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Is it possible to keep up with everything?

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 Oric
(@oric)
Estimable Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 87
Topic starter  

I do have a guitar, and I play it, but not nearly as regularly as I would like. My main three instruments are tuba, bass, and piano. Those are ones I have to practice, because of band, jazz band, and piano class (I love playing these three).
I also have school.
And I'm working on college applications.
And did I mention my school band's playing at Carnegie Hall this year?

Is it possible to really keep up your playing, actually practicing all four instruments regularly? I get an hour of piano practice during school every day, so bass, tuba, and git-fiddle are what I practice outside of school.

Don't you just wish there was more time?


   
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(@coloradofenderbender)
Noble Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 1106
 

Answers:

1. NO, its not possible to keep up with everything, unless you stop sleeping!
2. YES, I wish there was more time! Get up, shower & get ready, then work 10 hours, come home and spend some time with the kids and wife, eat dinner, put the kids to bed and THEN its time to practice, at like 10pm!!!!

:shock:


   
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(@wes-inman)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5582
 

Answers:

1. NO, its not possible to keep up with everything, unless you stop sleeping!
2. YES, I wish there was more time! Get up, shower & get ready, then work 10 hours, come home and spend some time with the kids and wife, eat dinner, put the kids to bed and THEN its time to practice, at like 10pm!!!!

LOL :D

When you are young and in school you have lots more time. Wait till you get a little older with a family and job. Then you will miss those school days.

You can do it all, but you can't do it for very long. :wink:

Congrats on your band playing Carnegie Hall. That is an experience you'll never forget.

If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 10264
 

1 - yes it is possible, but school's going to suffer - and if someone tells you to get a life, you can reply "That's OK, I've already got three or four...."

2 - yes - I play electric, acoustic and bass guitars, dabble with keyboards and harmonica, and I could do with at least three extra hours per day....

You reminded me of the old joke.....

Out of town beatnik (I did say it was OLD!) to New Yorker - "Hey Man, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

Hip (I DID SAY IT WAS OLD!!!) New Yorker...."Practise, man, practise!!!")

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@ignar-hillstrom)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 5349
 

Sleep is hyped anyway. For what it's worth, I too have piano lessons, study both Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, play in a band, do some collabs with people I know (aside from online ones) and spend time on guitar, bass, synths and various kinds of compositional stuff. I've got plenty of time left. As a wise monk once said:"an hour is what you make of it." :D

And good luck at CH!


   
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(@noteboat)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 4921
 

Possible? Yeah, maybe.

One of the teachers I work with plays 17 instruments well. He told me that he practices his main one (baritone) 2-5 hours a day, then he devotes an hour to one of the others. Every couple of months, he'll change second instrument, and work his way through them logically - if he'd just done violin, he'll play sax for a couple months, then maybe a double reed... when he works his way back to the string family, he'll do cello instead of violin, etc.

Can you be really really good at more than a couple? Probably not. It's a rare musician who has pro level chops on two different instruments - off the top of my head, I can think of only two: Jack DeJohnette (percussion, piano) and Roy Clark (fretted instruments of all sorts, plus violin)

Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL


   
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(@rparker)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5480
 

"an hour is what you make of it." :D

Ain't that the truth!

Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin


   
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(@ab0msnwman)
Estimable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 125
 

"an hour is what you make of it." :D

Ain't that the truth!
yeah that is a great quote.

i think i waste too much time not playing these days. over the summer i was putting in a good 4-5 hours a day. now i am lucky to get in like 2 hours a day.

too much time spent watching my x-files (yes i bought all 9 seasons) dvds the past couple of months.

I am hoping that I can play a little bit more when school starts up again. I am going to try to sign up for lessons for a few months and hopefully balance learning theory/improving my chops with all the crap i have to do for my master's degree.

oh and job applications . . . .


   
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(@chuckster)
Prominent Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 938
 

There are never enough hours in the day.

I admire anyone that can devote enough time and energy to multiple instruments. I have a hard enough time finding time for guitar sometimes. Paticularly these last couple of months.

Whatever you do though don't let your schooling suffer. I'm sure you won't.

Congrats on the Carnegie Hall gig and best of luck.

Vic saved me the embarrasment of resurrecting a very old joke - thanks Vic. :lol:

8)

I've had a lot of sobering thoughts in my time.
It was them that turned me to drink.


