I play guitar and i make my recordings generally at home, playing a bit of guitar, some bass, sequence some drums, adding synths, vocals, etc. I went to some piano lessons, i know how to make some chords or simple arpeggios in the synth but that´s it. I´m currently playing bass in another band, going to lessons, learning a lot...
but i don´t want to stick to only one instrument. I´m a sloppy guitar player at best, i´m also a sloppy bass player and a terrible keyboard player, but i can´t help to try to learn instrument after instrument after instrument. I plan to buy an uke, perhaps a trumpet, then drums, then!!...
Knowing that, i´m definately not naturally gifted for this thing of playing musical instruments (plus i have 15-year old girl hands), is this a stupid endeavor? other multi-instrumentalists here?

ps. i know there is another 'multi-instrumentalist' thread here, but it´s related more about playing several instruments in a band and switching mid-show.

not crap.

when you know how to play bass, guitar, drums and keyboard, it gives you a little more insight to how to other instruments work, what can be played, etc.

I play guitar to a pretty decent standard, bass acceptable (improving), piano a little, mandolin a little, accordion a little, drums a very little, blah, blah, blah.

I love playing all of these instruments (although drums are impossible at the moment) but I don't in any way consider myself a multi-instrumentalist. I am (having played guitar for more than 20 years) finally happy to call myself a 'guitarist' in the sense that I can play to a decent standard using a variety of techniques, but the other instruments I 'play' are strictly for fun.

It's incredibly easy to stagnate as a musician. How many times do you read an interview with a (for example) guitar-player where he/she explains that they wrote the new record mainly on piano, and that's why there's a 'freshness' to the recording? Absolute bollocks. There's a 'freshness' in terms of their fingers not going into automatic-mode and unconsciously re-writing their last record, but 99% of the time there's zero 'freshness' to their cack-handed, C major piano compositions. What might have introduced a genuine 'freshness' would have been becoming better at playing the guitar (or whatever).

It's terrifyingly easy to play one instrument for decades and broaden one's musical techniques/options very little.

It's certainly fun and useful to gain rudimentary a understanding of a variety of instruments, but really, any serious instrument is a lifetime's challenge in itself.

Unless you're extremely talented and time-wealthy.

Having said that, I guess my view is informed mainly in relation to composition; I guess that if one simply loves playing music (of whatever artistic merit) then being able to play a bunch of instruments to a rudimentary standard might be useful beyond the fun-factor.

I can play guitar, bass and drums (badly) but instruments with keys are beyond my patience.

I'd love to be able to play a brass instrument of some kind. Or maybe a theremin or something crazy like that.

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.

here's that multi-instrumentalismists thread you were talking about, Jose. lots of good thoughts there, too.

I'm not what you'd call a multi-instrumentalist. I can play a couple and can make people who don't know any better think I can play banjo well, but I'm not exactly getting calls from any body who needs extra spot filled in a band or something.

Bass is my main instrument, and I don't have much of a problem with it. If I don't pick up a guitar in a while, say even a week or so, I start to suck at it really easily. I started taking piano classes and I'm not really at the point to where I can play something that's not pretty easy and written on a page. I had planned to start playing a long to say, Bob Dylan records by ear to get a better feel for it, but I seriously don't care about it much anymore. Just more shit to buy gear for.

I'm happy enough with being more interesting and proficient with the bass and guitar.

Also, once, after eating dirty ecstasy and getting blind ass drunk at a New Years Eve party, I did manage to pickup a violin and play 'twinkle twinkle little star' without having played one before. Then, thinking I actually knew anything, I tried to do a John Cale drone thing and ended up fucking up the bow a little bit.
Party tricks can get embarrassing pretty quickly.

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!

i fiddled (heh) with a violin a month ago, what a complex instrument to play! really fun to play drone notes, and going thru a delay pedal..

Little Atlas Heavyweight wrote:not crap.

when you know how to play bass, guitar, drums and keyboard, it gives you a little more insight to how to other instruments work, what can be played, etc.

Yes, and you learn a lot about your main instrument too.

It forces you to think about it in a different way, which is very good.

if you listen carefully to Judee Sill's first album, in some songs she plays piano and acoustic guitar in others. it´s amazing how she kind of plays both instruments in the same way - you can hear how she could perfectly play the same part with the other instrument. i think that´s great.