Usually, I write here about music I'm listening to. After picking up my guitar for the first time in months, I started thinking about the creative end.
I'd like to know about the instruments you play. I don't care if you are proficient; most people aren't. If playing is a recreational activity for you, if you are able to pick out a tune of some sort or lay down a beat, that's good enough for me.
I am an actively mediocre guitarist, but I will also take credit for the piano. I took lessons for about three years in middle scchool. I don't remember any pieces, but I can still find my way around a keyboard and sheet music if I need to. I am also an awesome air drummer, but all my efforts at translating that to real drums have failed, so I won't claim percussion.
I hope you can see that this is wide open, with only the most modest of criteria. I can't make a poll with every instrument, so there are some general categories to take in some more uncommon instruments. If you choose a group category, I invite you to comment and get specific.
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I play piano, badly and can't read music. What I can do is pick out a simple tune (more or less) after hearing it a couple of times. I put voice as well - though I was much better at that in my teenage years than now - still enjoy singing in private though :)
ReplyDeleteStace
My mother studied the piano at Toronto's music conservatory, so she wanted to teach me from an early age. Of course, being stubborn and independent, I insisted on teaching myself so at age 5 she gave me a tutorial music book and left me to it. I became proficient at a few Beethoven pieces, and pretty much everything in the English Hymnal, as well as one or two Scottish dances. Ten years later, I attempted Real Piano Lessons but I had so many bad habits by then that I couldn't work myself out of them. (I currently own a Casio WK-200 keyboard)
ReplyDeleteI took recorder lessons in elementary school, and they turned into clarinet lessons a few years later. I can still remember the fingering, but I begged my mother to let me give it up because the amount of "puff" required was leaving me dizzy by the end of the hour. (I currently own descant and treble recorders)
I got a guitar for my tenth birthday and again managed to teach myself basic chords and techniques. It's still far from my best instrument, though. (I currently own a classical guitar)
One vacation, we somehow borrowed an accordian from somewhere, and I spent two weeks learning how to play that. I could bang out a simple melody, but never quite got the squeezing technique.
I had access to a glockenspiel for most of my childhood, and that was always fun for those times when the piano seemed too much work.
Another year, we went to Scotland and my mother bought me "junior bagpipes". I'm not sure they were ever seriously intended for actual music - the chanters were non-functional - but I could use them to do a wicked impression of an elephant in pain!
I also had a harmonica which I played around with, again managing simple tunes. That and the kazoo seem like no brainers to me. ;-)
I think that's it for instruments I actually got to have my hands on for an extended period of time. I could never get a sound out of the flute or piccolo, probably because I can't get a sound out of a half-full bottle of beer either. (Yes, when my flute-playing friend Laura came over, we used that test to prove that I was correct in my inability assessment!) I wouldn't mind trying the banjo, and a friend from work has a mandolin that sounds fun. My office mate owns an electric drum set, but I don't think I have the co-ordination for that.
So, yeah. I play. ;-)
I got my first drum, when I was four years old. It was just a cheap kid's drum with a cardboard head. It was also my last drum, because I poked holes in the head with the ends of the drumsticks.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was five, my parents bought an uprite piano, for my older sister to take lessons on. I didn't take lessons, but I did learn how to play chopsticks. We also had a ukulele, but no one in the family knew how to play it.
In the third grade, everyone in our class got a black plastic recorder, and we were taught how to play a few simple songs on it.
In the fourth grade, I took a music class at school, and the school issued me a brand new viola. We gave a little concert for our parents at the school one night, and I was totally lost. After the concert, my teacher confiscated my viola and kicked me out of the orchestra, when saw that I had not only popped a string, but put a deep gouge in the top of my instrument, when I scraped it against the corner of a table while running through the music room.
In high school, I got my first guitar, classical style with nylon strings. I never took lessons, but I learned to play most of the basic chords, and bunch of folk songs. Never could get the hang of bar chording. Later in my twenties, U got a Yamaha twelve string, but eventually gave it up, when I couldn't progress. When I turned fifty I bought a Yamaha six string, and quickly relearned everything I had learned years earlier, but once again, I hit a wall. I finally gave up on it again, because what I was getting out of it, wasn't worth what it was doing to my nails, and fingertips.
Melissa XX
Missing poll option: I'm tone deaf and play nothing! :)
ReplyDeleteGuitar....badly. Like Jenny I don't have a natural gift, and I couldn't sing so I had to work on playing. When I started to learn at 10 I had to practice like crazy, whilst three weeks later (while I was still struggling to make F), others in the class were inventing Jazz scales, diminished chords etc. David Byrne from talking heads describes my style very well....