   
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(@misanthrope)
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Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 2261
 

It's a rare musician who has pro level chops on two different instruments - off the top of my head, I can think of only two: Jack DeJohnette (percussion, piano) and Roy Clark (fretted instruments of all sorts, plus violin)

Off the top of my head too:

- Dave Grohl (the first, self-titled Foo Fighters album has one guest guitarist on one track and that's it. Everything else you hear is Dave, and he recorded the whole thing in under a week :shock:)

- Prince (Widely quoted as playing 17 (I think) instruments, certainly a few)

- Matt Belamy (of Muse, plays guitar and piano)

ChordsAndScales.co.uk - Guitar Chord/Scale Finder/Viewer


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 10264
 

You all missed the obvious multi-instrumentalist.....Mike Oldfield, of Tubular Bells fame....

Although I'm not a big fan, Peter Frampton seemed equally at home on guitar or keyboards.....

And what abour Roy Wood (The Move, ELO, Wizzard).....if you can get a tune out of it, he'll find a use for it somewhere.....

And feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't McCartney play everything on an early solo LP? He seems to know his way around guitar, bass and keyboards pretty well.....

Steve Winwood.....piano/guitar.....

Back in the 70's, there was an English band, from Manchester, called 10cc....onstage, they regularly traded instruments back and forth....someone'd be playing piano on one song, then bass then guitar.....Graham Goldman was probably the most famous member, he'd written "Heart Full Of Soul" (Yardbirds) and "Bus Stop" (The Hollies).....

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@noteboat)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 4921
 

Sure, there are lots of people who play multiple instruments - heck, I play six. But I look at the people named in pop/rock, and I think they fall into one of several categories:

1. They're good at one (Dave Grohl on guitar), and passable at another... because of the musical style (is Grohl's drumming with Nirvana world class, or did he get a bit of a ride on Cobain's songwriting?)

2. They're good at one (Winwood on keyboards) and play another because it allows the band to do things in concert without bringing in other musicians (Winwood on guitar with Blind Faith), or because it's entertaining to swap instruments on stage.

3. They're good at one (Prince on guitar), and take advantage of technology to lay down other tracks... I think ego plays a big part with Prince!

So at least in my opinion, there's a difference in ability between someone who plays multiple instruments for their own purposes/interests... and someone like Roy Clark, who's hired to play various instruments by others - not because it's cool to show that Roy plays a bunch of things, but because Roy plays that specific thing better than anyone else who is available.

I also deliberately excluded folks like Tommy Tedesco and Tom Bruner, the studio guys who each probably did 10,000 record/film/TV dates. You'll find each of them with credits on guitar, banjo, balalaika, sitar, whatever.... but as far as I know, they really treated each of those as variations of a guitar (playing a manodlin tuned in fourths - like a guitar - instead of fifths, like a mandolinist would)

Another reason I don't consider most of the pop-rock guys multi-instrumentalists is because I don't think of myself that way - I'm a guitarist. I studied percussion in college, played drums in the college jazz band, I've sat in with a local orchestra on timpani a few times, and I've been paid to be the drummer with a local theatrical show. But I don't keep my chops up - if somebody offered me an interesting percussion gig, I'd have to invest quite a few hours of practice before I could take it on; as a result, I don't bill myself as a drummer.

Or piano... I took five years of classical piano lessons. If you don't play any piano, you'd hear me and think "hey, he plays piano!". If you play piano, and you heard me, you'd think "well, that's nothing special..."

So in the end my opinion's still the same: there are lots of people, including me, who 'play' many instruments. But there aren't many "multi-instrumentalists"... I have the same sort of divide in my mind between "guitar players" and "guitarists" :)

Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL


   
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(@misanthrope)
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Joined: 18 years ago
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I know I know nothing about drumming, but Grohl's one of the three people who's drumming has ever made me stop and really appreciate it... gotta be worth something, even if only to me :wink:

ChordsAndScales.co.uk - Guitar Chord/Scale Finder/Viewer


   
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(@wes-inman)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5582
 

I always thought Dave Grohl was a great drummer in that particular style he played with Nirvana. Man, he really smacked them drums hard. :twisted:

Paul MacCartney is pretty good on guitar and piano besides being a great bass player. He can sing too. :D

If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis


   
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(@kingpatzer)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 2171
 

The answer to the question is "no."

If you have school, any sort of social life, and are trying to play that many instruments, you won't have time enough to keep up with it all.

I think the practical limit for most people is two instruments. More than that and it's just not possible to put in the time it takes to be reasonably good.

It takes a rare level of personal discipline to do more than that. After practicing guitar for a few hours, sax for a few hours, I can't imagine moving over to the piano stool . . .

If you want to never watch TV, never go out, put in minimal effort on school work, etc., then sure it's possible.

But most people don't care to have their lives that focused.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST


   
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