The Growing Culture Around Collecting and Playing Multiple Instruments

There’s a certain point in a musician’s life when their main instrument stops being enough. The interest that led them to learn one particular technique begins to reach in new directions, towards sounds and playing styles that are not possible with their current instrument. This polyinstrumentalism is one of the hallmarks of contemporary amateur and professional musicians. It’s not uncommon for a banjoist to also have a mandolin and a resonator guitar stashed in the practice room. They are part of a cultural shift in musicians’ attitudes toward the instruments they use.

Why One Instrument Stops Being Enough

The motivation to play more than one instrument is not dissatisfaction. Those who take up a second, or third, instrument are not “walking away”. They are opening up a wider landscape of musical possibilities, and their desire to do so is only increased by their mastery of the first. For instance, the skills of guitar playing create an ear and a musical sensibility that recognise the sounds of other instruments as something to explore. As musicians learn more about music through one instrument, they hear more of the possibilities of other instruments.

The Banjo as a Case Study in Lateral Discovery

The banjo is one instrument that epitomises the joys of exploration. It is close enough to the guitar that a guitarist’s first encounter with the banjo is familiar, in terms of the fretted strings and chord structures, but also far enough away that the tuning, the right-hand technique, and the percussive effect of the head all have to be learned. It is this blend of the known and the unknown that makes instrument exploration so valuable. The banjo is a world of tone, repertoire and technique that stands on its own while also being part of the larger family of stringed instruments.

Collections as Musical Biographies

The musical instrument collections of seasoned multi-instrumentalists are autobiographies of their playing journeys. Each instrument represents a time of discovery, a musical genre, an influence, or a technical challenge. The journey from a first guitar to an acoustic fingerpicking guitar to a resonator to a banjo is reflected in the objects collected along the way. Collections are not just collections of objects. They are records of who a musician has been and what they have been drawn toward across the years of their development.

The Technical Cross-Pollination Effect

Cross-instrumental fluency does not just add to a musician’s repertoire of sounds. It changes the way each instrument is played. A guitarist who takes up the banjo for six months comes back to the guitar with a right-hand dexterity and rhythmic nuance that were not present in their guitar-only practice. A pianist who learns a fretted instrument gains a new sense of melodic voice, leading them to believe that their experience with the piano was approaching from a different direction. The technical knowledge of each instrument feeds into the others, enhancing the musician’s skill set more than would be possible by spending more time on just one instrument.

Genre Fluency and the Multi-Instrument Advantage

Musical genres are often as much about the instruments used as their harmonies or rhythms. Bluegrass is the way it is, in part, due to the timbres and playing styles of the banjo, mandolin, and dobro. Irish music sounds the way it does because of the fiddle, uilleann pipes, and bouzouki. A musician who plays multiple instruments from the genres they love will develop genre fluency that comes only from playing. The experience of playing an instrument gives access to its physical and cultural logic in a way that listening can’t.

The Social Dimension of Instrument Diversity

Multi-instrumentalists have a social versatility not always shared by specialists. A jam that requires a rhythm instrument, a melodic instrument, and something to fill in the middle can be covered by a single multi-instrumentalist. The player who brings to a social situation the capacity to play several instruments or to pick up whatever instrument is required becomes a different kind of musical resource than the specialist. This social flexibility opens up opportunities for playing and musical connections, which enrich the musical community in many ways.

Physical Instruments as Objects With Character

Instruments are also physical objects with particular personalities, histories and aesthetic qualities that appeal to the collecting instinct of many musicians. The distinctive tone of a pre-war banjo, the pleasing aesthetics of a beautifully crafted acoustic guitar, or the mechanical brilliance of a concertina all have aesthetic qualities that are partly independent of their musical qualities. Musicians who recognise this aesthetic aspect of collection are not trivialising. They acknowledge that the relationship between musician and instrument is holistic.

Learning Curves as Deliberate Creative Disruption

There is a particular creative benefit to returning to beginner status, a path that advanced musicians increasingly understand and pursue. The experienced musician who takes up a new instrument enters a beginner state that is less likely to occur on their main instrument. This beginner state, in which everything is new and unknown, renews the musical experience in ways that advanced practice on a single instrument does not. Musicians who regularly re-approach the beginner state through different instruments tend to carry back to their main instrument a level of interest and openness that can be lost with focused practice on a single instrument.

A Musical Life That Keeps Expanding

The multi-instrument culture is symptomatic of a positive attitude to music-making that serious musicians bring to their craft over their lifetime. Rather than finding a peak and moving into consolidation, the multi-instrumentalists treat their musical development as an ongoing project that continually produces new possibilities. New instruments bring new repertoire, new communities, new technical demands, and new listening experiences. The expanding musical life that results from this keeps the musician’s interest and attention alive, forever.