My musical career This page probably won't remain after the launch. See here and here
"My" is the most valid word. "Musical" is in doubt and "career" is better than "life" etc as my career was divided between the hospitality/tourism industry and academe.
At the age of six, a ukele came my way alongside recorders and mouth-organs but no sheet music. At school, music lessons were a disaster. Teachers could not accept my non-reading ability. Although quite rare, those were the days when one saw a pupil beaten on bare legs with a ruler while made to stand on a chair. Later, one realised he was dyslexic. Others who stuttered occasionally went through similar ordeals.
At 14 and paper-round takings saved, my first guitar was an Hawaiian. At 17, a Spanish acoustic replaced it. In my late 20s, I played an ancient marching flute and ten years later played the clarinet (at times on stage). In 1988, I joined the Canterbury Pipe Band (long since defunct). Not being able to play two similar instruments, the clarinet went into the loft. I can cope with bagpipe and guitar, the latter in Flamenco and a few early Spanish classical pieces.
I taught myself all the instruments and still pursue new guitar pieces using tablature - diagrams showing the note at the fifth fret on the third string, etc. "Ten green bottles"? I'll have a go, with twelve milk bottles with varying levels of H2O in them. If the melody's in my head, I can usually render something.
Around the chanter table, the decison was made to crack the reading challenge. Only bagpipe score and guitar music still mystifies me. Only a few bagpipe notes but note-lengths are the biggest problem until the tune is in my head. Some pipers need to write the letter under each tune and we all have our way of coping. For me. embellishments are just approximations. I was in a Lucerne band for a year in 1992 and I'm now in an also-non-competing band.
I'll play the pipes solo in front of hundreds and not bat an eyelid (preferably without pipers present) . The guitar can be a struggle with more than six in the audience.