Yah, when I was learning guitar, I did practice. I practiced scales, I practiced changing from chord to chord, and even though strumming mostly came pretty naturally, I practiced various strumming techniques as well.
So it probably is a level-of-proficiency thing ... bass guitar and mandolin are so close to guitar that most of my guitar proficiency carried over, whereas clarinet is different enough from recorder and oud is different enough from guitar that with those instruments I merely had a head start.
Then there's the Appalachian dulcimer, which isn't very guitar-like in general, but comes very close to one particular guitar technique I'd already learned or something. For some reason the different left-hand position didn't slow me down at all.
(no subject)
So it probably is a level-of-proficiency thing ... bass guitar and mandolin are so close to guitar that most of my guitar proficiency carried over, whereas clarinet is different enough from recorder and oud is different enough from guitar that with those instruments I merely had a head start.
Then there's the Appalachian dulcimer, which isn't very guitar-like in general, but comes very close to one particular guitar technique I'd already learned or something. For some reason the different left-hand position didn't slow me down at all.