If you could "come back" playing any instrument, what would it be?

[leftofthedial]

I often joke that I'd come back as a harmonica player. I spent my early career as a "sideman" keyboard player, back in the day when that meant acoustic pianos, big electrics (Rhodes, Wurly or later the Yamaha electric grand) and a B-3 with Leslie. It took a whole truck just to haul my stuff, never mind the PA (anyone remember Voice of the Theater mains?) and everything else. I'm still amazed that my bandmates helped haul that stuff. In one band I was in for several years, we played more than 300 dates a year regularly and those guys sweated up and down stairs, in and out of some tough places with me and my gigantic gear . . . I can't even imagine it today. I'm gonna have to send a nice card and maybe some ibuprofen to all those guys!

Anyhow, while lifting a B-3 into the back of the van in a mid-January blizzard in Rapid City or somewhere at three or four in the morning, I often wished I had been a harmonica player instead.

Today though, I kind of wish I'd been a bassist.

[Idylle Moon Dancer]

1. maybe bagpipes

I tried them once and managed a feeble squawk before about passing out.

[leftofthedial]

6. I don't know how anyone plays them

I love the sound, but my only experience playing them was about like yours.

[dbt]

2. The Uillean pipes!

The Irish cousin to the bagpipes, where you've got a bellows to inflate the bag instead of having to blow into something. Jebus, by the time you put these things on yourself, it's like an octopus has got you in a death grip!

There's a strap that goes around your waist and a piece of rubber that you strap onto your right leg so you can mash the end of the chanter (?) into it at various angles to alter the sound. You've got something under each elbow and you have to finger the damn things to boot! THEN, there are what's called the regulators. Though I have never seen them, it would be safe to assume that they're another complication; not a lot of pipers use them, I'm told.

Ah, but the SOUND! Somewhere between a set of Highland pipes and a soprano sax. In the hands of a master like Davey Spillane, the Uillean pipes are a LIVING thing--the most haunting and LONESOME cry you ever did hear!

Yeah, that's it: I want to come back as a master of the Uillean pipes and play 'em in dark little pubs in County Clare (near a turf fire) while a red-haired barmaid with an odd number of freckles brings me pints of Guinness and the fiddle player keeps passing around a pipe full of bud grown near Cork City. Right, lads, "Sally Gooden" in A!

HELL yeah!

:loveya:

[leftofthedial]

4. that works!

[DeepGreen]

3. No change - Guitar

:)

[leftofthedial]

5. popular choice

[mitchum]

7. Tenor sax...

i always tell people that I became a slide guitar player because it's like being a sax player who can smoke

[leftofthedial]

10. I once played with a smokin' sax player

but that was different

[Ron Green]

8. Piano

Not keyboard, but piano. Walk to the job with your hands in your pockets. Don't have to set anything up or plug anything in. If there's not an acceptable instrument there, don't play the gig. After it's over, close the cover and leave. Play as a single if you want, or with a band. Sit down and play wherever there's a piano.

It's really the best instrument to play.

[leftofthedial]

11. I am a piano player

That's what got me into trouble in the first place. Pretty much no place has a piano.

alas. :shrug:

[Ron Green]

12. Almost every place I'm working now has a piano.

Once in a great while our piano player will have to bring along an electric, maybe to do a party out on a patio or somewhere there's not a piano, but in general in all the clubs and hotels where we're playing, there's a grand, or at least a nice spinet that's kept in tune. All the piano player brings in is his book and a music light.

[leftofthedial]

14. what kind of music do you play?

[Ron Green]

17. As much jazz as we can get away with.

You know, people who have the money to pay well for live music often don't have very good musical taste, so the requests are often for schlocky stuff. :( But we play as much jazz as we can, and sometimes there will be knowledgeable people in the audience who "get it" and will ask for jazz standards. Otherwise, we'll play whatever pop tunes they want, but with nice changes and solos. We typically use four pieces (piano, bass, drums, and a sax/clarinet player) and sometimes add a guitar.

[leftofthedial]

21. I'm a jazz virtuoso

inadvertent "jazz" that is . . .

One club I often play has a piano. Out of tune, but a pretty nice old upright.

I still have to haul my own keyboards.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. Probably the drums

I've been playing guitar since about 1966 and it's my main instrument. But over the years I've tried to pick up drums and have come to appreciate how difficult it is to be good (which I am not). I am in awe of great drummers like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones in jazz, Keith Moon or Mitch Mitchell in rock. I think drums are the most exhilarating instrument to play, whether in rock or jazz.

[leftofthedial]

15. I don't know how drummers do it

I've been working on a recording project with a really great drummer.

[cleofus1]

13. cowbell

need more cowbell...

[leftofthedial]

16. I don't know

You might have to double on tambourine

LOL

[cleofus1]

18. as long as

it's a green tamborine!

[leftofthedial]

19. how about a sunburst?

[cleofus1]

20. OK

(i'm easy)