Hello creatives!
it's been a while I had a chance to play music but lately I have been blessed by the luck of meeting soulmates who both are artists AND musicians and so I wonder, just for the sake of a good creative conversation, how many of you can play one or more instruments and what does that give to your creative life?
I have been playing piano, sax, bassoon and I've been a singer for many years. Gave up 14 years ago and went shyly back to just piano hopefully to stay - I like playing soundtracks mainly. A damage to my vocal chords makes it hard to sing but I still try now and then, but it is I admit very awful at times 
What music has given me that made my skills in Photoshop grow is the mindset of creating things a bit at a time, going back and refining small parts while you connect them to the rest of the score. The fact that building the piece whether I write (yes I can write music too, I had some composition at the conservatory of music, while at - I have written some children songs just for fun a couple of years ago) or I play does not go from A to Z but that I have to jump back and forth and that a complete piece is made of repetition, construction, execution and interpretation are a school for life, almost. To get to the top of the iceberg you have to go all steps.
How about you?
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Yarp. Guitar (both electric and classical) is my main instrument. My skills on the other instruments are somewhat rudimentary (except maybe bass guitar...which is really just a lower-scaled guitar with its upper two strings missing).
Got hooked on guitar early in high school, classical especially. Led me eventually to digital audio workstations in the late 90's/early 2000's. (Cakewalk for DOS, anyone?) It's amazing what's available today for the musician looking to record on his/her computer. What costs about $200 (or even less) now would have costed thousands years ago just to achieve the same end. I kind of laugh when I think about the 4-track tape recorder my friend bought back in the 80's. Think it was one of those Portastudios that TASCAM made.
I actually (and eventually) rolled around to Photoshop via my old job as an independent Web designer. I'm very DIY-centric so I pretty much ended up designing assets for my own music-related projects.
That was nice of you to give your tuba, Chuck.
I also play guitar (and bass), and piano/keyboards. I had a band back in the day, but don't have much time for that anymore. I'm trying to get myself motivated to hook up to my MacBook and record some tracks with Garage Band, but where does the time go?
Mike
For, you're right! Creative work and music are different facets of the same jewel. It's not surprising to me that we have a lot of musicians in our midst!
I'm reminded of this little demo I put together a while back, as I was playing around with a Photoshop 3D technique for a tutorial. I recorded it as a time lapse, and added a music track, and it seems to work I'm linking to it here, since it is "Festive," and that goes along with the season...
http://youtu.be/_pitiCQiXIE
Having fun with an old photo. I was trying to do compositing back in high school with film - didn't work so well, but 34+ years later, I find my old neg of me next to my tuba and holding a picture frame that I was going to composite something into at that time. So I posed and put my current self in the photo. A little tricky posing just right like I was actually in the tuba, but all those years playing it set up some muscle memory - plus a little puppet warp.
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