How many musical instruments can a person learn at one time?
musical instruments February 7th, 2010Without getting too caught up, with leftover free time, and with enough time spent on each to learn it properly.
And I mean a regular person with only an hour or so of free time in the evenings, but around 5 hours of free time on Saturdays and Sundays.
I’m just wondering, because I play the flute, and am learning the guitar, but would also like to learn the piano and several other instruments. Do you think I would be able to find some kind of balance?
Depends on your definition of "properly". If your hour of free time per day doesn’t include practicing the two instruments you already play, then you already don’t have enough time to be good at the ones you play. Half an hour a day is enough to be okay, but not enough to be great.
There are lots of instruments where learning one gives you a huge step up in learning another. Clarinettists often play bass clarinet too. Recorder players play all the sizes. If you like variety rather than always practicing one instrument, you might consider one of those. As a flautist, how about piccolo?
February 7th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
If you learn the clarinet you will be learning two in one because I think the fingering on the clarinet is the same on a sax. I’m 54 and I play piano, guitar, mandolin, bass, uke, banjo, flute, and harmonica. While I enjoy playing them all, I guess I’d rather have learned just one of them and reached expert level. Instead I’m just pretty good on all of them.
References :
February 7th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Depends on your definition of "properly". If your hour of free time per day doesn’t include practicing the two instruments you already play, then you already don’t have enough time to be good at the ones you play. Half an hour a day is enough to be okay, but not enough to be great.
There are lots of instruments where learning one gives you a huge step up in learning another. Clarinettists often play bass clarinet too. Recorder players play all the sizes. If you like variety rather than always practicing one instrument, you might consider one of those. As a flautist, how about piccolo?
References :