www.ruthellencooper.x10hosting
.com
Playing Since: 1970
Experience Level: Expert/Professional

Interests:
[Teaching] [Jamming] [Socializing] [Helping]

Occupation: cashier, musician, writer

Gender: Female
Age: 66

My Instruments:
Classical, electric, steel string, and resonator guitar
electric bass
Celtic, electric and resonator mandolin
banjo
pedal steel

Favorite Bands/Musicians:
Asia, ELP, Wetton-Downes Icon, Steve Howe, John Wetton, Carl Palmer Band, ELO, Nazareth, Flatt & Scruggs, the Carter Family, Josh Graves, the Chieftians, Paul Weller, Julian Bream, Robin Trower, Judas Priest, Motorhead, the Scorpions

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Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 5/11/2011
Last Visit 6/20/2012

Music has been my greatest love for my whole life, especially guitars. To me they are all like people so I call them "my family" and give them all names. Hymns were the first music I heard and it is still my favorite. I started singing in the church choir when I was 10 and began doing solos a year later. About that time my uncle gave my brother a guitar for his birthday with Fredrick Noad's book "Teach Yourself to Play Guitar." I figured I would just learn to play it too, especially since I didn't like to sing with the piano. It was a cheap classical with steel strings on it! It was almost impossible to play. When I was 14 I got a summer job and bought a 335 knock off electric guitar which I traded for a Fender Mustang the next year. I was totally self taught until I started at Western Kentucky University in 1980, first with radio as a major and music as a minor. Soon I switched the two with voice as my major but I really wasn't interested in opera. I had seen Michael Lorimer in concert and was so impressed with the class and beauty of classical guitar that I decided to pursue that rather than voice. When I tried out for the teacher, Dave Kelsey, he said, "Where did you learn to read music!" I said, "O, I just taught myself." I continued with voice as a secondary instrument but earned my degree in classical guitar. I also spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Hull in Hull, England. While I was there I took lessons in Celtic mandolin from Tim Keech a local music teacher in Hull. After earning my BA I went to Asbury Seminary where I earned a Master of Divinty, my other great love being Wesleyan Theology. As I said earlier I've always loved hymns, and I never stopped loving electric guitars even when I was studying classical music. The main thing I do now are Progressive arrangements of hymns where I play all the instruments. I also write a book to go with each CD which has an inductive Bible study for each song on the CD.