Instrument You Wish You Could Play

No practice, no calluses, no decade of scales. You simply wake up able to play it, which removes the only real obstacle and leaves the interesting question exposed.

Without effort in the equation, the choice becomes about what the instrument lets you do socially. Piano and guitar are the two that get you into a room with other people, which is most of why they dominate. Violin and cello give access to a repertoire that nothing else can reach and mostly require an orchestra to use properly. Drums are the only entry where being good is immediately obvious to a listener who knows nothing about music. The harp is astonishing and almost impossible to bring anywhere.

Expect thirty-two instruments, and the framing matters — this is the one you wish you could play, not the one you would advise a child to start on.

Guitar and piano tend to split the field early and then something odd happens in the later rounds. Once the obvious two have eliminated each other, people pick considerably stranger than they expected to.