Is It A Bad Idea To Learn Multiple Instruments or Styles?? | Brainjo Bite
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2022
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I've been playing guitar a little over a year and every time I add a new instrument I get better at everything. Harmonica, banjo, mouth harp, more focus on singing; it's all the same thing with a different flavor.
Same here. I have recently picked up the fiddle which is a hell of a beast but it's forced me to grasp more music theory. I started playing banjo with a new group recently and all of a sudden I'm able to apply concepts from the instrument I suck at into my main instrument. It's because I started learning fiddle that I'm able to find chords and modes on my banjo in keys I never play with by myself. I think what's important is that you HAVE FUN playing music every day. If it takes picking up something new or seeking out different people to play with to keep you interested, fresh, and engaged, then that's what it takes.
@zachb8012 I just added keyboard and it's like dumping gas on a fire, highly suggested.
No kidding. I've been working with my 9 yo daughter on her violin fingerboard hand and she's been struggling forever with her fingers collapsing rather than sitting up. She asked to learn a bit of guitar and this has transformed the physicality of her violin fingering. Now so much more present, independent and controlled. This now almost seems obvious to me that one thing can inherently benefit another.
This makes me feel better about wanting to pick up another instrument.
I come from playing rhythm guitar to support singing originally. But I play traditional banjo and piddle with with fiddle along with other instruments( tin whistle, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, dulcimer, keyboard, and piano). I'm not saying I'm proficient at all of those but it think the experience from every one has given me a better understanding of musical concepts. On another note I play traditional banjo more so than anything else now but even with it I play three different styles. I play overhand, two finger thumb lead, and up picking. To me the ability to play different styles gives me the ability to express how I feel about a certain song in a way that I could not with only knowing one style. That is invaluable.
Learning multiple instruments solves one of the biggest problems in music. Less of a need to deal with flakey musicians and organizing practice/playing sessions.
I'm good with my guitar, bass, drums, piano, etc along with Logic and a looper if needed. I'm average at all of them and I love it.
Haha, good point!
I've read your book, "The Laws of Brainjo..."--twice. It's great. This was a timely 'bite' for me. I've played guitar and clawhammer banjo for years, but I'm currently trying to learn ukulele and fiddle as well. I haven't been making too much progress on the new instruments, and I was wondering if this was my problem. But after watching this, I had to admit to myself that the real problem was my approach to each of the new instruments was mostly unstructured: No set practice schedule, no concrete intermediate goals, etc. So, thank you. (BTW, I can't believe you haven't been videoed by TedTalks yet!)
A very interesting topic.
I play four instruments competently enough to teach to what I would consider intermediate level, which I also offer to students. Not just strings but a combination of string, reed and percussion instruments, including 5-string banjo where I play several styles including bluegrass, 2-finger and my own hybrid technique which I find most adaptable in acoustic group settings.
There is simply never enough time to learn each of these to a highly advanced level, and for that I hold some regret, but that is a choice I've made. It helps if you throw out the TV, but keep the laptop, and most importantly always have a banjo nearby as I consider this your best mate!
At one point I sold almost all my instruments to concentrate on one specifically, and I'm glad I did because of the dedication and progress achieved. That is now my principal instrument which earns me money. Because I took lessons and learned by formal training, I have the skills which I can fall back on, essential for public performance and self confidence.
However, my affection for other sounds and applications brought me back to being a multi-instrumentalist where I remain content.
Maybe in another life it would be different?
But my advice to anyone would be to find an instrument that most suits you and delivers the greatest satisfaction. Forget about what others think of your choice. Make that your principal instrument over the others and explore all there is to know about it.
As someone who teach most wind instruments, I relate. I have a symphony orchestra concert on Sunday where I'll be playing first french horn and I wish I'd had more time to strengthen that embouchure, but I've also had to practise saxophone a lot.
The physical parts of it is the most challenging thing about being a multi-instrumentalist.
I 100% agree with the video regarding genres. It's good to be properly grounded in one genre, but then being curious about other things will only be beneficial.
