JSouthworth wrote:
I have a few musical instruments including a mini electric guitar, but they're mainly for use as props although I do have a couple of old amps.

It should be obvious, even to you Southy, but possession of musical instruments does not make you a musician.
The OP has appealed for musicians, not hoarders or those who collect props for the purpose of producing cliché.

P R E S T O N wrote:
It should be obvious, even to you Southy, but possession of musical instruments does not make you a musician.

Maybe, maybe not.......But the question is, who gives a fuck?

Ken Marcus Studios wrote:
French Horn

Mozart Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-Flat Major

That seems like a challenging instrument. I appreciated the Concerto, as I hadn't heard it before. My favorite was the third movement.

Shadow Dancer wrote:
I've got 2,000 plus gigs behind me. Mostly as lead guitarist, harmony vocalist. Some on acoustic guitar and lead vocals. And a few on bass, including playing bass one night for Bo Diddley. That night, the band learned in no uncertain terms how to play a Bo Diddley beat. Most musicians do not get that correctly.

That sounds like quite an experience!

P R E S T O N wrote:
It should be obvious, even to you Southy, but possession of musical instruments does not make you a musician.
The OP has appealed for musicians, not hoarders or those who collect props for the purpose of producing cliché.

What do you call someone who hangs with the musicians in a band, goes to all their practices, goes to all their concerts, and has pictures of themselves with all the musicians in the band? A drummer. LOL, drummers are not musicians, they do not make music. Even vocalists singing acapella are musicians because they make music with their voice or unaccompanied.

If you have hords of instrument or just props, if you can play or sing even one song you are a musician;

Definition: the art of producing pleasing or expressive combinations of tones especially with melody, rhythm, and usually harmony

I play keyboard and have written songs.

JSouthworth wrote:
I have a few musical instruments including a mini electric guitar, but they're mainly for use as props although I do have a couple of old amps.

Musical instruments have obvious uses as props in glamour photography, and turning the idea around, a surprising number of female bands have performed nude or topless:

https://www.google.com/search?q=nude+fe … Ox9J8oMdoM

Don't be too hard on Southy.
'They also serve who only stand and wait'

Rich M Photo wrote:
drummers are not musicians, they do not make music.
Definition: the art of producing pleasing or expressive combinations of tones especially with melody, rhythm, and usually harmony

I disagree. Your view is a static one, applying only to specific rhythms.

In my own way, I do create "expressive combinations of tones" that DO create a melody of sorts by providing an undercurrent of groove, along with a quickly-changing overlay of other tones and rhythms, and also by harmonizing with others or my own rhythms simply by expressing a different tonality within the same rhythm. Often I'm playing two rhythms at the same time. It can be and very much is a jazz approach in terms of its variability and spontaneity.

Rasheid Ali (who played with John Coltrane and Sonny Fortune, among many other greats) has said the same thing, and takes that same approach, playing in the time, yet trying like hell to stay away from it, and filling the air with a mass of tones all orbiting around the beat. Though I can't compare technically to him, I take it even further, spontaneously riffing off what the kit-drummer plays, or even changing it up completely for both of us in the middle of our spontaneous interactions, and we play it back and forth like that, to the delight, entertainment and dancing of dozens-to-hundreds every week.

Modelphilia wrote:
I disagree. Your view is a static one, applying only to specific rhythms.

It was a joke, and the reality is the definition of music and musician have changed over the years.

I find that there are huge egos in bands. The guitar player that plays too loud whose amp goes to 11, the drummer that hammers his crash symbols too loud, they keyboard player that wants to leave the band to do a solo album. Bass players for some reason in the bands I have been in have in general had the least ego, and are the easiest to get along with.

I like slap and pop funk base and fret-less bass guitar (Jacco)

Skylark Photo wrote:
I've played saxophone for almost ten years. I've recently started learning piano. Who else plays an instrument? What's your favorite song/type of music to play?

My hoarding of instruments started in the 80s, My first keyboard was a Yamaha DX7.. I still have my TX7 tone module and probably my oldest instrument besides my acoustic piano. Most of the music I generate now uses a laptop and VSTs but I still favor my Ensoniq VFX-SD as my controller sometimes the Korg Triton, or Yamaha KX5, I like the ribbon controller.

Rich M Photo wrote:
It was a joke.

Of course, I recognized that in your first sentences. Kit-drummrs have been the butt of many musician jokes for many decades. It was in your further explication that you seemed to be serious in your deprecation. No worries though. Play on!

Rich M Photo wrote:
My hoarding of instruments started in the 80s, My first keyboard was a Yamaha DX7.. I still have my TX7 tone module and probably my oldest instrument besides my acoustic piano.

