In Praise of Cheap Musical Instruments

We here at Nib Manor are not a particularly musically educated bunch. Yours likes Bach, Vivaldi and Mozart, but he cannot say why. The ever lovely Lady Nib prefers Italian operas. Yours can play several musical instruments badly; the mandolin, the harmonica, and the ukulele. Lady Nib, at one time, was a passable classical guitarist, but then she married your faithful correspondent and abandoned said instrument in favor of gardening and computer solitaire.

My first instrument was the mandolin. It was a "tater bug" bought at a pawn shop. I don't know how much it cost since Baron Nib bought it for me a a pawn shop. As time went on I bought a flatiron mandolin so I could play chords. My first guitar was bought a a swap meet. It was a piece of junk that couldn't be brought into proper tune without pulling the bridge off. Harmonicas are always cheap. My uke cost my not more than $80.00. My pennywhistles never cost more than ten bucks. I have a mountain dulcimer that cost fifty bucks. And each instrument gave me pleasure. Any failing in the instruments was due to me, not the instrument. And there lies the trick. A good musician can make a cheap instrument sound okay. A bad musician can't. Musical instruments are like golf clubs. A set of Pings can't make a hacker into Tiger Woods, but Tiger Woods can do wonderful things with a set of cheap clubs.

Unless one makes one living at it, cheap musical instruments are okay. In fact, they may be preferred. One, trying to play a Martin guitar for only a halting version of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" , may feel that one is failing the instrument. Plunking away on a Wal-Mart guitar, on the other hand, may make one more experimental. One has nothing to lose (perception-wise) in thrashing a cheap git-box or violin or dulcimer.

Let's face it, music is a little like driving a car. The most adventurous thing we do is drive the freeway. Most of us can get by by driving a Chevy Aveo, a Nissan Sentra, a Ford Focus or a Kia Rio. We really don't need a Lotus Formula One car. We have neither the talent and/or overwhelming desire to take our car/guitar/uke to the higher levels. So why invest in a Corvette when one can get by with a Cobalt? Is it ego? If one is going to have a big ego one should at least have the stuff to back it up. And most of us don't.

I cannot count the times when I've heard a beginning guitarist lament the fact that he or she didn't have a Les Paul Gibson instead of an old Silvertone Deluxe (sold by Sears) or a cheap knock-off of a Fender Stratocaster while ignoring the fact that Willie Nelson, for some reason, was able to make a pretty good song using a guitar that had a hole worn in the top of the sound box.

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Nowadays (and why is the word not now-days?) a cheap guitar is good enough for the average amateur. The bridges don't pull off the sound board, the necks don't bend and the guitars are probably a lot better than what your favorite bluesman used back in the twenties. The same goes for ukes and mandos. And the same goes for pennywhistles. Anyone who pays more than twenty bucks for a pennywhistle is an idiot trying to buy talent. And consider the great country harmonica player Charlie McCoy preferred the Hohner Old Standby (the cheap harmonica) over the Marine Band (the more expensive version until the Special Twenty). Until you can play Whammer Jammer on an Old Standby you can't bitch about your instrument failing you. Until you can play Malagenea on your Wal-Mart special your really haven't much excuse for not sounding like Segovia.

Most of us amateur musicians are tyros. We have neither the time nor desire to be really good. And even the cheap instruments that are available are better than a lot of the cheap instruments, or even middlin' instruments of times past when great music was being made.

Consider it this way. Roger Bannister was a medical student with little coaching in running. The only coaching he had was from the running coach at Oxford. There were no computers available, there were no biometric data available. He didn't have expensive running shoes. Bannister had two desires. He wanted to become a doctor and he wanted to run fast over the course of a mile. He busted the four minute mile, a goal that is even now, with all the technology available, that is a rarity. Bannister, in effect, played Vivaldi or Hendrix on a cheap git box. He didn't''t depend on his shoes or biometrics to reach his goal. He ran with shoes that current runners wouldn't even consider. He made the shoes. The shoes didn't make him. And the instrument won't make you.