Music If you could learn to play any musical instrument

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The discussion centers on the desire to learn musical instruments, particularly the piano, which is praised for its versatility across genres and emotional depth. Participants express interest in various instruments, including the violin, saxophone, drums, and even unique choices like the theremin and bagpipes. Many share frustrations about time constraints and the challenges of developing skill as adult learners, often feeling self-conscious about starting new instruments later in life. The conversation highlights the importance of early music education and the belief that learning instruments can enrich life. Digital pianos are noted for their accessibility, while some participants reflect on past experiences with music and the desire to explore new instruments. Overall, the thread emphasizes a shared passion for music and the challenges and joys of learning to play.
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I hope to learn to play the piano someday. I love how it can fit into almost any genre of music, and I'm always moved by its fullness of sound and the variety of moods it can create all by itself.

Lacking any constraints (money, time, etc.), what musical instrument would you learn to play and why?
 
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The piano is a good choice, and digital pianos are now finally reaching a standard where they are a reasonable substitute. (I rehearsed the solo part of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with my symphony orchestra last week using my Roland FP-7F digital piano, although I find its sound a little irritatingly muffled at times).

I mainly play the violin (also several other orchestral instruments), which means usually I need to play with other people to get the full effect of any music.

On all my musical instruments, I find it a bit frustrating that the biggest limitation on my playing is that as an amateur with limited free time I do not have the time and patience to develop the strength and speed to play better, so I often end up playing in rather a sketchy way not because I don't know all the notes but because I simply do not have the necessary strength. On special occasions (such as when playing a concerto) I have taken extra time and built up my speed and strength (which also means I can play other works better for a while), but it doesn't last for long unless I keep at it.
 
Yes, piano for sure. It's the most versatile. And, in our times, you can buy electronic keyboards that are inexpensive compare to real pianos, and much smaller hence portable.
 
My voice. If I could sing well, I'd do some musical theater.
 
I must admit that if I had the money and the time then in addition to my current instruments there are several other instruments that would interest me, including the harp.

Or, if you count the "symphony orchestra" as an instrument, I'd certainly like to do more conducting.
 
saxophone
 
Guitar and electric organ/piano, but I'd also like to get (and learn to play) a Mellotron.
 
Bagpipes. I love the soulful sound. Still, I had some practice pipes a while back, and sometimes
I would tell people I was going home to play with my bagpipes, people would smile, as if I was
using a euphemism.
 
I am just now learning to play the radio. :cool:

My hope is to, by this time next year, graduate to "remedial tape-deck".
 
  • #10
I've always wanted to learn how to play the drums but at my age I have no idea how I'd be able to get lessons without it being awkward.
 
  • #11
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If only...

Seriously, I would like to learn piano and saxophone would be a lot of fun.
 
  • #12
WannabeNewton said:
at my age I have no idea how I'd be able to get lessons without it being awkward.
Or breaking your arms? :p

Inasmuch as your profile photo is too dark to be seen, you seem to bear a disturbing resemblance to my niece. You don't happen to be a daffy Cree, do you?
 
  • #13
Jonathan Scott said:
The piano is a good choice, and digital pianos are now finally reaching a standard where they are a reasonable substitute. (I rehearsed the solo part of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with my symphony orchestra last week using my Roland FP-7F digital piano, although I find its sound a little irritatingly muffled at times).

I mainly play the violin (also several other orchestral instruments), which means usually I need to play with other people to get the full effect of any music.

On all my musical instruments, I find it a bit frustrating that the biggest limitation on my playing is that as an amateur with limited free time I do not have the time and patience to develop the strength and speed to play better, so I often end up playing in rather a sketchy way not because I don't know all the notes but because I simply do not have the necessary strength. On special occasions (such as when playing a concerto) I have taken extra time and built up my speed and strength (which also means I can play other works better for a while), but it doesn't last for long unless I keep at it.
Yes, I've come to realize I'll probably never be able to play as well as I'd like, but I hope to reach a point that'll be pleasant to listen to and fun to play. :) I have a great deal of respect for violin players; seems like an extremely difficult instrument to learn.
leroyjenkens said:
My voice. If I could sing well, I'd do some musical theater.
This is a close second on my list. I'd love to develop my voice as well.
WannabeNewton said:
I've always wanted to learn how to play the drums but at my age I have no idea how I'd be able to get lessons without it being awkward.
Most community colleges I've seen have courses geared towards beginners. However, you must also accept that learning any instrument is awkward for most people at first. :) After some time it will start feeling natural. Unless you meant awkward in some other respect (socially, culturally)?
 
