It might seem strange to suggest that mastering the trumpet would help you to become a better guitarist, but the honest truth is that there are plenty of reasons why improving your musical repertoire can and will help you to become a better guitarist – and musician – overall.
So, if you want to understand exactly what you might gain from putting down your guitar and picking up some drumsticks, then this article should help you.
Transferable Skills
First and foremost, one of the biggest benefits of learning another instrument – alongside your guitar – is that many principles in music are transferrable skills. This means that your experience with the guitar will help you to pick up the new instrument faster, but, more importantly, it also means that every new lesson you learn when developing your skill for that instrument will also help to make you a better guitarist.
What’s more, the lessons you need to learn to play different instruments are often different from what you had to master in order to play the guitar, which means you will almost always be learning new music skills when taking up new instruments.
Improving Your Creativity
Not only will the differences in these instruments help to improve your understanding of musical skills, but they will also help to make you more musically creative. After all, when you play guitar, you are probably thinking like a guitarist, and when you are playing piano, you are probably thinking like a pianist, but what would happen if you played your guitar like a pianist?
Whether or not you like the result, the ability to shift your mentality while playing is a major benefit and can help to make you far more musically creative than you might assume. Plus, when you understand more about why music works, you can start to play around with techniques and experiments that you might never have thought of without that extra level of understanding.
Best Additional Instruments to Learn
So, if you accept the idea that learning to play other instruments could boost your talents as a guitarist, then you might now be wondering which potential new instruments will give you the most bang for your buck and which new skill is going to boost your ability most.
Well, there is no single correct answer to that question since the style and interests of the guitarist will have a huge effect on which new skills they might benefit from. You could invest in a quality Piccolo Rental right now, and the process will likely be a positive experience overall.
However, if you want a guide to your explorations, then there is one point that will likely be useful to you: you should try to learn an instrument that belongs to a different musical family from those you already know. After all, those are the instruments that are going to be the most markedly different from those you already play and, therefore, will likely be the instruments that will require the most new skills to engage with.
Since the guitar is a part of the string family of instruments, you might want to consider engaging with a woodwind or brass instrument. These are based upon a very different interaction with the instrument and will, therefore, likely provide you with a fresh perspective on your music and the tools you use to produce it.
Applying What You’ve Learned
Finally, once you’ve spent enough time practicing with your new instruments, you are going to have to learn how you can apply your new knowledge when playing the guitar. Among other things, this is going to require a bit of a mental shift. Primarily, you need to stop thinking as a “guitarist” or a “pianist” and start thinking as a musician if you want to apply your musical skills across the boundaries of the instruments they normally apply to.
For example, if you learn how to properly create a beat while playing the drums, then there is no reason why you couldn’t apply that skill to create a beat using the body of your guitar. In fact, many musicians already do this, and you could too.
Ultimately, the process of applying this new knowledge of yours is all about looking for opportunities to bring your musical abilities as a whole forward. Your ideas to do this probably won’t always work, but when you create a blend of skills that click, you’ll be glad for the range of your experiences.
