how do you say " (so and so) can play a lot of musical instruments." ?
thanks 
hui4 tan2 hen3 duo1 yue4qi4
會彈很多樂器
But 彈 is not used for all instruments; wouldn’t it be better to say something like so-and-so 會很多樂器?
Also possible. I would still use 彈 as a general term for playing an instrument despite 拉, 吹, 打, etc.
Thinking about it I would probably add 種 as in 很多種
And 演奏 yan3zou4 could also be an alternatively, although it has the connotation of “to perform”
他會[彈/演奏]很多種樂器
For what it’s worth, a quick survey says:
hui4 hen3duo1 yue4qi: 會很多樂器: 214 hits
hui4 tan2 hen3duo1 yue4qi1: 會彈很多樂器: 3 hits
So based on the raw number of Google hits, anyway, “hui4 hen3duo1 yue4qi1” seems to be more popularly used. I would say, though, that either one would be understood – ESPECIALLY if uttered by a foreigner – as people would be more apt to make allowance for us getting that sort of a verb wrong (now if we could only teach them to make allowance for the whole wrong tones thing… 
)
This sort of comparison assumes that 1) both phrases mean the same thing (which IMHO isn’t the case here – I still believe that the Chinese would usually make the distinction between tan2, da3 and all the other verbs used for musical instruments, although in casual speech that might not be the case) and 2) the phrases were put in in quotation marks (i.e., they have to occur exactly that way, not in pieces, on Web pages. Googling a phrase is a very easy way of getting a preliminary idea of what variant is more commonly used – although it’s not foolproof by any means, but you do need to use characters to do it.
Yes, Ironlady, you are right, thanks. I should have given it a try with google before posting.
I did, however, continue to investigate with google, yahoo and a few more alternatives. Most popular on the web is - as has already been pointed out - 會很多樂器 266 google-hits, 64 yahoo-hits compared to 會玩很多樂器 134, 16, 會演奏很多樂器 80, 4, 會彈很多樂器 3, 3 Whether all of these mean the same or not is a different question of course. I think they CAN all mean “can play a lot of instruments.”
As I was slowly getting into it, I started to make some more googling, surprising result, leave out the 很多 and the story looks slightly different:
“會樂器” 649 google hits and 570 yahoo hits incl. some exceptions like 由本"會樂器"工場製造)
“會彈樂器” 377, 44
“會玩樂器” 1330, 209
“會演奏樂器” 3640, 125
“不會樂器” 1650 (sic!), 190
“不會彈樂器” 68, 12
“不會玩樂器” 225, 47
“不會演奏樂器” 2650, 21
I decided to stop at this point before there is no Forumosan left who doesn’t think I am nuts. But what really freaks me out though is the discrepancy between the result of “會樂器” and “不會樂器” in google (649 against 1650). This must be a bug in google.
I’m guessing your language preference isn’t set to Chinese. Putting phrases in quotes in non-Chinese environments does not search for phrases. I don’t know what or why it does what it does.
If you set your language preferences to traditional Chinese, you will get different numbers for your results. For instance, searching for “會樂器” and “不會樂器” will give more sensible numbers (5670 against 1660).
I don’t quite understand your comments, ploor, because it did work for all other phrases.
Anyway 5670 against 1660 is more of a figure I would have expected, thanks. It also proves what ironlady has said a long time ago, that 會樂器 is the most commonly used phrase at least on the web.
Thread closed.