N.

Oh yeah, another thing about Dan Barrett. He was in a garage band in high school and the other guitarist had a blonde Gretsch solid body that had 3 pickups and closely resembled a tele. I've never seen another one. Anybody ever hear about a guitar like this?