Instruments - what do you play

[[Desolate Divine]]

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I am primarily a guitarist. I play acoustic and electric, ranging from chill boyce avenue style to We Came As Romans style metal. I also teach twice a week. Used to be four times but in the last two months two of my students decided they didn't want lessons any more. I have nine guitars, though all but four of them were given to me by people who didn't want them anymore. Two of my guitars are currently out on loan to my students. I perform nearly weekly at church and youth group. I generally use one of my acoustics (as the other one doesn't sound nice), and switch between two electrics depending on what I am playing, though that leaves two guitars that I don't really use too much and gather dust. I better clean them up and give them a bit of love.

I also play piano, though nowhere near to the standard I play guitar. I have been teaching myself for two years. Though I originally started learning to impress the girl who played piano in the youth band, I found a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment from learning and am picking it up at a much quicker pace than I did guitar. Though I don't like to say this because I love playing guitar, I can see myself one day being a better pianist than guitarist. I have a keyboard that my brother got for his birthday years ago but never learned, which stays at my mums house. I first started teaching myself on that. However six months ago, when I had a week with a lot of work, I bought myself a really nice digital piano. Essentially a keyboard with better quality sounds, weighted keys and a sustain pedal. Pretty much a keyboard that feels like a piano. Since I got that I have improved much more, and am now waiting for the chance to play at youth or church (at youth I am the only guitarist so I tend to play that every week, whilst at church there are three awesome pianists, and I am more needed on guitar).

I have a basic knowledge of drums and can play basic beats though I much prefer to play a Cajón (The box at the start of this video)...

Spoiler:

I prefer the cajon as it is simpler, and has a cool organic sorta sound. That and it is highly portable and easy to mic. Hell, when I get my car windows tinted I will probably keep a Cajon in there. Can't keep any instruments in there at the moment as it gets too hot and damages them.

My toughest musical performance was my final assignment for my TAFE course. I had to do a mixed media performance. Essentially, I had to use a computer program and controller to play pre recorded sounds, whilst playing and recording stuff live. I used the studios at TAFE to record three basic beats on the cajon. I cut out the best bar of each beat, and assigned it to a button of the controller. Essentially when I would press a button it would start the beat and loop it until I started the next one. Over that I played and recorded piano and guitar. I got second best in the class (Best was somebody who chopped up five skrillex songs and hooked each sound (two to three seconds each) up to his controller. Mashed them together. It sounded awesome!), though would have gotten best if I didn't try to do so much at once. I didn't allow enough time to change so made a lot of slip ups.

As for what else I would like to learn, I would love to learn cello and violin. I have wanted to for years, especially after hearing it used so much in Skillet's music. Recently, I met up with a girl who plays violin and cello, to jam, as she needed a guitarist for her work. When I was there, before I left, she let me have a go of her cello. Whilst I was a spastic, I had a little bit of skill due to my musical ear and technique from guitar and piano passing over, and think if I really tried, I could pick it up. I ended up deciding not to work with this girl. Half the reason I agreed to jam with her was because I thought she was hot (I guess the hormones kicked in a little too much), but the plans she had were much more serious than I thought. Like, she was wanting this to be primary focus, when I should be finding work.

[Evildraws]

I prefer the cajon as it is simpler, and has a cool organic sorta sound.

Ah, I'd forgotten about the Cajon! (Except I've always known it as a box drum >w< ) Someone at my school's talent show last year played a box drum in a band and it was one of the coolest things I'd heard *w* I wouldn't mind learning to play that...

As for everyone else, there's so many guitarists and pianists and singers! All things I would love to do... I guess I forgot I used to play guitar, but I was self taught (and only for like, half a year...then my brother accidentally snapped the guitar in half X'3). The only thing I could play decently was the six flags theme song from the commercials XD As for singing, I like to say that I'm good...but then I listen to myself on recordings and I want to rip my ears off, ahaha :'D And I can only play the intro to Crazy Train (by Ozzy Osbourne) on piano...oh, and fur eliz (sp?) I guess XD