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?
I’ve played the cello for most of my life and I like to think I’m quite good at it, but it’s transferred very little to other instruments - I can play the fiddle but only if I hold it like a tiny cello, and can pretty much get a tune out of anything else with strings but only just
No experience with blowy ones though so I wouldn’t know where to start there, and I wasn’t any good on the keys