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Mass_Driver comments on Cheat codes - Less Wrong
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Well, since you mentioned expert violinists...most people find that guitar is alarmingly easy to learn once they sit down with it. With a 1 hour lesson per week and 30 minutes of practice 3 times a week for 10 weeks, most people can get to the point where they are affirmatively entertaining -- much more fun to listen to than silence or small talk. Being able to play an instrument reasonably well is good for making friends, impressing people, expressing emotions, achieving flow, and improving self-esteem.
Unless you're a perfectionist, extremely busy, or extremely lazy, you will probably find that after the first 5 hours or so of time-investment, both the lessons and the practice can be a lot of fun -- you don't have to follow a rigid system; you can just see interesting techniques used and then copy whichever ones interest you as best you can, and music comes out.
Is this specific to the guitar, or does it apply to some other instruments as well?
There are probably some other instruments it works for, but it does not seem to work that way for most classical symphony instruments, e.g. trumpet, clarinet, viola, etc.
It seems as if the guitar benefits from these qualities:
Am I missing some crucial element? It looks like these attributes are not all present in the drum, trumpet, clarinet, viola, &c., but are all present in the piano, harpsichord, harp, &c. Maybe piano, harp, and harpsichord are all more difficult to learn than the guitar?
That's a good analysis, and the harp and electronic keyboard are both easy instruments to learn. I would add that the guitar also allows for:
To get, e..g, different kinds of E Major sounds on a piano, you have to remember the finger shape for E Major and move it the correct number of spaces up and down the keys. To get that on a guitar, you just move one hand rapidly back and forth, hitting different strings at random. Maybe you occasionally release a finger on your nondominant hand.
Out of the instruments that are usable for both melody/soloing and harmony/accompaniment, the guitar family has the clinching virtues of being cheap and portable. Like keyboard instruments it is also applicable to virtually any genre of music. K/b instruments are more suited to complex material (hence their use in composition), whereas the guitar family allows more expression than instruments that are essentially controlled by switches.
These advantages entail one overriding disadvantage: ever other bugger plays one. So it is proportionally harder to get into a band or college. If you want gigs,play something cumbersome, like drums, double bass or euphonium.