Hey dudes - this is a great site, it's good to be here.

About me... my name is Andy, I'm 36 and live in London, UK. I do IT management / programming as a job and I've never played guitar before (well, up to around 3 weeks ago!)

Aspirations: Just to be able to hack out some tunes!
Gear: I picked up a Mexican Strat and a Roland micro-cube.

Influences:
I got into metal back when I was 13 - went to see Dio, Yngwie, Queen etc. live back then. I definitely like a crunchy sound - I'm more into the feel of the music than high speed shredding. Favourite bands are
Rush
NIN
Led Zep
Marillion
Riverside
A Perfect Circle / Tool
Mansun
Electronic / Smiths
Metallica
Thin Lizzy

Favourite guitarists:
Alex Lifeson
Jimmy Page
J J Cale
Ali Farka Toure
Prince

Why am I here? Well I finally picked up a guitar a few weeks back after seeing NIN live in their current tour. Aaron North was just amazing on guitar - I had to finally get myself one!!

I've started with a few books, practicing cords and trying to get smoothly into Dmaj (my fingers still aren't convinced - just practice I guess). I've done the power cord lesson here which was great, I'm practicing the pentatonic scale and practicing with a metronome.

This is a great site. Kris cracks me up. Look forward to talking with you guys.

Welcome to GMC.

You'll love it here. Lessons are awesome and the forum is great. Loads of info and the people are really nice. I've been playing for about 2 years (july will be two) and really wish I had started playing when I was younger. (I'll be 30 at the end of the month) but this site is helping me a lot. See you on the forum...

Thanks rokchik

Yeah - it would have been good to start earlier, but I just didn't have the patience back then.

What I'm loving at the moment is how even a few beginner chords and a bit of overdrive can sound great, and that brings me back to the instrument to keep practicing!