Keyboardists who play guitar as 2nd instrument

[Iconoclast]

I started out as a Prog keyboard player in my teens but when college came along I quickly dropped music all together in favor of food that wasn't shoplifted.

 

A decade later, solid day job secured, recent divorce freeing up time and living in a foreign country I took a leap and joined a band that needed a guitar player. I'd really never played much guitar but had been in bands observing guitarists. With my background and lack of distractions I was, with a couple months, the main guitar player in the band and within a year I was actually a pretty good picker.

 

During the rest of the 90s there was a lot of guitar centric alternative that I played the living crap out of. Almost exclusively a guitar player for a decade...then Alternative died and weirdly, Classic Rock bands had a bit of a re-surgence.

 

So I took another chance and joined a band that needed a keyboard player but already had 2 great guitar players. That worked out great and eventually I ended up replacing one of the guitar players when he moved away but still kept my keyboard duties so I was gigging with a good 50/50 mix of guitar and keys. Branched out to a couple of tribute acts and had no problem staying busier than I wanted to be with music.

 

Lately though I've bought into the synth bug, and I've been gravitating more and more towards where my real talent is, keys. Currently playing in 3-4 bands and almost exclusively a keyboard player. Still do studio work in guitar but almost no live guitar work.

 

Lately I've been thinking about taking drum lessons...

[montunoman]

I attempted to learn guitar as a boy, then a teen, a young adult , and now middle aged , I always gave up. But I always come back. I have now stuck with it for the last 5 years or so. I just try to pick it up everyday, some days much more than other, some days hardly at all.... I have nylon stringed guitar, and focus on easy classical pieces, bossa nova and bolero comping, and trying pick out Real Book type melodies. It coming along all right..... Better than when I was when I was a boy.

 

My first instrument is drums/ Latin perc/ marimba. I could spend a life time on any of those areas. I also play chromatic harmonica which comes kind of easy to me. Of course I'm no Stevie Wonder or Toots Thielemans but, I surprise people how well I can pick out melodies or read music on the chromatic harmonica. Oddly I just can't flow on a diatonic. It takes more technique to bend those notes.

 

Since the year 2000 my focus has been on piano, mostly jazz, blues, various Latin styles, and Bach Inventions. I have a OMB act playing on an arranger keyboard and singing- variety act I guess you could call it. Great American Song Book Standards, Latin, old time rock n roll, classic county, 70's disco, and a few current hits too.

 

Classic jack of all trades, master of none, but it is sure fun. Keeps me busy, and never bored.

[J_tour]

Sure. I was pretty big into copying lead guitar things by the some of the main blues-based/rock guitarists (Clapton, Duane, Freddy King, Page, Albert King) on a Gibson SG Special as a teenager.

 

Sold the guitar when I needed the money after I realized I wasn't "getting" how to read standard notation, which makes more sense to me than some of the "box" positions, or just following slack-jawed at some tablature, although I was doing transcriptions of classic bebop+ guitarists and doing mostly the right chord voicings by ear a decade after having put it down and picked it back up.

 

Never played it in public â only keys â but I'd like to pick up a nylon-string acoustic (or a fat semi-hollow Gibson/Epiphone knockoff) just for fooling around when I don't feel like walking the twenty feet to my keyboards at home. You know, ear-work, get some new ideas, steal some more things from Wes or Grant, that kind of thing.

[drohm]

I have been learning guitar for the past 5-6 years. Sometimes I go through months without working on it, but it is rewarding. I especially like bluegrass flat picking and playing that music with another person. I also like to play electric guitar. The only downside is that I also like to buy guitars and amps, so that has cut deeply into my keyboard budget. For some reason, a guitar made from real wood seems so much cooler than a plastic/metal keyboard. Learning guitar has really opened my eyes to some new perspectives when playing keys in a band with guitar players. I love it!