Or have you played something else in the past? What’s your favorite piece to play?

Edit: thanks for everyone that has replied. This has been so heartwarming to read :)

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    Over my lifetime I’ve learned to play like 8 or 9 musical instruments, from “can squeak out Mary Had A Little Lamb” on a harmonica to reasonable on the piano. I took band class in middle and high school and was a reasonable trumpet player, though it’s been awhile.

    I’m mainly a guitar player. I’ve tended toward 6 string acoustic, finger style. I tend to like the guitar because it can hold up on its own, it can be a solo instrument in a way that a trumpet can’t. Show up to a social gathering with a trumpet, see if you’re allowed to play it, compared to showing up with a guitar.

    My favorite piece to play on guitar is probably a solo guitar arrangement of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer. This is what I aim for with it, and I’ve got…most of it, not quite that clean.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      1·
      10 hours ago

      Yep, grew up playing trombone in band, and string bass in orchestra, and played guitar and electric bass in basement rock bands. I went to a conservatory for college and stopped playing guitar and bass. Got a degree in Music History, went into the classical/jazz music biz for a couple decades, then my own non-music biz for a couple decades, and never played anything for all those years.

      Then I was going stir crazy during the pandemic quarantine, going nuts from daytime TV, so in 2020 I took up the electric guitar, and got back to it.

      I improved quickly, but about 18 months ago, I got into fingerstyle, and now I’m obsessed. All I ever wanted was to be able to play well enough to get through entire songs, and entertain myself. With finger picking, I can do that. I have a strong music background, so I don’t use tabs, I just create my own arrangements.

      The result has been amazing for my mental health. I came to realize that I had been operating with a low-grade depression for a long time, maybe most of my life, but playing the guitar has lifted most of that. That’s how I knew I had been depressed - when it improved. It had just become my baseline existence.

      Favorite things to play? I’m all over the place, from classical tunes, to modern songs. Some of my favorite pieces to play are two songs by Stephen Foster - a lullaby called Slumber My Darling, and a beautiful ballad called Hard Times, Come Again No More, which was Foster’s own personal favorite, and the song he used to sing in taverns for free drinks as a broke, degenerate alcoholic.

      It’s so satisfying to sit on the front porch on a sunny late afternoon, looking out over the pond, and play my own music. If I was a religious person, I’d say it was one of God’s greatest gifts.