  • #14
Danger said:
Inasmuch as your profile photo is too dark to be seen, you seem to bear a disturbing resemblance to my niece. You don't happen to be a daffy Cree, do you?

No I'm a dude haha.

Dembadon said:
Unless you meant awkward in some other respect (socially, culturally)?

Yeah as in there just seems to be a bit of a stigma against people who start learning an instrument from the ground up well past their childhood/very early teens. I would feel too self-conscious as a result whilst learning.
 
  • #15
WannabeNewton said:
No I'm a dude haha.
Oops! Sorry. :oops:

In retrospect, I should have known because you seem to have less facial hair than she does.
 
  • #16
Drums or cello, but today I'd probably choose cello, I really like the sound (I can play the piano and guitar).

WannabeNewton said:
Yeah as in there just seems to be a bit of a stigma against people who start learning an instrument from the ground up well past their childhood/very early teens. I would feel too self-conscious as a result whilst learning.

It's hopefully only in your mind, dude! ;) I can of course only speak for myself, but I have great respect for anyone that tries to learn an instrument, regardless of age. I have tried to learn how to play drums, but I hadn't it quite "in me" and I realized it would take a lot of practice and time, time which I did not have at that moment.

EDIT: By the way, I started learning how to play the guitar at 20. A couple of years later, I was a guitar player in a band.
 
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  • #17
Dembadon said:
I hope to learn to play the piano someday. I love how it can fit into almost any genre of music, and I'm always moved by its fullness of sound and the variety of moods it can create all by itself.
There is another cool thing with piano, it comes with bonuses*; if you learn how to play it, it should be quite easy to learn how to play organs and synthesizers, at least in my experience (and Mellotrons too, I think, hehe).

Astronuc said:
, but I'd also like to get (and learn to play) a Mellotron.
Some Vsti mellotrons in the meantime, maybe? :):
I have tried one or two of these, but I don't remember how they sound...

* EDIT: There's a bonus with guitars too. Switching from guitar to bass is not particularly hard IMO.
 
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  • #18
I wish I could fiddle.

(There you go, Danger, a big fat fastball right over the plate...)
 
  • #19
lisab said:
(There you go, Danger, a big fat fastball right over the plate...)
Thank you, my darling, but I think that I'll just take a walk on it. Given my history here, any mention of rosining up my bow would probably get me banned again. :rolleyes:
 
  • #20
Dembadon said:
Lacking any constraints (money, time, etc.), what musical instrument would you learn to play and why?
The oboe. Why? Have a listen.

 
  • #21
Theremin

592px-Etherwave_Theremin_Kit.jpg
 
  • #23
I already know how to play guitar, when I was 21 I walked into a pawn shop and bought a used squire strat for 100 buck didn't know how to play so I used the left over cash I had working as a clerk at a quicke mart to pay for lessons, I wanted to play finger style like paul simon (think scarbouroh-fair) and electric like jimmy page. I ended up getting a classical teacher taught by someone who learned from andres sagovea so I learned classical, I only learned how to play a few songs but a can learn a new one if need be. I remember getting a violin bow and trying to play like jimmy page on Kashmir, it left rosin all over my fretboard and made a mess but it was fun when I was experimenting. now I got a Jackson with a Floyd rose (a shreaders guitar that I dreamed of when I was starting out.)

I could be a rock star but I don't practice much so I suck, still I can play black dog though. in the next life i'll do everything I ever wanted and be a rock star as well along with my other aspirations, I figure if your half way decent being a rock star is the only job I'd actually want to do (making millions while young) then I can concentrate the rest of my life doing science stuff.
 
  • #24
thankz said:
in the next life i'll do everything I ever wanted and be a rock star
Has it crossed your mind that even if reincarnation existed, rock music probably wouldn't by the time you come back? It might be to that generation what banging sticks on stones is to ours.
 
