From: ccmnate@othello.ucdavis.edu (The Jester)
Newsgroups: alt.guitar
Subject: Re: Other Instruments
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:57:39 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: Computing Services, UC Davis

In article <GREENE.92Apr12191036@aelle.cs.odu.edu> greene@aelle.cs.odu.edu (Bradley Greene) writes:
>
>-Has anyone else had any similar experiences with playing on other
>instruments?  If you haven't, then I really recommend that you try
>it out.  You dont have to master the second instrument but just
>use it improve your guitar playing.

I have spent the past several years learning to play instruments other
than the guitar (mandolin, marimba, clarinet, oboe, various percussion
instruments, piano, harp, harmonica, bagpipes, violin, viola, and cello). 
Each instrument has a whole different musical vocabulary.  Some are
polyphonic, some are monophonis, and some have no discernable pitch
at all.  For each instrument, I have had to learn its idiosyncracies,
the things that it can can or cannot do.  Learning each one has strengthened
my guitar playing by a great deal.

The clarinet and oboe are both monophonic instruments...they cannot play 
more than one note at a time.  That is a special consideration when 
improvising.  A single clarinet does not make a very good rhythm section
because it cannot play chords.  What it is very good at, however, is 
throwing little melodic snippets during breaks of the melody.  Just 
listen to any good Dixieland jazz, and you will hear a clarinet in the 
background just ripping out lots of incredible fills.  

The marimba is basically a wooden xylophone.  It is both a percussion 
and melodic instrument.  The notes have an almost immediate and total decay 
right after it is struck.  While it can be polyphonic (up to 4 notes under
duress), it is largely a monophonic instrument.  This instrument, more than
any other has helped my sense of rhythm improve.  Having to roll a note
for an entire bar in even 16th notes is difficult for most people...tho 
most drummers would have no trouble with it.  That simple act of rolling 
a note in even 16th notes is invaluable practice for learning to hear/play
them on ANY instrument.

Enough people have espoused the virtues of learning drums so I won't go into
that right now.

Hell, even the bagpipes taought me a few things about music.  The melodic
range of one of those things is REALLY REALLY small.  I think it has
a range of about 12 notes (my memory is failing me).  That gives it a 
range of about an octave and a fifth.  Add to that the fact that few, if
any, non-scalar notes can be played.  (i.e. can only play in one key)
With such a small set of notes to play, a performer has to get VERY creative
with the melody.  In the past 400 years or so, the number of bagpipe tunes
from scotland is astronomical...and each one is unique.  Not bad for an
instrument with such a small range of notes.

Each of the little idiosyncracies of an instrument can be adopted by a 
guitarist.  He can apply the techniques for playing another instrument
to playing a guitar.  To simulate a percussion instrument, he can play
short, muted, choppy chords/notes.  To simulate a melodic instrument, he 
can avoid chords...blah blah blah

There is an incredible ammount of musical techniques you can learn by 
learning more than one instrument.  If you don't want to go that far, 
just learn some pieces that other instruments play.  An example I can see
that is already being done is the 24 Caprices that people are talking
about.  You can never lose by learning things out of your medium.

Nathan  Rollins
ccmnate@othello.ucdavis.edu