What Instrument would you want to be good at?

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I want to be able to write and record a rock/metal album all by myself at some point in my life.
I'm decent at the piano/keyboard and drums but I really want to be good at the guitar.
Most guitarists tell me that if you can play the electric guitar, you can also play the bass so that would be enough to make rock songs.
 
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Absolutego said:
Not sure which hand has the non-functional finger, but if it's your right, it's actually not very hard as a lefty to play righty. I play right-handed, and it's much more convenient.
Since we're such a minority, we're already typically a bit ambidextrous when it comes to using tools. Same applies to instruments. If you're really starting out, the only real handicap is your picking hand might be a bit slower than it otherwise would be if you were picking with your left, but you're not going to start out hammering out thrash metal riffs anyways.
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It's the pinky on my left hand, aka the strumming hand. It's basically a stiff, bent, useless lump. It would just get in the way, like right now I can't even hold a shovel or a gun properly, the grip is significantly weakened. I tried playing on right, but the strength, endurance and precision disparity between my arms is simply too great.
 
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I would love to be good at guitar.
I have been playing on and off for over 20 years and I still suck.

The best way I can describe it is the difference between tracing and drawing.

If I find the tab (a system for transcribing guitar music that doesn't require reading music) for a simple song and spend enough time on it I can reproduce a crude facsimile of the song.

I would LOVE to be one of those types who can hear a song on the radio once, play it back perfectly and then just randomly play things they heard in their head.
 
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I'm definitely gonna go with piano. There's just so much you can do with it. And being able to just bust out something like this at a moment's notice would be fun.



Pierre D'Olnique said:
left-handed chords wasn't just something I could procure out of thin air. And now I only have 9 functional fingers.
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Otu gets by with 5 fingers and playing regular guitars upside-down.


Otterly said:
Piano. I’ve always wanted one, could never really afford one
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Roland FP-10. Way more portable than an upright. You can get one from Scamazon with a DP-10 sustain pedal (because the included clicker pedal is crap) and a stand for under 500 pounds.
EDIT: Consider the FP-30X instead. A bit more, but I'm reading that the FP-10 seems to have issues with recognizing the full range of input values from the pedal (defaulting to on/half/off rather than a 0-127 range).
 
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Electric guitar. Then I could be a fucking rockstar.

Instead, all I ever played was a plastic guitar in the game Guitar Hero and I wasn't even really good at it.

 
Polyarmory said:
Partial credit for piano answerers.
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I went to music school and studied the piano for 8 years. The children who studied other instruments also had to study the piano. I was, and still am, immensely salty about it (that is, about everyone else being able to play an additional, possibly portable, instrument). Even a piano + balalaika (not much demand for the folk section) would be nice than piano alone.
 
The accordion you can do a lot with accordions friend of mine is an amazing accordion player it is one of the hardest instruments to master and I don't mean like the small one I mean the big **** accordion also you can play sweet sobian music to kill Albanians with
 
If I had to go back and do it again, I'd learn piano rather than guitar. It's a lot harder to pick up, better for learning how music works conceptually, and more universally applicable.

neger psykolog said:
Piano or guitar. But I would prefer piano because you can plug it into a computer and do shit with it.
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All I do these days is plug my guitar into my computer and do shit with it. I've got a nice 100 watt tube amp that's been collecting dust for years because VSTs are so much more flexible and convenient.
 
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Ibanez RG 350EX said:
If I had to go back and do it again, I'd learn piano rather than guitar. It's a lot harder to pick up, better for learning how music works conceptually, and more universally applicable.
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I learned piano and music theory but it feels like people who play the guitar are generally wildly more flexible and can improvise on the spot and make interesting shit (that's a generalization though). Of course true mastery is someone who can pick up almost any instrument and play it well and improvise.
 
Piano. Tried my hand at guitar multiple times in life. With guitar you have to choose between playing lead or rhythm. Studio albums have bands with 2 guitarists and a bass, but the albums can have something like 3 or 4 guitars going at the same time. Playing solo, you'll never get anywhere even close to that sound. Listening to live albums gives a better perspective on what is actually possible to play in RL.

Some of the acoustic guitar players are really awesome in being able to play the chords and be able to pick off notes in the lead melody at the same time. They are geniuses to out how to modify the chord to emphasize right notes. I think the music also has to be arranged in away for this to be possible.

Piano players don't have any sort of limitations like that. Their left hands can bang out the chords, while their right hand can do the melody. They also got a sustain pedal to keep the previous notes ringing, while they play the next. Usually there is only one piano in a particular music piece. A single keyboardist can accomplish more than a single guitar.
 
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Ocarina. I have one but haven't mustered the discipline to learn it.
 
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