  • #25
Theremins are really cool. A bit more expensive :), but also cool: Laser harp.
 
  • #26
Speaking of unusual "experimental" instruments/gadgets, I'd also like to mention the EBow, which I personally like (for guitarists):



It produces sounds similar to the sounds of the so-called Infinite Guitar.
 
  • #27
Piano or guitar... leaning more towards piano. I am apathetic towards getting lessons though. I've played drums most of my life and they have been too fun for me to want to start all over again on another instrument.
 
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  • #28
I have no interest in creating music, but I really should learn the bagpipes just to scare the hell out of my neighbours as my Highlander ancestors intended.
 
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  • #29
Tuba players seem to have fun:

51B22533WYL.jpg
 
  • #30
jtbell said:
Tuba players seem to have fun
And hernias. :rolleyes:
 
  • #31
I'd like the piano and also my voice...
 
  • #32
JOJO1985 said:
I'd like the piano and also my voice...

Is fantastic ?:cool:...Welcome to PF:)
 
  • #33
Definitely the Sitar. But the Persian sitar...not the Indian one.

Check out this dude:

 
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  • #34
David Carroll said:
Definitely the Sitar. But the Persian sitar...not the Indian one.

Check out this dude:


Amazing how things can captivate ones mind, I couldn't stop it:), but I did keep thinking about Stevie Ray Vaughn:D
 
  • #35
Stevie Ray Vaughan was clearly influenced by the South Asian population in Dallas.:)

My first time visiting Dallas, I was driving from Upstate New York. As I was approaching Fort Worth, I was flipping through the radio stations and found an Indian radio station playing classical Indian music (not sure if it was Ravi Shankar or not). But anyway...that was my first impression of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area.
 
  • #36
How about the Lute?

 
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  • #37
Yes, the Lute!
 
  • #38
dlgoff said:
How about the Lute?


David Carroll only locked me in for 27 minutes, my afternoon has now gone to a couple of screwdrivers and two hours of slack-jawed listening :cool:
 
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  • #39
RonL said:
David Carroll only locked me in for 27 minutes, my afternoon has now gone to a couple of screwdrivers and two hours of slack-jawed listening :cool:
Glad I could be of help. :D
 
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  • #40
dlgoff said:
Glad I could be of help. :D
I gave you a like, but my wife's not so happy:eek:
 
  • #41
I play traditional ottoman turkish musical instruments:
ney, tanbur, kemençe, ud, kanun, lavta, rebab
and some western instruments in turkish style:
chello, violin, flute, guitar, clarinet ! :)
 
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  • #42
RonL said:
I gave you a like, but my wife's not so happy:eek:
Well, promise her this after you're done with the Lute.

 
  • #43
I've been playing the guitar for close to 15 years, and perform live in electric and acoustic acts, but I'm not really all that good at it, even though I've put a lot off effort into being good. I basically play background rhythm chord progressions with an occasion riff or simple solo, and I only get away with it because the other guitarist(s) in my band are really good, and can cover for me if I screw up. Sometimes I'll do one or two solo performances in an acoustic act and it's always an anxious performance. I also have a keyboard which I use to write songs and set up rhythms and beats to record on my old school Tascam. But I'd never dream of playing the keys live, the learning curve is too high there, so I abandoned that a long time ago.

The problem is I started too late. From my experience, if you wait until after middle school (even high school may be too late), then your musical learning and expression is relationally interpretive rather than organic. What do I man by that? Well, it's kind of like learning to speak a new language later in life where you may hear a sentence and then have to mentally convert the foreign sentence into English (or whatever your native tongue is), rather than just "understanding" it on the fly. Or vice-versa trying to formulate a foreign sentence by mentally translating it from one language to another. Gerald Edelman spoke of these as primary versus secondary "repertoires" in his book Neural Darwinism, whereby the primary repertoires are ones that are "hard wired" in pre-adolescence (4-12), or what Piaget refers to as the pre-operational/concrete operational phases of development. Secondary repertoires are those that develop after this critical period, and that for the most part have to work around the primary ones.

