Instruments - Do You Play One?

Always had guitars around me, so know a few chords. Nothing Much though.

Also had a crack at the bass, but never really got anywhere with it.

Just about everyone of my closest mates plays a reasonable aMOunt of guitar, and my younger brother's taught a few of them.

I got a digeredoo for xmas, and haven't had much luck with it, but will keep at it....... for a little while longer at least.

As for it improving musical appreciation, yeah, I guess so.

I can't talk so much about it from a playing point, but being able to hear "live" music MOst nights, and knowing how much practice it takes makes me both realise what's going on MOre, and know how it *should* sound.

 

Violinist. Used to be pretty good, then didn't practice properly for a few years :nigel:

 

had guitar lessons when i was young, i was hopeless.
had double bass lessons at upper school, packed it in to spend more time on the computer.
nowadays i whistle, hum and play a mean kazoo.
cheers


julian

 

There were no musical instruments around at home nor have I come into regular contact with muso types, so most of my learning and enthusiasm has always largely been self taught or self motivated.

I always feel a bit bitter when I think back to the lack of peripatetic musical instrument teaching opportunities at the school I went to for the majority of my primary and all of my secondary education. One key incident in particular, in our 4th form year when our music lessons for that entire year were cancelled so that the music teacher could concentrate on giving the school's star music pupil private tuition whilst our form had to do non music related private study in the meantime instead - this turn of events prevented our year from taking the GCSE music exam the next year as we had obviously missed out a whole year's worth of syllabus teaching!

We were taught descant recorder at my first primary school but that didn't last long as I only spent 2 years at that school and that was pretty much the end of that when I moved schools.

At the new school I had flute lessons for two years until the school's main and only music teacher who was providing the lessons left and her replacement wasn't able to teach us so that was that. Never actually took any exams on the flute so not quite sure of my standard, but whilst working in London I participated in a flute group evening class for intermediate/improver level flautists and was told that I was about grade 4 or 5 standard.

Just after finishing university and just before taking up the flute again, I joined a piano evening class group. I've only ever had any experiences of private instrument tuition just more recently, and only went the private route because there were no other opportunities available locally for teaching beginner/intermediate level instrument playing in groups. The group piano lesson evening class was the most fun thing I've ever done as an evening class. Each weekly session of the piano evening class was 2 hours long and there was about 10 of us in the group (out of a possible maximum of 18). Obviously with one-to-one private tuition you'd progress faster and learn more rapidly, but even so I managed to get a few exams under my belt during the 4 years I attended that group. One unique thing we all gained out of the group and something that the tutor and his subsequent successor were both very keen on was the ability to improvise - something which is far easier and a lot more fun and interesting to learn when you do it in a big group rather than as a one-on-one exercise. So yes, the answer to the original question is I consider the piano as my main instrument. One of the stumbling blocks I have, besides the motivation to practice is that of learning new repertoire. Due to eye sight problems, it's not really practical for me to sight read music in real time whilst playing, but if I were to be honest my sight reading is really bad anyway because I've never bothered to get it proficient enough in the past rather than because I can't see to do it properly par se. I think sight reading music would feel more natural had I learnt it at an early age. So even though I've actually taken up to and including the grade 4 exam for piano, I always get by by remembering and playing all the music required for the exam from memory. Unfortunately, my ability to rapidly memorise and replicate a piece of music I'm listening to and be able to play it back on an instrument isn't all that great either. Having said that I do much prefer playing by ear and am certainly not one of those people who are completely and utterly lost unless they have a sheet of music in front of them - that seems very odd to me!

I've also tried having lesson on the guitar and euphonium, but neither lasted long as I found that I just wasn't getting enough practice in each week to make the lesson worth while, again these were evening class activities. So about the only type of instrument I haven't tried my hand at yet is a bowed string instrument. I don't know why, but I reckon strings are about the hardest to get started on IMO, it's the lack of fret markers that makes me think that these instruments must be incredibly hard to play in tune (especially in an ensemble situation), plus the bowing technique must take ages to perfect before you can get any type of musical note out of it!

Never played in a band before as not really been competent enough or had the opportunities to do so in the past. Oh well, one day, better start getting some more practice in I suppose when I get the time!

Listening to other people play and appreciating their skills can be an awesome experience, but being able to make your own music too is satisfying in a different way; it's the self-effacing and self-expressing art of it that is special IMO.

 

Piano- done Grade 8 (Distinction)- now got a digital piano- Roland FP5 which sounds fantastic

Clarinet- done Grade 8 too (Merit)- have a LeBlanc Esprit.

Just done a BA (hons) degree in Music too.

Quite impressed by the number of guitarists here. Messed around with Cubase VST, Cool edit etc but not Sonar or anything like that

 

In the dim and distant past, I have been known to make an infernal racket on one of these:

http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/wasp/

and one of these:

http://www.vintagesynth.org/korg/mini700s.shtml

Also used to experiment a lot back in the late 70s and early 80s with tape loops and the like. Haven't done anything like that for years, keep meaning to start farting around again.

I have no musical training, as is obvious to anyone who's heard me play.

-- Ian

 

Wahey, someone's talking synths!

I bought and sold second hand classic synths in the late 80s early 90s, never had any of the big Moog modulars pass through, but pretty much everything else came and went at some point.

I've owned both the above (many times) and also the Wasp's big brother the Oscar. Quality stuff. The most bleepy fun to pass through my hands ever was the EMS Synthi AKS – forget the keyboard, just play the knobs and joystick! Totally cool. I kept it for some years before moving it on for a huge profit when I was broke. I so regret selling that one…

Classic analogue synths have all really gone to ground now, no bargains to be had anywhere.

Tony.

 

Yep, they're insanely expensive secondhand. Something to do with analogue sounding better...

I like the look of that EMS.

I still love analogue synths, there's nothing better for dark and dirty electronic music. The laptop kids are missing out. Wish I still had a Wasp, it was a great little thing, very good for creating insanely loud total information overload.

-- Ian

 

It was a remarkably versatile little synth – the filter being switchable between low / band / hi-pass, having two oscillators and EGs and good modulation options made it embarrass many expensive synths of the time.

I used one in a crappy synth band back in the very early 80s, the flat touch keyboard was a total twat under stage lighting – I remember a gig where the lighting kept going from right in my face to off all the time; no way did I hit the right notes at that one!

The real downer with the Wasp was its bizarre interface which would only talk to other EDP kit, there was no sane way of sequencing it. I later got a Korg MS20 which had a sizable patch bay so you could plug it up to other things.

Tony.

 

I remember that - that was well out of order and for the school to ALLOW him to basically opt out for a year with no replacement was, quite frankly, taking the piss. At the time I was only into listening to music 'cos I didn't like picking up an instrument and not immediately sounding like Mark King, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon etc! Wish I'd messed around with bass and keyboards back then...

My nephew's learning the euphonium - I tried getting ANYTHING out of it and gave up! Too much :MILD: I guess...

Analog synths RULE! We had a Jupiter 7 at the aforementioned school that needed "tuning up" when cold; I remember Void, the best band at our school, trying to play Relax on it during a gig (must have been 1985, the night the whole of the South West got caught in a blizzard so the next day we were snowed in over the weekend at the school!) and the damn synth just wouldn't stay in tune. I remember the guy (but forget his name!) frantically trying to keep the damn thing in key by using the twiddle pot on the back! He he he...

They did a BLINDING version of dIRE sTRAITS' "The man's so strong" that night though - never forgot that either - seeing the snow starting to come down outside and by the end of the gig, having to stomp through it to get anywhere!