Cool, Jeff.  I've fooled around with one of the larger G-Decs, and they are neat-o (had a tough bout with Gear Syndrome on that one).  Like others have said, one of the best ways to learn to make music is to play with accompaniment, either CDs or a looped progression like the G-Dec provides.  Last year, I bought a workstation with 8-track off Ebay, and it energized my sessions IMMENSELY just being able to loop some progressions to solo over.  It is very important to entertain yourself with it so it doesn't become a chore.  Also, don't be surprised if the muse comes and goes over the years; just keep your guitar in the corner instead of the attic and you'll pick it back up later.
Now, some advice.  You mentioned Eddie Van Halen, and while his fretwork and ear for tone is obviously extraordinary, I think what really makes him so great is his impeccable rhythm.  The left hand gets all the press, but the secret to the guitar is in the right hand, IMO.  With that in mind, try to establish good fundamentals at this point.  I had a TERRIBLE time breaking the habit of downpicking everything (too much Metallica in my youth).  I still have the tendency, but I make an effort to work on my alternate picking.  Also, I'd advise that you be careful of 'riff practicing'; ie just playing the neatest snippets of songs.  Try to get a feel for a whole song, how chords go together and stuff.
Finally, Youtube.  How cool it is.

It's fun, but I've got to say that 'hilarious' is over-used.

I'm nearly certain they do disappear when you die (or lay out more than your initial load-out), but I'm not 100%.  I know in BF2 PC you could pick up your old kit off your corpse and trigger any C4 you had laid out, but I don't think they do that here (C4 will expire over time, though).  I've pretty much polished off GTAIV, so I'll be deploying in the desert more often;  I'll try to figure some of this stuff out. 
I'm planning to beFriend some of you folks (no I in teamwirk), so look for MooseFoe invites if you're not pegged out on the Friends list.

White!  Wiz had successfully identified the song as Tchaikovsky.  It was the ice cream trucks jingle.

Someone commented that only the sniper class was worth playing, I have not found this to be true at all.  I've scored 400+ points in a round with pretty much all the classes Except sniper. (I'm not a good sniper)  A good sniper, or pair of snipers can make a big impact, but this is true of all the classes.  I like that they changed the spec-ops sub-machine gun to not be a rapid fire sniper anymore, past a fairly short range you won't be killing anything other than someone who is almost dead already.

That's not quite what I said, but I didn't explain myself very clearly (post was already overlong).  I played Sniper a good bit, but I really like Demo and SpecOPs better, mostly because I like to blow shit up.  What I meant was that Sniper seemed to fit nearly any role almost as good as any other class, and IMO games need to have compelling reasons not to be Sniper otherwise the battlefield teems with them.  In the Beta the laser designated missile was absolutely the best anti-tank weapon; one shot kill on tanks if you hit anywhere within 10 feet of them.  I'm very glad to hear it has been nerfed.  Sniper is obviously great anti-infantry at distance, and even if you feel like approaching the objective the gaydar (sorry, it just fits!) device makes avoiding or surprising enemies very easy.  As you say, though, points can be a problem, if you're not getting the +5 for headshots and are not close enough to your squad to benefit from squad bonuses.
Did you say that they reduced the range of SpecOPs guns from the BF:BC Beta, or were you referring to PC BF2 (which had highly accurate rifles for them)?  That would bother me; I felt SpecOps really needed some love in the Beta.  I enjoyed and had good success playing close crate defense with C4 and silenced guns, but other than that it was kind of hard to do much with them.  I could count on one hand the number of Indicator Tag assists I got through the entire Beta, and I tagged EVERYTHING.  It seems like they move quicker than most classes, but I think a lack of armor makes them more fragile.  I was hoping that they would have some kind of ninja powers, like they had less susceptibility to spotting (I didn't say it), or had quiet footsteps or something.
I'm probably coming off like an over-critical bitchboy, but I really just like discussing this stuff from a design standpoint.  Like I say, I've loved the Battlefield series (I think they've spoiled me for any other shooters, frankly), and I'm actually envious of ATB for discovering the greatness of a more tactical AND logistical FPS like this.  I know everyone loves COD for what it is, and it does what it does better than BF, but when you get in a good role-based squad that is supporting one another there is no substitute.

My kid got turned on to reggae from listening to Tuff Gong, and we Wizzed a song to get the artist info.  It showed up as Petr Ilyich Tchai...  Can you guess what color our vehicle was? 

