re: What musical instruments have you taken lessons for in your lifetime?

Drums: 10thgrade-freshmen in college.. Ray Fransen.

Played in multiple bands, only to work in the medical field today. My dad always told me, "you better have something to fall back on."

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He's even played with some big time bands like Blood Sweat and Tears and Chicago as a sessions musician.

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That's some serious accolades, was some serious talent he was playing with.

Got a cheap acoustic guitar around age 12 and there was a musically gifted family that lived across the street from me.

The mother taught piano and organ and her second oldest son taught guitar and banjo and I took lessons from him for about 1 year. I had fun, but eventually lost interest as my focus became girls and trying my hand at amateur boxing.

I did eventually buy a nicer acoustic guitar and one of those Mexican Fenders with an amp and played around with it for a few years but never seriously.

I still have the guitars but haven't touched them in 20 or so years but on the very rare occasion. The little I did learn is pretty much a thing of the past now and I'd prefer to not embarrass myself trying to play.

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Started out on trumpet, switched to French horn and mellophone in high school.

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I did the switch from Trumpet to French Horn in Junior High, then added the Mellophone for marching season in High School. My HS marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade the year before I got there, and went to London to play for the Royal Family the year after I graduated. I still have the trumpet I started with (Holton Galaxy T401). It was my brothers before it was handed down to me, and my son played it in Middle School...so it's been in the family since the 1970s.

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I did the switch from Trumpet to French Horn in Junior High

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In hindsight whoever asked me to switch did me a big favor. I ended up getting paid a nice chunk of change that one year of college for doing it.

Took piano lessons for about 4 or 5 years in elementary. Wasn't really into playing music at the time and eventually quit. That's the extent of my formal training. I was never great at reading sheet music and nowadays its completely lost on me.

Early high school age me and a few friends all taught ourself guitar. Eventually formed a band. Eventually moved to bass. Played some shows, also eventually around college age rounded into playing and getting drunk at the hometown local bar. The wife plays piano and the fiddle. We now have a baby grand that I mess around on, I find mostly I play ballad type songs for whatever reason. Probably BC they're easy. I can probably play 3 or 4 songs on the fiddle. I still play my guitar sometimes but not as much as I like and while I was never stellar at my apex, my skills have severely degraded. I also was able to score a good deal on a stand up double bass that I'll occasionally mess around with but fretless is a different animal than fretted instruments. At least it has machine heads... fiddle players will never admit it, but fiddles need machine heads.

Violin and fiddle (same instrument, played differently). Took lessons, in both, for 8 years but could never play by ear which is what I wanted. So decided to start making violins, and it has been a great feeling of accomplishment, having made 15 fiddles so far.

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Another story, but it's about my best friend in high school. He was a phenomenal drummer. Our junior year of high school he tried out and made one of those show bands that traveled the USA. I think phantom regiment was the name of his. This dude was incredibly good. He did that for 3-4 years. He told me stories about the crazy amount of drugs they would do on these trips. He's now a homeless bum on the streets, last I heard, hooked up on some bad stuff.

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Was this guy from the New Orleans area? Brother Martin high school? Marty Hurley was BM's band director at the time, and he was also Phantom's drum line director.

I knew a few guys who played in Phantom back in the 80's.

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That's some serious accolades, was some serious talent he was playing with.

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He's 83 and still plays in 2 different swamp pop bands in the Baton Rouge area. He's way cooler than I'll ever be.

Another CSB:

Growing up, my dad was a strict father raised in the 50s. He was like Ward Clever, very straight laced. He was a music teacher for middle school concert band.

BUT, he was also a rock and roll sax player. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention above, he was a founding member of John Fred and the Playboys too.

I knew that he played music on the weekends, but that didn't really mean anything to me. All I knew was his music teacher and his strict disciplinarian persona. All my friends were kinda scared of him.

Fast forward to 1984 when the World's Fair was in New Orleans. The band my dad was in booked a standing gig at the Australian bar called Sheila's. One Friday my class was set to go to the World's Fair as a field trip. My dad talked with the owner of the bar and got permission for me and some buddies to come see him play. The drinking age was 18 and we were all 17 and it was New Orleans, so no big deal.

My buddies and I went to the fair and saw all the sights and rode the rides. As the sun set we headed over to the bar to see the show.

We walked in to our first bar, dark, smoky, Australian guys drinking oil cans of Foster's, it was magical. The stage was dark and then a spot light flared. Bathed in sodium light, wreathed in inky darkness, stood a sax player. He starts a solo that melts the mic. The rest of the band joins in and the lights blast the stage. The sax player was like Conan standing upon a pile of skulls, triumphant in his glory.

My friends and I just stood there in awe. It was my straight laced, strict, won't let me play KISS records, Ward Cleaver, dad. We were dumbfounded.

They kick in to a Blues Brothers song and the whole place is rocking. I just couldn't believe my dad was so fricking cool. He was a rock star.

I finally saw him for who he truly was. Not the guy who worked for shite wages teaching school and playing gigs on the weekends to make ends meet. Not the guy who made me cut the grass whether it was dark, or raining, or Christmas day. I saw the guy who loved to create art and entertain. It was the purest slap of reality I'll ever experience.

It was golden.

Trumpet, and I was good too. I loved playing and reading about the great trumpet players, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard.

I grew up a military brat and my dad killed my trumpet dreams by constantly telling me that I could play in the Army. I didn't want to play in the Army, so I quit.

I'll regret that decision for the rest of my life because I ended up having to join the Army anyway because I was too concerned with chasing puss in college rather than studying.