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Little Atlas Heavyweight wrote:when you know how to play bass, guitar, drums and keyboard

I'm guessing that you can't play these instruments very well.

I'm guessing that if a drummer learned G major, C major, D major chords and proudly proclaimed to you that he had an understanding of the guitar, you'd laugh in his daft face.

A guess.

I am better with a piano than I am with a guitar, this puzzles me. Dreaming of playing more than one instrument is not crap, playing more than one instrument is certainly not crap as well.

Adam CR wrote:

Little Atlas Heavyweight wrote:when you know how to play bass, guitar, drums and keyboard

I'm guessing that you can't play these instruments very well.

I'm guessing that if a drummer learned G major, C major, D major chords and proudly proclaimed to you that he had an understanding of the guitar, you'd laugh in his daft face.

A guess.

i can actually, and also, i would.

i'm a better bassplayer than anything, but i'm fairly competent on the others depending on how much practicing i am doing.

one way or another, you have to be ok at percussion in addition to your primary instrument. unless percussion is your primary instrument, in which case the "in addition to..." doesnt apply.

i know that sounds like a silly "rule" but im serious. i really jump to conclusions when im jamming/collaborating/etc with someone who seems to be an ok musician on his "main" instrument but his timing totally breaks down when he tries some form of percussion. even if its just holding down straight quarternotes on a tambourine. im not asking much. its just that some people suck at percussion and i keep track of that. theres something (bad) to be said for those whose multi-instrumentalism doesnt extend to some form of percussion.

c'mon, theres millions of "non-musicians" who can play bongo drums just fine.

BClark wrote:one way or another, you have to be ok at percussion in addition to your primary instrument. unless percussion is your primary instrument, in which case the "in addition to..." doesnt apply.

This is a reasonable demand.

Jose Luis Perales wrote:

kerble wrote:NOT CRAP!

I've been working on a lot of music as of late, and one of the things I've been practicing is writing things on guitar and learning them on keys and vice versa. it's a lot of fun and I've been getting better at both.

yeah, i tried that several times with keys and guitar. it´s very interesting, specially how some silly things in guitar are dead easy to do in keyboard and viceversa!

It's crazy - you learn how to play A minor in all of it's forms, and it's the same thing all the way up and down the keyboard.
Not so with guitar.
Plus, the damn G string tends to piss in it, right?

Don't let only rudimentary skills put you off. Synths were monophonic for years. One note can do a lot.
Also, one of the most recognizable piano songs ever, John Lennon's "Imagine" is dead simple, you know?
Rick Wakeman gets on my tit.

I wish I were a total badass player. I saw Jon Brion do his show once and it made me want to quit. He can do anything.
I guess I'm lucky that I can play more than one thing though. I just wish I were better.

-A

I've given up on ever being proficient at any instrument other than guitar and bass. I can tinkle dink around on keys and get cool sounds, but nothing technically good. And I know the...for lack of a better word, "theory" of "good" drums but I couldn't be a skinsman if I was living on an island of lepers.

I support multi-instrumentalists.

Steve V. -

Don't write off being a good bass player and good guitarist as being the same thing - you're selling yourself short.

I've been a guitarist for 2/3rds of my life.
I had played bass before, of course.
However, it took quite a few months of me playing bass in a band before I really understood it. Something clicked and I went from a guy who could play bass to a bass player.

If you can do that and "tinkle on the keys" assuming you don't mean pissing on them, you are a multi-instrumentalist.

---

Having just hoped over from the Zeppelin thread, let me say, John Paul Jones?
Dammmnnnnnnn.......

-A

My first instrument was cello, starting at age 10. I fiddled around with a guitar for a couple years but didn't start trying to learn in earnest until age 14. I combined my knowledge of guitar and my knowledge of a bowed instrument to play upright bass in Concert Band for two quarters my first time in college. And I don't claim to play drums, but I've improved on them at a glacial pace for the past many years--if I owned a set I could probably get good. I'd say I'm at least as good as Meg White at this point.

Piano has always been tough for me--I can plink out a melody, but can't actually play. And forget about any wind instruments.

I don't see how being a multi-instrumentalist can be considered Crap. Oh yeah--because it's not "punk rock" to be competent at even one instrument, let alone many.

The term "multi-instrumentalist": CRAP

being one: NOT CRAP