I'm definitely a BF-series fanboy, although this was the first BF I'd played on a console.  The beta was a lot of fun; I played enough to get all the unlocks, mostly enjoying Oasis.
I did have some complaints, and I really hope they've been addressed since the beta.
#1: Gaydar!  OK, UAV's (which show the position of enemy soldiers, typically for a brief period) have been in these kind of games for a while now, and I understand the basic purpose of shortening the 'search' part of 'search-and-destroy', but this implementation is just too damn much.  Basically, a member of the opposing team 'looks' at you by placing the crosshair on you, and the game automatically 'spots' you (not a keypress like the PC BFs, but it had some flakiness in that it wouldn't consistently trigger).  Once spotted, your position is known to the entire enemy team.  Pretty standard, right?  Wait, not only does the enemy see you on their map or mini-map, IT PUTS A FRIGGING DOT ON YOUR LOCATION ON THE MAIN VIEWSCREEN.  Well, OK, some people don't understand maps, I get that.  Wait, IT ALSO UPDATES THIS INFORMATION IN REAL-TIME.  Well, maybe that helps people who nee- FOR LIKE 8 TO 10 FREAKING SECONDS!  Combine this mechanism with destructible walls, and I spent a lot of time madly running away from combat while an enemy Bradley destroyed every wall between me and him, then turning around and heading back when I thought my 'signature' had worn off.  Now, in my day, we used to call this kind of thing a 'wall hack', and it was generally reviled.  Now it's cool?  No.  It's still not cool.  Actually, there's too much of this onscreen information in general.  It doesn't really help me to see dots for every friendly within 10 miles, indeed it hurts if an enemy gets between us resulting in a slow threat identification.  I don't like that the crates have a 'shoot here' triangle for enemy boats or tanks to sit back and shell.  Will there be a hardcore mode without this egregious level of hand-holding?  Suck it up, noobs, read a friggin' objective description now and then why don't ya?
#2: Squad/team management.  I understand that in this context, the developers are smart to limit team-changing, but I've been on both sides of some severely unbalanced matches and there was nothing much to do about it except leave.  Is there some kind of autobalance now?  I seem to recall that it wouldn't even consistently add new players to the shorthanded team.  The squad system had the same problem of manageability.  I never figured out how to start a new squad or join a different squad (e.g. your only other squadmate just wants to practice his 'nap-in-the-earth' helo flying).  Am I hearing there is some kind of party system that will let me squad with Friends?  Anything new on that front?

These were the big ones.  I also wasn't crazy about some of the class decisions they made, but this is de rigeur with non-homogenous shooters.  For example, usually there's not much reason to be anything other than sniper.  Support is mostly useless, IMO.  The Anti-Tank weapon is really not much use against tanks, even square in the rear.  Of course, there may be other environments in the full game where these other classes come into their own.

What's the final disposition of the unlocks?  Initially, the 'buy-only' unlocks at the top were to be sold on Marketplace, or included in the Gold Edition.  I thought I'd heard that EA had decided to include these with the regular product, as the 'pay for advantage' aspect raised something of a stink.  Like Hark said, the 'non-buy' unlocks are mostly minor differences.  I think the main advantage to them is not having to rely on the weapons a particular army offers you for your bread-and-butter class; ie you can always use your unlock and get intimate with it.

Finally, I'll probably get the damn thing anyway.  I didn't really get into COD4 MP, but I look forward to fragging with some of you FPSers.  Look for MooseFoe (also for GTAIV now).

PS: Hi.

The 'gaydar' as you call it is no different than the system in BF2 where you could mark your target and it would show up on everyone's radar/hud.  The only small difference is that instead of pulling up a menu and selecting what the target is, it automatically calls out what it is.  You ONLY show up on radar if someone has spotted you and kept you in the center of their vision for more than about 1.5-2 seconds.  It's really not that hard to avoid if that's your game plan.  I like the dots because not only does it make it much easier to shoot the noobs, but when you get good at not being a dot, peopel assume you aren't there and it's much easier to kick their ass unseen

If the crates weren't marked as such, the 50% of players that actually do try to attack or defend objectives wouldn't.   Most but not all crates are in positions that boats, tanks and helis can't take them out easily anyway.  There's usually one every couple waypoints that is accessible to tanks.  If you let a tank kill the crate you deserve it anyway since it takes about a dozen rounds and no tank should live that long.