In light of that, I love my parents but if there was one thing I would change about my childhood is that I would have wished I were forced to take music lessons from as early in life as possible. And specifically a harmony instrument, such as the guitar or piano. I remember learning the recorder in middle school or something, I think it was mandatory for school or my mom wanted me to learn an instrument and picked that one for whatever reason, I don't remember, but that didn't do much. You need to learn a harmony instrument and feel the relationship of the chords and the scales. So, if I ever do have kids one day, they are going to get a military regimen of schooling in both the guitar and piano. Once they turn 18, if they never want to play an instrument again, that's their choice, but I can't think of giving your children anything better than the gift of music.
 
  • #44
I've also heard that if you cannot roll your 'r's by the time you're around 12, you'll never be able to do it. I would roll my 'r's as a young child because my sister taught me how, but if that never happened, I'd basically be forever handicapped to the vast majority of the world's languages.

I took German in High School, and it took me forever to master the backthroated 'r's. To this day, I think that's an annoying sound, so I hate pronouncing a lot of German, French, and Hebrew words. But other languages are no problem.

By the way, did you know that there are only three languages in the world that has the retroflex "r" sound that English has? English, Mandarin, and some obscure language in Botswana.
 
  • #45
David Carroll said:
I've also heard that if you cannot roll your 'r's by the time you're around 12, you'll never be able to do it. I would roll my 'r's as a young child because my sister taught me how, but if that never happened, I'd basically be forever handicapped to the vast majority of the world's languages.

I took German in High School, and it took me forever to master the backthroated 'r's. To this day, I think that's an annoying sound, so I hate pronouncing a lot of German, French, and Hebrew words. But other languages are no problem.

By the way, did you know that there are only three languages in the world that has the retroflex "r" sound that English has? English, Mandarin, and some obscure language in Botswana.
It was so disappointing when "ladies number one detective agency" did not get renewed for more episodes:L the show was based on life in Botswana, so much fun to hear the sound of spoken dialog.:)
 
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  • #46
Thanks guys for such a wonderful wasted afternoon, anything I could have done today can likely be done tomorrow or the next day (the beauty of being retired:)).:D
I used to go out and hear Stevie when he was just getting started, I think he might have had to pay the bar owners to perform, it was so tragic his life was cut short.:(
 
  • #47
I play piano and violin reasonably well, but I'd really like to play organ. Unfortunately, while the university I go to does have a music department, they got rid of the Yamaha Electones they had in a practice lab, and while there is a church that offers lessons it's only to play religious music as a church organist rather than any sort of general skillset, and I can't stand religious music. The other problem is that there isn't a whole lot of new repertoire (Final Fantasy 6 notwithstanding).

I did, however, build a rank of pedals to use with my keyboard, but it's still not the same.
 
  • #48
neyzentanburi said:
I play traditional ottoman turkish musical instruments:
ney, tanbur, kemençe, ud, kanun, lavta, rebab
and some western instruments in turkish style:
chello, violin, flute, guitar, clarinet ! :)
You really sound gifted oo)
 
  • #49
jack476 said:
I play piano and violin reasonably well, but I'd really like to play organ. Unfortunately, while the university I go to does have a music department, they got rid of the Yamaha Electones they had in a practice lab, and while there is a church that offers lessons it's only to play religious music as a church organist rather than any sort of general skillset, and I can't stand religious music. The other problem is that there isn't a whole lot of new repertoire (Final Fantasy 6 notwithstanding).

I did, however, build a rank of pedals to use with my keyboard, but it's still not the same.


What a quandary:confused:, after 3-1/2 hours of music that I know I like, this left me bewildered:rolleyes: won't say I didn't like it and can't say I did. Do you have an explanation of how it is intended to move the listener ? what mood or setting does it fit ?:)
 
  • #50
RonL said:
What a quandary:confused:, after 3-1/2 hours of music that I know I like, this left me bewildered:rolleyes: won't say I didn't like it and can't say I did. Do you have an explanation of how it is intended to move the listener ? what mood or setting does it fit ?:)

I kind of like it, it feels like an uptight and anxious abstraction of Pink Floyd's "Atom heart mother." I love almost anything with organs in it.
 

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