Even when learning a musical instrument is not always essential to write a song, it will enhance greatly your musical skills and will provide an effective tool to materialise any idea that comes up to your mind. The music history is full of examples of instruments that have became famous after hit songs were written on them like the “Hamburg” model of John Lennon or Ozzy Osbourne’s piano. In this article we will focus on picking an instrument which suits your needs.
You can never under estimate the potential of any instrument, even if it seems weird or not very popular. Think about the English Horn of the second movement of the “Concierto de Aranjuez” of Joaquín Rodrigo or the Cornet of “La Vie en Rose” of Louis Armstrong. I can’t imagine better examples of how an instrument’s timbre can deliver a particular emotion so effectively. Think about an orchestra and the infinite possibilities of every instrument in it, even the percussionist who seems not to be doing nothing at all, when his turn comes he plays a very important role.
So, what is the best instrument for the new songwriter? there are some aspects we need to take into account before choosing the right one:
- Budget: The majority of us have a tight budget at the beginning, but 50 or 100 dollars can buy us a decent acoustic guitar or keyboard.
- Flexibility: Some instruments have beautiful timbres, but just can play a few octaves and are pretty difficult to learn (Violin, Saxophone, Cello)
- Convenience: Drums are cool, but your mom will not be happy if you play them 4 hours a day in a 2 bedroom apartment.
- Resources Available: Internet is full of free lessons for guitar, piano and bass. You don’t need to know music notation to learn the most of popular songs.
- Personality: If you want to be a rock star, chances are that you will not be playing a tuba in your first concert.
According to the experience of most songwriters, there are a few instruments that have the best balance between all of these points:
- Guitar: Pros: very cheap, easy to learn, tons of resources available and by far the most popular instrument of all the time. Cons: becomes monotone once you learn a couple of chords and your songs tend to sound predictable.
- Keyboard: Pros: flexible, some models have a lot of voices, it is the “portable orchestra”. Cons: more expensive, more difficult to learn.
- Accordion: Pros: nice timbre, can play harmony and melody, easy to learn for some of them are diatonic (it means any button will sound right). Cons: expensive, unless you stick to a specific type of music it could be difficult to fit into different genres.
- Drums: Pros: you can play a rhythm and your band can “fill it” with ideas while jamming, drum players are on high demand by local bands. Cons: very expensive, noisy, can´t play melodies or harmony.
- Bass: Pros: easy to learn, very fun to play. Cons: needs an amplifier (electric ones), can’t play complex melodies.
In my personal experience I have found the piano and the guitar the most effective instruments to develop new material for they are flexible, easy to learn and nobody will be upset in your home if you play them in your spare time. In the next article we will talk about the basic songwriter’s kit.