I had a guitar back when I was in my late teens – early twenties. It was a Hohner Viper STii and I loved it. My friends and I had a ‘band’ and we played together.
Was I any good?
I probably thought I was better than I actually was.
Through the passage of time this instrument has been lost to me.
Fast forward some 20 odd years later and I now have a family. I never really lost my interest in playing guitar but with more important things like work and bills, this interest got shelved.
Until last Christmas…….
My daughter asked for a guitar. She has been teaching herself to play the ukulele over the last year, and as she hasn’t done too bad a job of it, we agreed. The problem here is that learning the ukulele is one things, but the guitar is whole other ball game. I had heard of Rocksmith from Ubi Soft, but after some research I couldn’t find a definitive answer as to whether it can really teach you to play. From the YouTube videos i had seen, it looked very similar to Guitar Hero from Activision. My daughter has played quite a bit of Guitar Hero and I started thinking would this help her learn?
I bit the bullet and got a copy of Rocksmith 2014 through Steam. I then had to get a cable. The cable was £19.99 on its own from Amazon, or for £22.99 I could get the cable and the previous version of Rocksmith. So I did just that.
She has spent some time with her guitar hooked up to the PC battering away at various songs. When the Christmas Holidays were over she returned to school.
I guess curiosity got the better of me and when she was out one day I decided to try if for myself. I too have played guitar hero and the interface was similar. But unfortunately her choice of guitar was not too my liking. She opted for a semi acoustic and all though it is a nice instrument, the body is HUGE. Way too fat for me and I am not comfortable playing it. I am constantly aware of this and it distracts me.
So I decided to get my own. I really needed to keep the budget down, as this IS an experiment and there is a chance of failure. But, not too cheap. I remembered a friend from school who bought a REALLY CHEAP guitar from the back of a magazine. It was very flimsy to say the least. I headed over to eBay and after much browsing I bought one.
A B.C. Rich Ironbird. 
Yes metal music is still a part of me after all these years.
So now I am awaiting my new arrival, wondering what condition it will be in and hoping its not too banged up and it gets here in one piece.
I will continue to update my progress (Assuming I make any) in the blog so head over there if you are interested in how my Mid Life Crisis pans out.