Do you play a musical instrument, if so: which?

[KBD]

I took Bass guitar lessons when I was a teenager. Wanted be another Geddy Lee or Chris Squire :) I had fun with it, loved that growling Bass sound. But never got beyond just playing it occasionally as a hobby rather than anything serious. Also played electric guitar a bit, but again, just as a hobby and not much in awhile.

[rs55]

I play the DeadBeef !!

[entropyfoe]

Same as KBD,

Started on bass guitar, then switched to guitar (acoustic steel string with a pick-up).
Strictly amateur. I do use MX to edit files with audacity and "compose".

[CyberGhost]

I play rhythm and lead guitar, bass guitar, native american flute, harmonica, didgeridoo, percussion instruments like djembe drum, congas, bongos-etc, keyboard and piano, and just about anything else I pick up I can play. (With practice of course) I play by ear and have always had a knack for music production whether it be with instruments or electronic music production equipment. I know how to read tablature for guitar songs but I never learned how to read sheet music. Maybe someday I will learn sheet music. I enjoy making music but it's more fun when you have others to play with so these days I don't play as much.

[mxer]

I've made myself a (kind of) bodhran from what was called a floor drum, I was going to use it as backing when I learn to do multi track recording, just need to get some practice in on it.

[Eadwine Rose]

mxer: interesting, got pics of it?

CyberGhost: Didgeridoo.. wooow... that is so neat!

[Davo]

Always rhythm guitar for me. it just in some ways means that you are almost always present in the mix - to very much develop and guide the direction of a song structure and to maybe propel a song forward, by giving it it's base.Not it's bass, haha.
Bass guitar however is quite genuinely alien to me. Many fantastic exponents, but not my area. Quite often lead guitar kinda goes the cherry blossom route of dazzling for a few moments and then just lightly following. Not quite creative enough here (me),nor as patient to wait for right moment to shine.

Give me a good old-fashioned rhythm (triplets, eighths, sixteenths , down-down or down-up or up-down or literally any mix of any of it) ...just about any of this and I can do it just fine. Finger picking or else a driving beat. Many previous areas to explore were like native Brazilian beats or else African continent stuff.
Currently Japanese stuff and the manipulation of the pentatonic scale in quite a unique way. Abrupt starts (on beginning with full-on chorus), then bit melodic, then up-down, then sudden abrupt stops. Not so very usual to western ears, much of it anyways. Just another avenue to explore, always only hobby-wise.

[Gordon Cooper]

I played the bagpipes for several years, was in a band, but my job involved 7 day a week shiftwork so pulled out and gave up the pipes when I was in my early 20's..

Later was leader of a Hawaiian guitar group, built 3 electric steel guitars, first a basic 6 string carved out of a piece of 4 x 3. the later two were double neck 16 stringers with different tuning on each set of 8 strings and one neck two inches longer than standard. Was an interesting task calculating the fret spacing in the years before calculators.

Made a didgeridoo years ago, but could never get my breathing right for sustained blowing.

[JayM]

Not currently. My mother played the acoustic guitar and she encouraged me to also try to learn it when I was young, but I didn't like it because pressing the strings hurt my fingers. Her: "It will only hurt for a few weeks then you'll get callouses." Me: "If I stop playing it will stop hurting right now, not in a few weeks!"

When I was in my very early 20s I started taking violin lessons with the intention of playing fiddle tunes, but as I had a 4-plus hour total commute to and from work at the time I never found enough time to practice. I was always too tired when I got home at almost 7PM, plus there was dinner to consider, and early to bed so I could get up at 4:30AM to get ready for work again.

I used to be able to play a few Irish airs on a Generation tin whistle (which I still have around here someplace) at around the same age as my violin lessons, but when it came to the faster stuff like reels and jigs my fingers would always get mixed up. :)

When I was young I picked up a cheap old all-metal (nickle-plated brass, I think) clarinet from a pawn shop and messed around with it from time to time but never learned to actually play anything worth hearing. Clarinets are strange instruments. Instead of overblowing an octave like normal wind instruments they overblow a 12th, so if you're playing a low C and blow harder, instead of it becoming a high C it's a high G. If you wanted the higher C you had to remember to change your fingering to four notes lower.

I've always wanted to learn a musical instrument but not passionately enough to put in the effort. I'm kind of lazy by nature. I can play the radio pretty well though. :)

[Gordon Cooper]

I forgot. The Hawaiian group included a very good fiddler and we all could play rhythm guitar. So we were called upon to perform at local concerts, a regular Saturday
evening pastime in New Zealand's far south. Driving home in a Southland winter, four of us in a 1937 Austin 7 was something to be remembered. The Austin's windscreen
opened outwards so the loading was. Gordon Mills and me in the back seat with a guitar and violin on our knees, the 3/4 size double bass bottom end resting on our shoulders. Front seats, Graham with a guitar on his knee, Bob driving, both of them supporting the double bass front end on their shoulders, with the neck and finger board of the bass projecting out the open windscreen. It took several hours and a couple of drams to warm up when we arrived home !