In that case, maybe you'll be interested in my super-rare, early-80's C-465 Orla keyboard, from back when they were still Italian-made. It's set up like an accordian-keyboard, has a MIDI interface, and all of its buttons are completely programmable!

Modelphilia wrote:

In that case, maybe you'll be interested in my super-rare, early-80's C-465 Orla keyboard, from back when they were still Italian-made. It's set up like an accordian-keyboard, has a MIDI interface, and all of its buttons are completely programmable!

I did not play the accordion, I think that would be a good controller for someone who had. I am too old a dog to lean that new trick.

Mark Salo wrote:
Violin long ago: Vaughan Williams ~ The Lark Ascending

Mostly I played in orchestras: two Dvorak Symphonies were my my favorites

The Lark Ascending was beautiful! I enjoyed hearing the woodwinds in the background. Many times they are covered by other stringed instruments. I looked up the history of the piece -- I've been fascinated by the effect of WW1 on music and composers of the era.

Studio NSFW wrote:
I am also not a musician…I’m a bass player….

Found it great to hear from someone from Austin in this thread, I was about 11 years in Nashville.  Recorded quite a few song demos for songwriting houses, but found more success in audio engineering, producing, and some art direction and (gasp!) photography.

Nashville is a factory town…for every “Star” you actually are aware of, there are probably 100 people or more making that possible.

And if anyone gets bugged by the bass player joke at the top of this, it’s an olde one, and I have lots more….

Q: What do you call a perfect pitch?
A: A saxophone landing in the middle of a dumpster.

It's great that someone who was in Nashville replied. I've always used music for personal self expression rather than business, but it does seem like there are good opportunities in the field for talented people. I'd like to go back to Nashville again, and see Dollywood and Graceland, but Austin is good too. I've enjoyed the jazz and blues scene here.

Rich M Photo wrote:
I did not play the accordion, I think that would be a good controller for someone who had. I am too old a dog to lean that new trick.

I'd have thought that anyone doing keyboard for a long time would be familiar enough with the possiblities for using the onboard MIDI capability on that vintage Orla and its accordion-style keyboard in ALL SORTS of ways!

In fact, I hadn't had it out for a long time until my previous response, and now I think I'll get more serious on that score myself! The decades younger kit-drummer I play with is very familiar with electronic music, and also composes in that genre. I'm going to try to get together with him to fill its buttons and sliders with a glorious collection of sounds, samples, and track-lets, then improvisingly play it myself like I would when hand-drumming. Fun awaits!

Skylark Photo wrote:
Austin is good too. I've enjoyed the jazz and blues scene here.

It's good to know that there still IS a good jazz-and-blues scene in Austin. I'd imagine it is quite a bit more cosmopolitan these days, given all the outsiders who have flocked there in recent decades.

Its country-and-blues scene was very much in the Texas-style back in that once-small-city of my late-1970's & early-'80's years. The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughn were both just Wednesday-night dance-club bands, and brother Jimmy Vaughn was one of the late-night DJs on KUT. Joe Ely was a regular act at a semi-outdoor converted lumber-yard venue (Liberty Lunch).

The weekly summertime free concerts along the lake brought us the likes of Asleep At the Wheel, The Uranium Savages and dozens more to entertain us during our beer-and/or-LSD-soaked dancing. A club which I often frequented on 6th Street allowed me the experience of standing on a cat-walk just a few feet above James Brown as he performed there with his full band; and then to also be in that same position when I was only a few feet above Sting and the rest of The Police when they, still largely unknown, came through town on their very first U.S. tour!

The overall Austin scene was so small then that it was easy for the musicians, music industry writers, DJs, actors, and photo-enthusiasts like myself to run into each other. I once rode out to a beer-garden concert in Fredricksberg in a car-full that included (besides a couple of indispensable female friends!) Delbert McClinton (? I think) and Butch Hancock. We met up with Augie Meyers and Doug Sahm (of The Sir Douglas Quintet, The Flatlanders, etc.) and, together with various other mutual friends, we all sat around listening to Alvin Crow & The Pleasant Valley Boys singing their mock-country songs and their infamous "Nyquil Blues". I think Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys, another mock-country act, were also on that bill. Good times was EVERY day!

The smaller jazz-scene was very progressive at that time though, and likely still is. I used to know and to be neighbors with some of the best band's young members, knew their girlfriends, etc. I haven't been back in about 25-years, so I might not even be able to find my way back to 6th Street for a little while if I ever do return!

Enjoy it for me!

Varton Photography wrote:
I play keyboard (Korg PA80) also guitar (Gibson SG), sing pop music cover at family/friend's gatherings member of small amateur band.
Soloist at the church, I sing 1st tenor also sing in a private choir.

Oddly enough I've never been attracted to the keyboard the same way I have been to piano, but I would learn the pipe organ if I had the chance. Maybe you'll get the opportunity at church?