Playing other instruments: yes or not?

[David Emm]

13 minutes ago, EB5AGV said:

My aim is for personal challenge, keeping the keyboard as my main instrument and playing it on the band, which has already a good drummer and also a nice guitar player.

But at my home studio, I am the band 😄

 

Yep. For me, learning how to synthesize and then perform brass parts, for example, came about because I watched real brass players as they phrased various parts. It benefits you greatly to know where acoustic players have to BREATHE. That doesn't always apply to the SQUEE sounds of the synth world, but even then, a sense of more natural expression will add to your ability to, um, OSMOSE a sound better!  

[Melving]

Will learning a new instrument help musicianship?  Well...  I grew up on violin, picked up guitar in college, got a couple years of jazz lessons, now studying jazz on piano.  And I find that I play the same things on each instrument, with a little adaptation for the shape of the instrument...  The thing that helps my musicianship is studying the stuff my teacher tells me to.      OK, that was a simplification, but still.

 

Admitted though, it was pretty funny playing a violin part on a keyboard, to find out later that people have walked in and searched the room high and low for the violinist...

 

 

[Ed A.]

I tried acoustic and electric guitar for about six months and my fingers couldn't take it. I had some kind of neuropathy in the tips of my fingers that wouldn't go away until a couple months after I quit guitar. The other problem I had with guitar is I didn't get a feel for the fretboard layout compared to what I know on a keyboard, it didn't translate for me.

[Jose EB5AGV]

3 hours ago, Ed A. said:

I tried acoustic and electric guitar for about six months and my fingers couldn't take it. I had some kind of neuropathy in the tips of my fingers that wouldn't go away until a couple months after I quit guitar. The other problem I had with guitar is I didn't get a feel for the fretboard layout compared to what I know on a keyboard, it didn't translate for me.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience, I guess I will know when I begin to practice if I can take it or not.

 

I will get my first electric guitar next Saturday... Let's see!

 

Jose

[Iconoclast]

My musical journey in a nutshell: learned keys very young, switched to guitar in my 30s-40s, brought keys back into my life and now in my 50's I'm mostly a keyboard player. I'm a very good guitar player...but very good guitar players are a dime a dozen. Good keyboard players are more rare and that gets me more work.

My advice? If you have the time/money/inclination to learn another instrument, it can be very rewarding. There is NO DOUBT that I come up with completely different solutions to musical problems on guitar than on keys. My brain works TOTALLY different on those two instruments.

I played in one band that required me to switch back and forth between the two within a songs, and quite honestly, I had to learn to re-boot my brain quickly.  Now I can do it just fine, but for a while it was like the next instrument was totally foreign to me for a few moments.

Anyway: it's not easy, but if you want to, and you have the time and money, I highly recommend it.

[CraigT]

I’ve gone back and forth between piano and guitar for my entire adult life.  Not for any reason other than I wanted to play both.  And now I’m not great, but proficient, at both.  In my cover band I am a “utility player” as keys and 2nd guitar sometimes playing both on a tune. 

[Outkaster]

Drums and Marimba.  When I was in HS I was in a very competitive marching band that ended up doing field show competitions.  Most of the drum corps in the area folded and the instructional staff came to the HS.  The fact I played piano and knew notes forced me to play marimba.  I worked out with the drumline so I knew a lot of rudiments. I wished I played an actual kit and have thought of getting one for the basement.

[David Emm]

Would I be a lying crapsack if I bought a Minifreak and called it an "other instrument?" Probably. I'd be more prone to play the various *engines* than the keys proper. That might seem a bit backwards, with only 3 pre-selected parameter knobs per choice, but the demos have actually convinced me that Arturia chose pretty well. If its a choice that steps far enough outside your existing ones, shouldn't that qualify?

[dsteinschneider]

On 2/6/2023 at 5:12 PM, EB5AGV said:

 

My aim is for personal challenge, keeping the keyboard as my main instrument and playing it on the band, which has already a good drummer and also a nice guitar player.

 

But at my home studio, I am the band 😄

Gotcha, it is a lot of work being the whole band but fun. Maybe just go a song at time, working on each instrument until you've got the part down. 

[KuruPrionz]

On 2/7/2023 at 9:04 PM, Ed A. said:

I tried acoustic and electric guitar for about six months and my fingers couldn't take it. I had some kind of neuropathy in the tips of my fingers that wouldn't go away until a couple months after I quit guitar. The other problem I had with guitar is I didn't get a feel for the fretboard layout compared to what I know on a keyboard, it didn't translate for me.

There are some big differences. Keyboards have one location for each particular note, a Stratocaster has 5 different locations for Middle C. 

Changing keys on keyboards (up or down any interval), changes the fingering (pattern). Once you've learned the keys on guitar, you can just move the same patterns up or down the fretboard. 

An F minor 7th chord on a keyboard is fingered differently than an F#m7 chord, on the guitar you can just slide up one fret and play the same shape. 

Those are differences between keyboard and fretboard. There are also differences between pressing a key and playing on a string. There is a consistent note when you play a key on a piano, you can control the volume but not the timbre. On a guitar you can control the volume, the sustain (muting), the timbre and even learn to play harmonics from the same fretting position. This is to say nothing of stretching notes and vibrato. Lots of expression there!

Profoundly different instruments, each has its pluses and minuses and each has its place. 

[Tom Williams]

This will look like a brag.  Bear in mind that every one of you that I have seen or heard play is a more accomplished musician than I.

 

I started on piano, picked up trumpet in junior high band, took church organ lessons, switched to trombone in high school, passed out from hyperventilation, switched to horn, picked up trap drums in the choir classroom during lunch hour, moved to percussion section of the marching band (horns are useless on a football field), picked up tympani and mallets back in concert band because I could read notes.  I learned enough alto sax and clarinet to get through the pedagogy courses in college (horn major), and generally sucked on every string instrument I ever touched.

 

Every one of those -- including my misspent 6 months practicing guitar an hour per night -- have aided me as both a pianist and a synthesist.  On piano I can self-accompany projecting a good image of what the bass and drum set would be doing.  On ROMpler/workstations, I instinctively know how winds breathe, and which articulations are common (and which chords are generally unplayable) on guitar.  I can program drum tracks with realism and feeling, even if their timing is robot-tightly quantized.  When programming synths, I strive for instrument programming that does on the instrument things that keyboards don't do -- fretted glissandi, fingered vibrato, pitch bends of different depths for different members of a chord (Steel guitar). 

 

Much -- most? -- of my value to bands as a keyboardist has come from my understanding of non-keyboard instruments.

[Jose EB5AGV]

Thank you all for your encouragement! 🫂

 

I did it! 🤩. Last week I got a couple guitars (why I can't never get only one instrument 😅). Both are in the 220€ each range new, got them used but in very good shape for 97€ and 100€, so are in the entry-mid level, good enough to learn and grow on them. Exact models are Epiphone Special 2 (Les Paul) and Squier Affinity (Stratocaster). That way I can check which kind of guitar I prefer. And I have also learned to replace strings, set up the bridge, intonation and such. YouTube is really a great tool for that and I publicly thank all luthiers who publish that kind of procedures.

 

I have began a series of video tutorials and maybe I seek some in person classes in the short future.

 

All in all, it is being really fun 🥳

 

Some months/ years from this moment I will report back my experience. Keep tuned! 😉

 

Jose