I don't think there's any type of musical instrument that's typically heard in all, or even most, types of music, except maybe for drums.
"Every rock band has a guitarist, why not a banjoist?"
The same reason they don't typically have someone playing a ukulele, mandolin, harp, lute, kantele, etc. Each type of music has certain characteristics which identify it as that particular type of music. One of those characteristics is the type of instruments that are typically used. While there are always some oddballs, like Bon Scott playing bagpipes in "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)," if bands started making a habit of throwing in random instruments, their music would start becoming a different type of music.
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Dogiswhite (1318)
2 years ago
I don't think that there is anything wrong with that. I know for example that John Mellencamp had his band around the "Scarecrow" album trying different instruments to make a different sound. Unique can be awful but also very good at times. I'm joking about more banjo but why not let bands try to integrate different sounds in their music. Like REM used a toy piano in "Stand" which created a unique sound to that record. Yeah a whole album of that might be awful, but ya never know.
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