ReplyDelete"This is a crime against the state, this is the meaning of life, Tune this electric guitar"
(Am, F#m, E, F...if I remember correctly). Claire
@ Jenny -- Yep, I realized about 18 hours after I put it up that a non-musical category would've been useful. Hindsight and all that.
ReplyDelete@ Liz -- You sound like my daughter, who can make music from most anything she picks up. She's a bit more dedicated on the clarinet than you, though.
@ Stace -- I was glad I thought to put voice in here. I love to sing, and do so loudly alone at work in the evenings. My singing is much better than my guitar.
@ Melissa-- If it comes down to nails or guitar, I'd have a tough decision. Best to alternate.
@ Claire -- Always a perfect lyric from you. Glad I wasn't drinking something when I read it, as I got a good laugh.
I'm hoping someone will fess up to playing sitar or marimba or theremin. That's what Exotic is there for.
ReplyDeleteMy first lessons: the recorder, dreadful instrument and teacher.
ReplyDeleteThen piano. My father would like to hear his three sons play a classical tune while he was shaving. My brothers played violin and clarinet so it could have been Mozart but it never happened. Today I would have liked to hear my sons play together more often but this happened only once or twice on our New Years Eve party.
I asked for a guitar as a birthday gift but it turned out to be a ukulele. Darn my economical parents. First I refused to play but later I got the hang of it and tormented their ears in revenge.
In high school I joined a band playing the old piano and was stimulated to play guitar and harmonica too. We were in to the blues you know. Nowadays I still play (sometimes with my eldest) some campfire songs as we call them.
In university I learned to appreciate jazz and started to play trombone (lovely and simple tube with a human voice like sound).
My latest achievement is mandolin. I fell in love with it after hearing the theme from The Last Walz by The band. It took me eventually thirty-three years before I could hold her in my arms. She is a lovely round backed baby but very hard to keep in tune.
Corinna
@Corinna, the Ukele is a fine instrument, if you don't believe me, check out Anarchy in the UKelele and other Rock and Punk classics from the Ukelele Orchestra of great britain, probably on www.ukeleleorchestra.com
ReplyDeleteor something similar
@Claire, yeah now I know but at the time I din't. Later on I discovered its power (playing the blues in B)
ReplyDeleteMy favourite: Tiny Tim's Tiptoe Through the Tulips (See YouTube)
Thank you for the info
Corinna
Latecomer to music. Took up piano at age 40, plateaued after 3 years of lessons, but still manage to find 15 minutes of therapy on the bench daily.
ReplyDeleteWant to be able to play a small handful of Gershwin tunes before being called to the great beyond.
Beatles songbook is tough enough for just now.
I was given a ukelele as a child; still remember 'my dog has fleas' :) and wish sometimes I still had it for the pure fun of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm a reed player; clarinet, sax, oboe. Great therapy, but lousy for performance without accompaniment... hey Petra!
Halle
I played the piano for a time when young. I've got grade 1! But I didn't like practice or my piano teacher. I've got an 'O' level (U.K. 16+ exam)in music but I only did it because I was so useless at languages. It means that I know a little about music theory (chord progressions, cadences etc.) but I still didn't play an instrument.
ReplyDeleteAbout 2 years ago I gave up smoking and was looking to something to keep my hands occupied so I bought a guitar. I was always in awe of the kids at school who could play but never did anything about it.
Now after a couple of years I have found I can play at least well enough to impress myself if not anyone else. I can even play and sing along and I never thought I would be able to do that.
So I gave up smoking, learned the guitar now what was that other thing that's been weighing on my mind since I was younger .... ah yes my gender?
Also I would say any of us using even the most basic PC have sound synthesis hardware that I could only dream of in the 80's. There's loads of free software online that you can mess about with. Try ...
http://www.audio-simulation.com/downloads/DS1Install_R004.exe
Have fun.
Rachel X
I have a machine which pumps out 700 watts of music but I have no idea how music is made.
ReplyDeleteI went to a school which did music and art aversion therapy, they did not want us to waste our time on useless stuff like that!
Parents never played music in the house till I left home!
Can't even sing. Literally tongue tied and can only just lick an ice cream...
Does not help that I tried to use my voice as little as possible once it started to break, now I want to use it...
Sorry, I should read these posts instead of just clicking on the link! Then again, where's my box? Story of my life.
Caroline xxx
I played a radio console really well. Does that count?
ReplyDeleteWas a concert pianist, but burned out. Also a really bad drummer and did some woodwinds.
The talent is there, buried inside somewhere. Now, I need someone to teach me how to play guitar.
Calie xxx
I can play three chords on the guitar and do a really fair cat-in-pain impersonation with my musical saw. I always wanted to be a concert musical saw player...I just don't have the hand strength.
ReplyDelete