How to “Play” Instruments Just to Look Cool

By Lee Kirschner

Hello! Welcome to your organized guide on how to “play” instruments (aka, how to pretend to play them so you don’t actually have to learn, but you get all the credit for being “talented”). 

1. The guitar. This one’s fairly simple, as we’ve seen it in about ten million movies. Simply grab the nearest electric guitar and strike your hand down on it. If you hit it aggressively enough, you’ll hopefully just get labeled “heavy metal” as opposed to clocked as the phony you technically are. 

2. The drums. This one’s even easier. Just start banging on them, and if you play loudly enough, you can drown out all the haters who say you’re terrible. 

3. The violin. This one may be a bit harder, because you can’t rely on sheer volume or intensity, but I believe in you! Just pick up a violin, hold it in a way that you think feels right, put on a recording of someone else playing the violin, and mime moving the bow up and down. No one will know unless they, themselves, play. You can cross that bridge when you get to it. Who even plays the violin, anyway? I definitely don’t know, like, eight people who do. 

4. The cello. This one is pretty much the same to a violin; just, you might want to cross-train a bit with weights or something. It’s pretty heavy...

5. Singing. My philosophy on this one is simple, but all-purpose: if you damage their sanity enough, no one cares how awful your pitch is. Not that I have any experience with that or anything. Why would you think such a thing about me? 

You may be now wondering, where will I go to do these things? My advice is, the more public the area, the better. The more people who get to see how amazing you are, the better. If it’s drums or singing, preferably go with strangers, given that damaging one’s hearing and/or sanity and then having to see them at school the next day, or at the next family gathering, may be a bit awkward. However, that’s really up to you. Maybe doing this to a certain relative or another will satisfy your deepest desires. Who am I to tell you not to follow your dreams?