i got into ambient/drone music last year, when i discovered richard skelton (who maybe falls closer to the former). & when i get into things, i want to try them myself. i read and i write; i listen to music & i play and make it, etc etc.
so my plan for that rapidly-approaching quiet time is to sit down and make some music. i have some pieces sketched out in terms of what i want to do, how i want to layer things. in the last few months i've bought a few more pedals (a reverb, a looper, ...), what i had from when i was last really into electric in my 20s being mostly basic staples (a delay, a muff, a chorus, an od). and i'm itching to sit down and go. i did a test run last week, and everything recorded as expected. my little usb audio interface has a mic port and a guitar jack, so i mic'd my tube amp, and ran my (very old) amp modeller through the guitar jack on the audio interface. a test run in audacity. good to go.
decades ago my friends were doing similar sorts of things (and one or two still are) but more with synthesizers and trackers than guitars. i couldn't play either so i just sort of watched from a distance. the closest i got was a recording session just before the turn of the millennium, where i joined them on my own instrument. then i put that aside, focused on school (the usual story).
& now, here i am. a little into midlife, much more grey than i'd like, a row of pedals lined up next to an amp and a pod in a darkened room. i like to tell the story about how i first picked up a guitar when i was 15 or 16, decided i was going to learn a bit, got some music from my mother, who also plays. how that never stuck, but how a decade later, i'd return to the instrument, and it would in many ways take over my life. this, too, something like the same.