Switching back and forth between clawhammer and three finger is how I handle the issue of running into plataeus. Strangely enough, its the one time where running away from an issue in life seems to be the best option! They kind of grow and cultivate on their own even when i'm focusing on the other. And when I eventually return, it seems like there is always more visible room for growth than I saw before. Thanks for sharing this! Much appreciated
What I have learned, while learning banjo, is if you have another instrument you already know how to play, that it's good to pick it up sometimes. I've played guitar for years, but haven't picked it up in a long while, while learning banjo (mainly clawhammer). Then, when I picked up my guitar, after not playing it for a long time, it was hard getting used to it. Everything felt awkward. The neck is wider. Just everything, suddenly, harder on the guitar, even though it was easy in all the years I played it before learning banjo. So, now, I see it's good to pick it up sometimes, to get used to changing instruments. On a stage, you will see singers changing instruments with different songs. I can see now you have to practice being able to do that, and that it's not as easy as it looks, when you are first learning an instrument, but that it takes practice.
Great video and thanks for producing it! I often joke with friends that, based on the Malcolm Gladwell “10,000 hour” concept, that I will be an awesome banjer player in my 90s! I do recall that learning guitar started very difficult after having played the banjo … I kept plunking the low E string. But now I’m able to swap w/o difficulty.
This video needs more views! Thank you, it is exactly the encouragement I needed.
As a kid I had 6 years of formal piano lessons. Unfortunately at some point I couldn’t bare learning only classical music anymore which lead me to stop playing piano. I then started studying guitar as a young teenager, formed a band and stayed active for the next 8 years, followed by a few years of not playing any instruments.
Today, 31 years old, I started studying piano again, which sparked my interest in harmony, music theory, rhythm, sight reading etc. I am also in the mood to play guitar again. During this past time I really felt the benefit’s you described of one thing helping the other. Interestingly, even knowledge from my studies as an electrical engineer improved my music journey.
Now I feel the need to learn the violin, but I was hesitant, if it is “too much” or “too late”. Your video gave me enough confidence to proceed. Thank you.
I'm not interested in learning banjo but am learning fiddle and bass. Just bought your book. I'm excited to read it. Going to be purchasing your fiddle lessons this coming week.
Love it thank you !
I play guitar, bass, drums, lap steel, banjo, piano among others. Am I the best at each, no. Am I good at them all after my 30 years as a musician, yes.
Playing multiple instruments if fun. I enjoy being able to record and play all the instruments myself and not have to count on anyone else.
I also enjoy playing with other musicians and being able to decide to pick up an instrument that best fits the song and style.
My advise, for what it is worth… Have fun and never stop learning! ✌️
Thank you! :)
Thank you for posting this. I wonder if you'd ever wanna speak about this beyond music in general. I see so any people hyper focused on certain goals whereas I've always been a bit aloof. I like to dance. I love the outdoors. I wanna get into woodworking (gourd banjo??). There is so much life has to offer. Plus, there has to be crossover from seemingly unrelated skillets...
I've spent a number of years trying to improve my Spanish, but found myself feeling like I was hitting a wall. I decided to start learning a bunch of other languages just casually for fun. Weirdly, I have found it has helped with my Spanish a lot. It's like my brain has started approaching and reacting to languages differently and more easily now. I'm still not fluent in any of them, but I now feel much more comfortable hearing and approaching these languages, as well as other new ones.
enjoyed this.
I'm 46 and I am currently learning guitar, mandolin and clawhammer Banjo at the same time. I recently set myself a challenge to practice each instrument for a minimum of 1/2 each per day for a month. After a month I made good progress, but without a structured practice routine I realised that for some instruments I was just practising so I didn't get worse, maintenance not improvement. The other challenge is when you get in the creative flow of one instrument, you sometimes feel like you are neglecting the maintenance of the other instruments. I have often asked myself maybe I could be good at one of these instruments if I just focused on the one, but then I remember that I just love music and learning, so call me Jack.
Thanks for your comments, Donnie.
