So you want to be a musician. A lot of us wanted to become a musician because we saw somebody playing an instrument or maybe singing a great song so we wanted to be just like him or her. If this sounds like you then you’ve already accomplished the first big task: you’ve found your instrument! Now, if not, then you still have to do that. The things that can help you find your instrument of choice are: the look of an instrument, the sound, portability, the style of music you want to play and – not to forget – the “cool” factor! Maybe it’s a bit easier to impress girls when you play a guitar?! Or drums?! Or some place like Slovenia even when you play an accordion… 🤪 So, let us choose the weapon of our choice.
How to start?
I would start with the style of music first. If you want to become a classical musician then you have tons of instrument options and some of my tips don’t apply. But if you want to play rock, pop, blues, country, reggae, folk, bluegrass, electronic… (inhale!) then you can basically choose between drums/percussions, bass, guitar, keyboards, horns (sax, trumpet, trombone) and some other genre specific instruments like banjo, lap/pedal steel, fiddle and harp, just to name some of them.
You can immediately exclude instruments whose sound you don’t like. Then, as an example, let’s say you want your instrument to be portable. Then you can forget the drums, pianos and some heavy keyboards like Hammond B3, double basses (if you are a smaller person) and similar. If you’d like to sing along when playing your instrument then playing a woodwind or brass instrument is probably not so good idea either…
Here’s something else you can try if you’re still not sure. Take your favorite artist(s) and play some of his songs that you love the most. Turn it loud and start playing some “air instruments” along the music. Do you prefer/enjoy playing some of them more than the others? Maybe just one? Which one makes you feel like a rockstar? Close your eyes and picture yourself playing live on stage with this artist. Which instrument do you see yourself playing? There’s a pretty good chance that that’s the one…
Try it out
After that you should go somewhere where you can hold and/or play (if you can’t play at all yet just act like it) the actual instrument. You want to know how it feels, trust me! Because if you’re serious about making music you’re going to spend quite some time with it so you better love the way it feels! Ask your friends if somebody has the instrument of your choice to check it out or go to a music school or your local music store. But before you actually buy the instrument take somebody with you that can already play (no beginner!), maybe your future teacher, so he or she can check out the instrument for you.
How much?
The last tip: don’t buy the cheapest instrument or the most expensive one right at start! If you buy the cheapest one and something doesn’t sound right when you practice and play you’ll never know if the problem is you or your instrument. Cheap instruments are more than often very hard to play, the intonation and the used materials are mostly bad and in some cases they even may break if you play them hard (a friend of mine who is a pianist literally broke some keys on his new low cost master keyboard for practicing on the road after just a couple of weeks!). Also, if you decide that music is not for you after all and want to sell the instrument it’s very difficult to sell a bad instrument and you usually lose most of the money you paid for it. And if you want to sell an expensive one that in your eyes is still new but in reality it’s used you lose money, too.
Buy a solid intermediate instrument that you can keep even when you buy yourself an expensive one later. It’s good to play, you can still sell it for a good money if you quit and believe me, you don’t want to take your $ 2.000,- guitar to a campfire party so you will be glad to still have the old $ 250,- one… 😉
As you can see finding your instrument can be very easy or very hard and anything in between. I hope I was able to give you some useful tips and suggestions to make your search easier.
