[Hack&Lube]

I've spent about $3000 in guitar and keyboard stuff in the past 5 years (starting from not knowing how to play either at all, only started keyboard a month ago actually) and really, more than anything, I need some musical friends or people to play with or teach me new stuff.

It gets tiring just playing to tabs or sheetmusic and trying to learn on your own. I've really hit that wall where I want to play music but not having proper training and I just don't know how to play or I can't progress any further on my own.

I just play a mish-mash of things, no real full songs. The only 2 full songs I can play on guitar with even a mild approximation of the solos (but I will never be able to shred I don't think) is Dokken's "In My Dreams" and Whitesnake's "Love Ain't No Stranger". I play a few bars of Little Wing and Lennie from SRV. I'm trying to figure out how to play some Prince songs or learn some funk playing. I can only do the intro to "Purple Rain". I've got a funky groove for "Do Me Baby" and a simple progression for "Little Red Corvette". For acoustic songs I can sing along to, the only ones I can do are the joke song from the UK Office "Freelove Freeway" and John Waite's "Missing You". Otherwise, mostly what I do is just play lead and solo over backing tracks with pure improv as I have too much ADD to learn new songs note by note.

For the keyboard I just got, I'm just fooling around. Playing with reworking some oldschool jazz and funky sounds like the rhodes piano melody that you can hear in Warren G's "The Regulators" that comes from "Sign of the Times" by Bob James and the slap bass bassline that comes from Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)" that was performed by Louis Johnson.

If these are all strange combinations of music choices, you are right! And even wierder is I'm a mid 20s asian kid!