Then you are not a musician.

I play music. My own.

What good is that? You have to learn to play properly, to learn the songs everybody else knows, in order to learn how to create your own stuff.

Then I will sound like everybody else.

No. You will learn why everybody else sounds that way and be able to try your own stuff. You have to learn the rules to break them.

Right. What instrument do you play?

The CD player.

Well, that's this conversation over.

I've tried to learn to play the guitar properly several times over the years. I have taken lessons, bought books, videos, DVDs... No good. The guitar and I do not have the same relationship everybody else does.

I have spent most of my life listening to music. For about half of it I have felt that I was too stupid to learn how to make my own. The rest of the time I have been playing and not really giving a hoot what anyone else thinks. I don't need a band. With a guitar I am an entire orchestra. When I am playing, there are no other musicians in the world and there is no music besides what I am playing. I am often amazed when I play back one of my recordings how badly it came out. So I just delete it and try again. I am also occasionally surprised when something happens and the recording displays a talent and a skill that I really do not possess. I could not duplicate that recording without years of study. The fact that I have a multi-track digital Tascam Portastudio complicates things. I overlay stuff that I cannot remember having done, using effects and techniques that I many never be able to duplicate.

I am no longer a factory worker. When I play the guitar, I have no intention of being a factory worker. To me, learning to play someone else's stuff is hard, tediuous work. I think I did the required work when I listen to other people play. I've spent forty years listening to music and choosing the sounds I like and the rhythms and melodies. Now I know what to avoid.