You can’t go wrong following what’s speaking to you at any given moment. If there’s anything I want to convey with this episode is that doing so is much more likely to be beneficial than detrimental.
But yes, having structure of some kind to your practice is preferable, regardless of whether you’re working on one or more instruments simultaneously.
An interesting video, Josh. I agree that you can readily learn several instruments and styles, but I think this has to be qualified. It takes time and practice to develop and hone the basic motor skills to, say, play fingerstyle guitar. If you never put in that time because you have spread yourself so thin trying to learn too much too soon, you won’t get much better at anything. But I also think that knowing one instrument or style can make learning something new a bit easier. Rhythm, scales, phrasing, chord progressions, and other musical concepts are universal. Plus, once you have trained your weak hand to make a full barre F chord on guitar, learning a two finger F chord on a banjo is a piece of cake!
When jamming, i always play the banjo first because my fiddle playing always upsets my banjo picking. Not sure why.
Banjos get jealous easily.
I’m in my late 50s and continue to dabble at many instruments. I’ve asked myself this question, which one I should get some more depth, but can’t even decide on one instrument, I’m having too much fun. 🎉 My BF and I play old time music, and some of other styles, and I play whatever works with each song. I don’t have the pressure of being the best or aspiring to Juilliard as I have a day job. I think having learned piano and flute as a child made music making a transferable skill.
As a Brasswind musician this is so eye opening, multiinstrumentalism is very frowned upon with brassplayers, however there are litteral living examples that multi-brass instrumentalism is in fact possible anf so do i, i always feel sad when my teacher and other people in my band say that i shouldnt do it, that it will ruin my technique, while i only saw my instruments benefiting eachother! So i play Euphonium and Trombone on expert level, shortly followed by my cornets who could usr some fine tuning, and recently i've been learning some Tuba and i absolutely love it, and indeed! The Tuba has made my use of air WAY better!
That's true, completely logical. I play a guitar that has been gathering dust for a long time, and I've wanted to learn to play the banjo for a long time. The musical scale is the same, and the tonality complements each other. Encouraging the brain to develop. New synapses, neuroplasticity...
I've never really dares to learn an instrument due to various personal reasons but am soon turning 30 and have always wanted to learn the bass, drums, keyboard, guitar and to sing better. I hope this isn't a bad idea since I've always loved music but never dared to start playing. Got any tips? Due to financial reasons I want to start purchasing one at a time starting with bass ending with singing.
I like Scruggs style but use a lot more chord changes. Want to use a pedal capo on back left and bridge springs in front right with pedal steel cables.
My next instrument to learn is the mandolin. Will there be a Mando Blast next?!
Interesting, and thought provoking Josh. One would assume that the girls in the Italian orphanage were all quite young when they were learning music. How does ( or, does ) age affect our ability to simultaneously learn multiple instruments? I find that switching between instruments takes me a few minutes to "switch" my thinking patterns (different paradigms) ; for example, a G chord shape on the guitar is different from that on a banjo, mandolin and ukulele. I frequently catch myself mixing them up until I mentally settle in to the particular instrument that I'm currently playing.
It is logical actually. If you learn 2 things like instruments, languages etc. they have more in common than you think. Many things will transfer over from on to the other. Not totally separate things. Might be different if we talk about learning an instrument at the same time training for 100m dash. Not so much in common there and then I guess the time not spent on one of them will suffer from the other etc.
This is the easiest way for me to learn new skills, I have ADHD and if I'm forced to "stick with one thing" I WILL get bored and quit. I have been learning clawhammer banjo now for 8 months, relearning piano for 4 months, and have also picked up the fiddle and 3 finger styles since this summer. Having the freedom to bounce around has made me learn clawhammer so much faster than I was!
If this sounds odd to people let me break it down. Piano has helped me understand keys and music theory in general also playing by ear has been easier. Fiddle is helping me hear the pitch of the notes better since you can't rely on frets. Lastly 3 finger style has given me a better mental map of where everything is on the banjo and has made playing without looking at my fingers much easier.
It's all connected, more importantly it's really fun, and if you're having fun you'll stay with it!
