I’ve dabbled with multiple instruments in my life
off topic celebration of playing by ear
but I’ve been acoustically crippled with a bad ear. About 2 years ago, I started working on playing by ear and, holy shit, it totally changed the game! Before, I had to laboriously read music and look up fingerings. Now, I know what it’s supposed to sound like and I keep pushing buttons (clarinet) until I get it right because I know what it’s supposed to sound like, and now I know if I want to flat that position it’s this button, and to sharp that note, it’s this button, etc. Quite painless and not laborious–even fun!
It seems crazy to me someone would learn all the fundamentals of music and not at least be able to play rudimentarily another instrument. I mean, why not? You already understand music, you just have to figure out the instrument, which is a pretty small investment relative to musicianship, and opens up a lot more possibilities.
What have you learned from your different instruments?
As someone who started as a drummer, but moved to guitar as a primary instrument (and can also play piano, or most anything given enough time) this is it. 99% of musical ability boils down to muscle memory IMO. Or at least 99% of improving at playing an instrument is based in improving muscle memory. Muscle memory is absolutely critical to your sense of timing and delivery of dynamics.
After playing guitar for like 15 years, it was very easy to learn to play a charango or a ronroco. In the musical/theoretical sense a ronroco is very different from a guitar in that its a reentrant tuned instrument instead of linear. But at the same time if you have the muscle memory from playing a guitar you already have most of the tools you need to play a ronroco.
I could more easily write music for someone else to play on a wind instrument than I could actually play one. Having the theoretical understanding of where it should fit in music or what would sound good means nothing in terms of actually playing it. I cant get used to how a wind/brass instrument feels on my lips. The fingering is a bitch. Theres lung muscle memory rather than just doing shit with your hands. All those different kinds of muscle memory are muscle memory I dont have. Could I develop it given enough time? Sure, but I doubt I ever will.