A question for the musicians out there

[ericcoleman]

What instrument do you have in your house that you don't pay enough attention to? Or that you wish you knew your way around better?

For me it's a tossup between my various synths and my banjo.

How's that for a good example of the weird range of music I am into?

I'd like to get back to making some of the electronic music I used to make a couple 100 years ago, so I bought a couple of synths. I'd also like to play more old-timey stuff, therefore the banjo.

So, how about you?

edit Reminds me, this is because of stevieannie talking about a bouzouki

Comments

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Since I'm primarily a singer, it's both my bodhran and my bowed psaltry.

It's so damned frustrating to see a 18 year old kid pick up a bodhran and, ofter 1 year, be playing like he's born to it; triplets as fast as I've ever heard anyone and can go just forever. Really makes me just feel like putting it down, even after all the progress I've made. Ah well, at least my band appreciates my playing.

And then there's the lyrics I need to get to writing for songs for the new CD.

[mike46.livejournal.com]

keyboards. It's the instrument I actually took years worth of lessons on, and the one I suck the worst on. I'm left handed and I can't get my left hand to do anything I want on the keyboard. Also 12 string guitar. I know it's technically not a separate insrument, but I just can't get the hang of those extra strings.

And on a biological note, I don't spend enough time singing, so I'm not satisfied with my voice snd what I can(t) do with it ...

Left-handed

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I don't know you, but I know more about left-handedness and music than anybody else you're likely to meet. What I have seen a lot of in keyboard players who are natural lefties is trouble with their *right* hands -- and yet, up to a certain point, their left hands don't do that much better. (There have been a couple I've known, though, who after a lot of gigging, songwriting and studying jazz, out of noplace started playing left-hand bass.) I am curious as to your guitar playing. Do you play right-handed? Most guitar teachers know one or two natural lefties who play guitar conventionally, and pretty well, but about 2/3 of the time you wind up with frustrated musicians with rhythm problems, particularly having difficulty synchronizing rhythms with other players. If you do not have this all-too-common problem, I would consider your having difficulty with the 12-string guitar to be relatively trivial. I've been playing guitar for 51+ years,including a lot of recording studio work, and I don't do well with 12-string guitar either; it just takes too much work to force the strings all the way down to the neck. And I am living with this "handicap" as though it were completely irrelevant; you can do likewise. (I'm going to go to your LJ and see if you're somebody I should be in touch with; at this instant, I think I'm intrigued.)

Nate

Nate

Re: Left-handed

[mike46.livejournal.com]

I play guitar conventionally, and I don't believe I have rhythm problems, in fact I think I've got alot better rhythm than I do any sort of technique on guitar. But then I'm just a blues rock-ish player and who needs techique to do that? :) The problem I have with 12's is the sheer force you need to get a clean sound. I mostly play electric and I could probably clean up the 12 sound if I put down the electric and concentrated on acoustic, but I don't have time for both and I need the electric at the moment more than I need the acoustic. I'd love to be proficient on both - heck I'd like to be proficient on one - but life seems to interfere.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

The autoharp. The thing where one holds it up and plays with one arm crossed over the other seems just weird and untenable to me. And then there's tuning it, oy!

[gamerchick.livejournal.com]

In the past my mandolin hasn't gotten enough love, but now that I am actually playing it in a band, who knows. I also don't play my classical guitar nearly enough but that's mostly because I'm afraid of breaking it.

[gundo.livejournal.com]

Wish I knew them all better, but probably the ones I'd say I feel most out of place on would be the banjo and the accordion.

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

My accordion. It is in need of a service, and I can't afford the couple of hundred quid it'd cost.
Result? One slightly out of tune accordion, and therefore one that sits in the case, looking gorgeous, and abandoned :(

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is 'keyboards'. I know how useful that can be for composing, especially melody, but I'm hunt and hunt and peck.

(My second reaction is to quote Shel Silverstein: "Everybody needs a little something but, Lord, I need it all".)

[chasophonic.livejournal.com]

Fiddle. It was my fathers.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

I have a bowl-back ("tater bug") mandolin which I used to learn the chords, but soon discovered that the frets were simply too close together for my massive fingers. I'll probably sell it one of these days. It has a very nice custom-made-for-it soft leather carrying bag.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

It goes in waves with me. I'll leave something for months and then play it obsessively for weeks on end, leaving something else behind. At the moment it's probably my bagpipes, although I can guarantee that the act of remembering they are there makes me want to play them again.

Oooh! Itchy fingers again! Argh!

[herald-mari.livejournal.com]

We have a keyboard in the closet, and I have my clarinet from middle school. However, I want to learn to fiddle.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

My harp, which lives in Nevada with my folks...

Accordion and resonator

[sexybass.livejournal.com]

I guess it would be my accordions and resonator guitar. I recently bought a DVD while at Elderly Instruments on slide resonator guitar. Hope it helps. I have so many instruments that it is easy to not pay one enough attention :-(

[vretallin.livejournal.com]

My clarinet and trumpet are both severely neglected anymore and the flute is sitting around here equally neglected.

[deborah_c]

All of them.

No, really. Back when I was a student, I was doing two or three hours of violin practice a day, and playing in orchestras most days, and singing in choirs, and playing the organ for people (and doing an hour or two of practice most days), and, and...

... meh. That was twenty years ago. Since when, I have accumulated a guitar, a mandolin, an octave mandolin, an oboe (which I have no time to touch, still less learn to play properly), a piano, an organ... oh, and three children and a demanding full-time job.

And I want to be able to spend those hours playing and practicing and be as good as I was then (when professional music as a career was a serious option), but... *sulk*.