This study aims to shed light on the motivation governing instrument choice. To collect data, we designed, piloted and administered a survey to a population of students enrolled in a music teacher education programme in Sweden. In line with previous, Anglo-centred research, we identify the instrument’s timbre and parental influences as relevant motives for this decision. Uncommonly, however, taking part in a testing session is suggested to have a similarly influential effect. Accordingly, our study supports the value of offering free-to-all sessions where children may try different instruments and openly discuss them with music teachers. Further insights from our results include families exerting more influence than peers, genre preferences bearing little relevance and potential tendencies regarding the influence of gender and socio-economic background for instrument choice. In addition, we uncover several motives that counteract this decision, music provision being the main impediment to pursuing one’s original preference, thereby underscoring the urgency of reducing the Swedish communal schools’ waiting lists for specific instruments. Our results further suggest the presence of mediating factors, including the musician’s starting age, family environment (beyond parents/guardians) and the availability of the instrument at home. This finding opens a new path in the study of instrument choice and challenges the way this topic has been traditionally researched, given that such factors could function as confounding variables in the study of instrument choice.

本研究旨在阐明控制仪器选择的动机。为了收集数据，我们对瑞典音乐教师教育项目的学生群体设计、试点并进行了一项调查。与之前以英语为中心的研究一致，我们将乐器的音色和父母的影响确定为这一决定的相关动机。然而，不常见的是，建议参加测试会议也能产生类似的影响效果。因此，我们的研究支持提供免费课程的价值，让孩子们可以尝试不同的乐器并与音乐老师公开讨论。我们的研究结果进一步表明，家庭比同龄人发挥更大的影响力，流派偏好几乎没有相关性，以及性别和社会经济背景对乐器选择影响的潜在趋势。此外，我们发现了阻碍这一决定的几个动机，音乐供应是追求个人最初偏好的主要障碍，从而强调了减少瑞典公立学校特定乐器等候名单的紧迫性。我们的结果进一步表明中介因素的存在，包括音乐家的起始年龄、家庭环境（超出父母/监护人）以及家里是否有乐器。这一发现为仪器选择的研究开辟了一条新的道路，并挑战了该主题的传统研究方式，因为这些因素可能在仪器选择的研究中充当混杂变量。