1: Acoustic guitar, any keyboard, any drum machine. I'm not picky when it comes to getting down ideas
2: I firmly believe there is something essential happening at any given moment, you just need to find it. But right now I think it's pretty strong within electronic music.
3: Artists need to be able to live from their craft, and unless they have the ability to play live or dj, its had for them to get by. It's also why we've lost a certain strain of guitar based music over the last decade.. I remember when really strange bands were getting decent record deals which you don't see much of these days.