Re: another survey (wasRe: OT, but getting close to not-OT: guitar/sax improv sessions)

["Travis Hartnett" <travishartnett@gmail.com>]

I started on piano then switched to guitar.  David Gilmour and Mark
Knopfler made the prospect of putting up with my very old-school piano
teacher a non-starter.

I wasn't really aware that a thing called a "cello" existed until my
teens.  Had I known when I was seven, I would have asked for lessons
on it instead of the piano.  The vocal quality of it easily trumped
the polyphony of the piano to my ears...once I knew the damn thing
existed.

On the other hand, I fiind the Stick/Warr Guitar/touch-style
instruments are the most chronically under-exploited instrument ever.
A combination of the piano and the electric guitar?  Brilliant!   How
did this instrument not catch on like wildfire?  Yet the results have
been consistently underwhelming for me, except when I saw Jim Lamphee
playing on a London street during lunchtime, which made me really
reconsider changing instrument again.
Angry Stick Players: let's just agree to disagree on this one.

TH

On 10/6/07, Paul Mimlitsch <pmimlitsch@mac.com> wrote:
> I've always wondered why someone chooses a particular instrument as their
> "voice" - multitimbral vs mono timbral - and, based on my own experience 
>and
> conversations with others came to the conclusion (assumption?) that, in a
> lot of cases, it has to do with how you hear things/ organize sounds, in
> your head.  When you think of a melody are you hearing single notes 
>flowing
> one after the other, multiple voices running parallel, or more texturally
> (ie: notes stacked on top of each other)?  When you pick up your 
>instrument
> do you gravitate towards single note lines or a more chordal approach 
>and is
> this based on preference or the physicality of the instrument?  Another
> question I should have asked in my original post was:  How many people 
>have
> switched instruments to meet their needs.
>
>