I have so many bluegrass instruments I have a hard time deciding which to play so I wind up not playing any of them... Then I get upset with myself ....
So, if I want to learn both 3-finger style and clawhammer style and I can dedicate only 1 hour a day to practice what is the ideal practice schedule? Dedicate the 1 hour to 1 style and alternate days? Dedicate the first 30 min to one style and the next 30 min to the other? Separate the 30 minute sessions by at least 4 hours? What is the ideal scheme if I only have 30 minutes I can dedicate each day?
I would just do one at a time for a couple months
My experience has been very negative, to the point of stressing a lot, because I'm not getting anywhere. And now I'm so lazy, I just focus on keyboards😂
I love to hear this. I play multiple instruments because I thoroughly enjoy them all and agree that there is a synergistic effect. In which Brainjo podcast can I hear about the motor interference? Thank you for these awesome videos.
Thanks Kim! Here’s the episode about interference: ua-cam.com/video/Kb0tMseT5OM/v-deo.html
Learning multiple instruments and multiple styles certainly didn't slow down Mike Seeger any. He could play guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, Jew's harp, pan pipes, harmonica, and probably other instruments, in multiple styles, all of them well.
I have to question your statements at about the 5 minute mark that talent comes from training only and not because parents are musical. In the early 1990s my banjo teacher was Jack Tuttle at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, CA. Jack played banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and bass. I stupidly gave up banjo after a couple of years but that's another story and something that I'm trying to fix now. Fast forward to today and Jack's three children are all outstanding musicians, including daughter Molly who is a rising bluegrass and country star and was the IBMA guitar player of the year in 2017 and 2018. Look at UA-cam videos of Jack's kids playing together when they were barely big enough to hold a guitar let alone play it, and it kind of blows the argument out of the water that children don't inherit musical talent from their parents. I'm sure the Tuttles are not an isolated case.
Actually a case like that can’t tell you whether it’s from inherited traits or being in a great training environment. That’s precisely why the story of the Pieta orphans is so critical, as it answers the question for us (you should’ve kept watching! :) ).
In other words, any child raised in the Tuttle household would end up with musical talents, because what matters is the training.
@@ClawhammerBanjo I did watch the whole thing. I've also read your book, which I found encouraging for trying to re-learn an instrument at my age. Still, it is sometimes discouraging to see a kid shredding on a guitar after a few months of lessons while I, who started guitar lessons at 57 years old and had weekly guitar lessons for 7 years until the pandemic stopped lessons in 2020, still can't play a guitar solo to save my life! I would still argue that some talents can be inherited.
@@paulstockford532 What you don't see are all the kids who bought a guitar (or a violin, or piano, etc.) who AREN'T shredding after a few months, which is the majority. If you do see a child (or an adult) who is learning really effectively, don't make the mistake of assuming they must be innately talented, but rather try to learn as much as you can about HOW they practice. The differences are not in the brains themselves, but in how those brains have been trained (and the myth of innate talent is why ineffective training methods are still so common).
@@ClawhammerBanjo My brother is 4 years younger than me. We grew up in the same house, had the same "training" as it were, went to the same schools, even had some of the same teachers. Like my father, my brother found mathematics came easy to him while I struggled. In the mid-80s I went to Santa Clara University to earn my MBA. One of the first courses I had to take was Calculus, which was extremely difficult for me. On Saturday mornings I would go to my parents' house, where my younger brother still lived, and he would help me get through my Calculus homework and, in particular, the word problems that always stopped me cold. I had a college degree (training) and barely made it through Calculus at grad school. My brother easily solved graduate level calculus problems. He had a high school diploma and drove a truck for a beer distributor. I don't know how you could argue anything but that his ability to solve advanced mathematics was (and is) innate - a gift some might say. Not a result of any sort of training.
Since you brought up learning multiple languages as a comparison, there IS a pervasive myth that learning sign language interferes with spoken language for children who are Deaf or hard of hearing! Once you think of it simply as language-learning it's clear the concern is misplaced.