I don’t know exactly why I’m curious about this, but I am. What is the very firts thing you typically do when you pick up ( or sit down at) your instrument. I’m wondering if other miusicians fall into the same kind of habits that I do. I’m a guitarist, and whenever I pick up a guitar, the first thing I usually do is play an open A chord and let it ring out. I don’t know exactly why or when I started this, but I’ve been doing it for 20 years or more. It just seems like a good chord to check the tuning and the tone, and (for an electric guitar) the settings for the amp and the effects. I also typically follow up the A chord with a little BB King blues box run in E.
Do other muscians have these kind of habits? If you play keyboards, are there any chords or runs you always paly when you firts sit down. If you play drunms do you do a little tom run? If you play bass, is there any kind of run or line you typically play?
I suspect that most musicans are creatures of habit and have something or other they always do when they first get hold of their instrument (for the sake ofthe thread, assume you know the instrument is already in tune or close to it).