Looking for a musical instrument to inspire you?

There are so many beautiful musical instruments around for musicmakers. I have a soft spot for baby instruments - beautifully crafted, easily stored and surprisingly cheap.

These small scale instruments - often called travel instruments, baby instruments or mini instruments - offer intimacy and easy handling to songwriters and musicmakers at the day job, crooners on the back porch and dreamers in small bedrooms!

The lower prices of baby instruments suit both professionals wanting a unique sound and beginners wanting a small instrument to play often

How can it be that something smaller is cheaper? From my experience of building model aeroplanes as a kid, 'smaller' involves so much more effort. (Or was it just the glue?) But much of the baby instrument range is priced low enough to warrant building a little creche of 'babies'. And that way they can play together when you're busy.

The size of these travel musical instruments make it possible to have several in your life without clutter

Baby instruments fit discreetly in the corner of your workplace or studio allowing you to take a break and 'have a blow'. (Imagine lawyers, truckies and childcare workers grabbing a moment to strum their baby mandos or strumsticks to ease tension and bring a little magic into the day!)

Baby instruments are not toys. They have a tangy sound each of their own by nature of the scale and materials used. I love the sweetness and intimacy that these little babies evoke. It's the musical version of 'oh she's so beautiful' usuually bestowed on little animals and humans!

Baby instruments help save songwriters and arrangers from 'Writer's Block'

For songwriters the perfect antedote to 'writer's block' (we'll talk about that myth another time) is to move between musical instruments to find a new insight and to release the 'block'. So, widen your soundscape - go into unexplored territory.Often playing an instrument you are NOT proficient at leads you to exciting new places in your musicmaking. And we all know how great a teacher a chord book can be in helping us approximate ease and competence on our instruments!

Choose your baby musical instrument of choice and then something way out of your experience from guitars, basses, ukeleles, accordians, banjos and melodicas! Having a selection of beautiful baby instruments will keep you inspired for ages! And in the digital age of 'small is beautiful' you'll get lots of kudos for your socially relevant choice of a baby instrument. Yeah that's right, you'll be the point of interest wherever you go with your 'baby'.