Justin Bieber is known for being a fantastic singer and songwriter within both the pop and R&B genres. Bieber can definitely sing, but can he play the guitar, too?
Justin Bieber can play the guitar. He started learning to play guitar when he was eight years old and also learned to play the drums, the trumpet, and the piano when he was young.
Read on to find out more about Bieber’s guitar playing as well as the other instruments he plays.
Guitar Accompaniment
Justin Bieber often plays the guitar while singing some of his songs during his performances. He knows the chords to his songs and will accompany his singing voice by playing them on the guitar, as many music artists today do.
Bieber is left-handed, and learning to play the guitar was one of the ways he and his family discovered his strong preference for his left hand. “At 8 I started to play the guitar. Basically when I started playing the guitar, I picked up a right-handed guitar. ‘Cause that was all… my mom had a right-handed guitar in the house,” he began.
“And I picked it up and I picked it up left-handed. My mom would switch it the other way. And I would switch it right back to the other way and try to play… My mom, I think it was for my birthday, she bought me a left-handed guitar. And so ever since I was young I learned on a left-handed guitar.”
Becoming a master of the guitar and being able to fingerpick riffs and patterns is incredibly difficult and takes a lot of work. Bieber sticks to the chord progressions of his songs when he plays the guitar, which highlights his voice.
Many of his fans love seeing him play guitar in concert, posting appreciation tweets like this one. While he does often play guitar, Bieber doesn’t claim it as the instrument he’s best at, so what are some of the other instruments he plays?
Watch the YouTube video below to see a fan-made compilation of Justin Bieber playing guitar during his performances throughout his career.
Instrumental Talent
Along with the guitar, Bieber has also learned to play the drums, piano, and trumpet. While he’s mainly focused on learning instruments that can accompany his voice, like the drums, piano, and guitar, he also played the trumpet while he was in middle school.
The first instrument he’d ever learned to play was the drums, first on congas, and then on a full drum set by the time he was two years old. Usher, Bieber’s longtime mentor and the artist who first signed him, said that he was a “young phenomenon. He’s definitely a priority for me and Island Def Jam.”
In a 2015 interview, Bieber talked a lot about his instrumental talents. When asked if the drums were the first instrument he learned to play, he said, “Yeah, because it’s basic. Kids can bang on anything. When you start putting a guitar in front of them at a young age, they can get confused–there’s so many strings, and you’ve got to put your fingers in certain places. Drums are a great first instrument.”
While talking about the instruments featured on his fourth studio album, Purpose, he said, “My best instrument is definitely drums, so I’m featured a lot on the album drumming.” He also listed bass, guitar, and keyboard as key instrumental parts.
Bieber playing the drums is impressive, and it certainly looks like he’s very comfortable playing them. Past videos of him playing the drums when he was young are favorites on his YouTube channel, as well as impromptu jam sessions while he was on tour.
Another fan posted this on Twitter about Bieber’s talent with many different instruments, including a video made up of shorter clips of him playing the guitar, the piano, and the drums.