Gifts for Musicians Who Already Own Their Instrument

The instrument is not the gift. That is the first thing to get out of your head. The guitar, the keyboard, the whatever — they chose that themselves, they're attached to it, and getting them something different is a good way to give a gift that immediately lives in a closet. What musicians actually want is the stuff around the playing. The care, the tools, the things that make practice more comfortable or more interesting. A good metronome. Picks they didn't know they'd prefer. A recording setup that finally captures what they actually sound like. These things make it into the daily routine in a way that a second instrument almost never does.