Have you ever had a lesson?
Learned to read music/tab?
Learned any theory?

In your "1 helpful reply in 5 ..." post, you neglecteed to recognize the value of tunesmiths advice, which in my opinion was the best.

If after 40 years you haven't been able to crack it on your own, then maybe the time has come to swallow your pride and ask someone else to show you.

Of course we're all in the folk scene and people just love to boast about how they taught themselves as it somehow lends them more folk credibility.

But it takes a rare and talented iindividual to learn a musical instrument without guidance of some sort.

We've all had our mentors and guides in some form or other.

Being able to play comes from knowledge of your instrument, and consequently of music.

Much as you might wish it, these two essential factors will never be beamed into your intuition from the cosmos. They need to be learned and worked at.

Of course you can learn it if you want to. You need to be realistic about how much work you must do and how your playing is going to sound for a while.

Learning is incremental and you have to see it as a long term and ever growing process.

what did you expect?

Would you like to be able to play all that challenging stuff you admire so much?

Well crack on then. The time is now and every day is a new opportunity.

Ring round a few teachers and find one who you feel comfortable with - reputations aren't too hard to unearth either. Talk to the guys at your local guitar shop and find out who's hot and who's not.

Go to a shop that sells sheet musicfor kids and ask who they recommend.

Find a teacher that specialises in a type of music/playing that you are into so you don't waste time boring yourself with stuff that sucks all the drive out of you. You might end up going off the guitar because of having a bad teacher.


etc etc etc - hope I've been of help.