Regarding the auto-balance, it seems like it was in the beta, but not the demo.  Hopefully with full servers it won't be an issue but I agree that this could be a problem if they don't bring it back.

I think you may be misremembering.  It is indeed very different from BF2 (which BTW had a context-sensitive 'Spotted' command, no menu required), where the enemy's position absolutely DID NOT show up on the HUD.  There is a world of difference between cross-referencing a red dot's location on your minimap with an enemy's location in the world, and seeing a constantly-updated 'Shoot Here' marker on your HUD.  If it were just on the minimap or only lasted 2-3 seconds, I wouldn't have that much of a problem with it.  It's ridiculous that an enemy, who has never even seen me, knows my exact location upstairs in a building because I ran into and killed his pal 5 seconds ago - downstairs.  Who would appreciate such a mechanic besides the worst REMFs in the game, baiting with their teammates and having no intention of ever approaching a crate?

I'm definitely a BF-series fanboy, although this was the first BF I'd played on a console.  The beta was a lot of fun; I played enough to get all the unlocks, mostly enjoying Oasis.
I did have some complaints, and I really hope they've been addressed since the beta.
#1: Gaydar!  OK, UAV's (which show the position of enemy soldiers, typically for a brief period) have been in these kind of games for a while now, and I understand the basic purpose of shortening the 'search' part of 'search-and-destroy', but this implementation is just too damn much.  Basically, a member of the opposing team 'looks' at you by placing the crosshair on you, and the game automatically 'spots' you (not a keypress like the PC BFs, but it had some flakiness in that it wouldn't consistently trigger).  Once spotted, your position is known to the entire enemy team.  Pretty standard, right?  Wait, not only does the enemy see you on their map or mini-map, IT PUTS A FRIGGING DOT ON YOUR LOCATION ON THE MAIN VIEWSCREEN.  Well, OK, some people don't understand maps, I get that.  Wait, IT ALSO UPDATES THIS INFORMATION IN REAL-TIME.  Well, maybe that helps people who nee- FOR LIKE 8 TO 10 FREAKING SECONDS!  Combine this mechanism with destructible walls, and I spent a lot of time madly running away from combat while an enemy Bradley destroyed every wall between me and him, then turning around and heading back when I thought my 'signature' had worn off.  Now, in my day, we used to call this kind of thing a 'wall hack', and it was generally reviled.  Now it's cool?  No.  It's still not cool.  Actually, there's too much of this onscreen information in general.  It doesn't really help me to see dots for every friendly within 10 miles, indeed it hurts if an enemy gets between us resulting in a slow threat identification.  I don't like that the crates have a 'shoot here' triangle for enemy boats or tanks to sit back and shell.  Will there be a hardcore mode without this egregious level of hand-holding?  Suck it up, noobs, read a friggin' objective description now and then why don't ya?
#2: Squad/team management.  I understand that in this context, the developers are smart to limit team-changing, but I've been on both sides of some severely unbalanced matches and there was nothing much to do about it except leave.  Is there some kind of autobalance now?  I seem to recall that it wouldn't even consistently add new players to the shorthanded team.  The squad system had the same problem of manageability.  I never figured out how to start a new squad or join a different squad (e.g. your only other squadmate just wants to practice his 'nap-in-the-earth' helo flying).  Am I hearing there is some kind of party system that will let me squad with Friends?  Anything new on that front?

These were the big ones.  I also wasn't crazy about some of the class decisions they made, but this is de rigeur with non-homogenous shooters.  For example, usually there's not much reason to be anything other than sniper.  Support is mostly useless, IMO.  The Anti-Tank weapon is really not much use against tanks, even square in the rear.  Of course, there may be other environments in the full game where these other classes come into their own.

What's the final disposition of the unlocks?  Initially, the 'buy-only' unlocks at the top were to be sold on Marketplace, or included in the Gold Edition.  I thought I'd heard that EA had decided to include these with the regular product, as the 'pay for advantage' aspect raised something of a stink.  Like Hark said, the 'non-buy' unlocks are mostly minor differences.  I think the main advantage to them is not having to rely on the weapons a particular army offers you for your bread-and-butter class; ie you can always use your unlock and get intimate with it.

Finally, I'll probably get the damn thing anyway.  I didn't really get into COD4 MP, but I look forward to fragging with some of you FPSers.  Look for MooseFoe (also for GTAIV now).

PS: Hi.