“Take the time to master one instrument. More than one will be too much to learn.”
Multi-instrumentalists everywhere hear this too often from some teachers and other gigging musicians. The life of a multi-instrumentalist can be tough: hearing that sentence over and over again, the cost of gear, traveling equipment, and being seen as “legitimate musicians” by their peers.
Multi-instrumentalists have been present on the music scene for centuries, being the norm in Renaissance consorts, jazz combos, big bands, pit orchestras, and even rock bands. Despite this, there are still teachers and professional musicians that express disapproval of a student’s curiosity to pick up another instrument, so let’s look at a quick history of multi-instrumentalists.
History of Multi-Instrumentalists
Musicians in Renaissance consorts were known to switch instruments frequently, and would each play recorders, brass, woodwinds, and strings. Classical musicians started setting precedents for modern “doubling,” such as clarinetists doubling on flute, trombonists doubling on tuba, etc. The invention of the saxophone, and later the swing era, broadened these doubling abilities. For example, Ray Nance, a longtime member of Duke Ellington’s band, doubled on trumpet and violin.
Saxophone players were known for playing flute, clarinet, and even bassoon at times and bass players were known to play tuba. This crossed over into musical theatre pit orchestras. Due to the heavy jazz influence in early Broadway shows, jazz musicians were commonly used, and orchestrators wrote their strengths into the scores. Guitar books generally include banjo, mandolin, and ukulele, woodwind books are split into “Reed” books, covering up to six instruments in a book, trombonists double on euphonium and tuba, and trumpet players may even be requested to play flugelhorn or piccolo trumpet.
Let’s even look at rock and pop music! It’s not uncommon for rock musicians to play piano, guitar, bass, or even drums. Some of them even play orchestral or world instruments! (We’re looking at you, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones)
Music Theory
No matter what instruments you play, whether they’re in the same family or are completely different in every way, they’re played different and will require you to think differently.
Let’s take guitar and bass guitar for example, which is one of the most common “doublings” for musicians. The two instruments share very similar tunings and will generally play the same genre of music. However, they read in different clefs, play in different octaves, and their vocabulary can differ immensely; guitar music will be chord-heavy, when bass music is generally built on single notes.
Playing multiple instruments can drastically improve your reading skills, transposition abilities, and sight-reading!
More Instruments? More Gigs!
In commercial music such as jazz or musical theatre, there’s a great advantage to playing multiple instruments. In musical theatre, there generally won’t be a “Saxophone” book or “Clarinet” book. The woodwinds are usually divided into “Reed 1” and “Reed 2” and so on. Each reed book can have theoretically any woodwind, including saxophones, clarinets, flutes, oboe, bassoon, and even recorders and whistles! But this doesn’t just happen for woodwinds. Some guitar books ask for banjo, mandolin, and ukulele!
What’s great about the musical theatre community is that everyone knows each other and you’ll form bonds with other musicians and music directors. This comes into play when a local theatre company needs musicians, either for the whole production or to sub. You could be on guitar for one show, bass for the next, and then sub on trombone on the next show!
Meet New People
Think back to the first time you joined the school music program as a kid. You probably joined with a few friends, and ended up meeting people in class. Becoming a gigging multi-instrumentalist is essentially the same thing, but on a larger scale.
You’ll meet people that studied at the most prestigious conservatories and people that are entirely self-taught, and gigging on different instruments in different shows and groups will broaden your network. Before you know it, you’ll find a group of musicians that you always look forward to playing with, no matter what instrument you’re playing.
With all of this being said, there are some precautions to take as a multi-instrumentalist:
1. It’s not how many instruments you play, but the quality in which you play them.
2. Most musicians have a “main” instrument, and any other instrument they play is additional on top of it, so really put in the work to perfect one or two instruments, and go from there.
Great……..Exactly 1000%….Thanks for posting ……
I play bass guitar and drums , I agree get a good teacher and learn the instrument..I find that drums and bass feed off the vibe of the rhythm section, I felt that it was a good match. My drumming teacher said don’t do that or try to learn any thing else. I thought this did not seem to be what a teacher of music might say.i love both drums and bass and as said I have met new musicians and can add to pieces if needed