Musical instruments

Benjamin [inactive] · Musical instruments

So who here plays (a) musical instrument(s)? If so, what?

My main instrument is the clarinet, which I current play in the Birmingham Schools' Wind Orchestra and for which I tend to take Grade 8 (ABRSM — this exam board is somewhat international, although I don't know to what extent it's actually used outside of the UK). I also play the piano (although rather badly) and intend to start teaching myself the recorder next year.

Shouga

I play the piano, have played it for nine years as of now! I am currently doing grade 7 ABRSM (my teacher keeps putting the date forward as I have many exams at the moment and, because I have also started to learn the viola, I have had to concentrate on that lately), but I am a higher standard than Grade 6, as I can sightread Grade 6 pieces quite easily.

I also play viola, as mentioned above. I have played it for one and a half years, but in all honesty, only properly for six months, as I barely played it at all in the first year of having the viola! Nevertheless, I took my grade 3 this December, and passed it.

I play the guitar too, which I have played for two and a half years - although even more irregularly than I play the viola! If I were to count up the days that I have actually played guitar on, they would only come up to about two or three months. Chords are easy for me, and I can read simple tab, but obviously I am not very good at the guitar, and haven't picked it up in about a month!

Deborah

I don't play anything now, but I played 'cello from the third grade until I graduated from high school. The third grade was when you could start taking free lessons in public schools in those days. I took private lessons for a year when I was about 12-13, but the teacher eventually told my mother that she was wasting her money, as I obviously wasn't interested in playing the 'cello (I virtually never practiced) and was only interested in ballet. So the private lessons stopped, but my mother insisted I stay in the orchestra at school until I graduated.

I enjoyed playing in the orchestra (at the time, it was one of the top high school orchestras in the state), except for playing solos -- that made my innards turn to water. Having to perform "The Swan" in "Le Carnaval des Animaux" was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life! I had managed to get promoted to first chair by virtue of a having fair amount of natural ability, and I was immensely relieved when a much better 'cellist finally came along who took over first chair.

The only other instrument I played was the Egyptian tabla (a drum with a fish-skin head) for a couple of years when I was studying bellydancing. I haven't played it in years, but it's beautifully inlaid and makes a nice decoration for the apartment.

Click here to hear the sound of an Egyptian tabla (aka doumbek or darbukka in other parts of the Middle East) and other drums, played by Vince Delgado, one of the best drummers in the SF Bay Area.

Loic

I play the electone, or rather, I attended electone classes from 6 until 19 without any visible manifestations of talent or aptitude. I subscribed to the AMEB (Australian Music Examination Board) standard.

In Singapore, piano exams are invariably conducted by the ABRSM with Guildhall taking a smaller slice of the pie. It's like the gold standard as far as piano is concerned. Many of my friends are grade 8 players.

For those who play an instrument, what does your practical exams comprise of? For mine, my bete noire has to be improvisation where a candidate is given a piece and we're given 15 minutes to come up with an introduction as well as to improvise the little ditty that is before us. I was horribly bad at it. I am not really able to read a score sheet well and this puts me at a severe disadvantage where I have to guess if the tune is a march or a jazz or a swing or a waltz, all of which require different chord combinations in making an intro.

My best component has to be sightplaying and of course, the practical pieces where you get to select 7 songs of an appropriate level to perform for the examiner. That's what usually saved my hide.

Shouga

Loic

Right. Scales and the number of sharps and flats, harmonic or not, especially with those minor chords, drive me up the wall.

Daniel

I play the violin (or the fiddle if folk music is played) and have been doing so for 12 years now.

I play mostly traditional folk music of both Scotland and Ireland, and occasionally Central and Eastern European too.

I sometimes play classical but I prefer folk music.

Pauline

I can play some things on the piano, but not many. I didn't leanr those things you've written about, or made exams. I would like to learn the piano ; it's a beautiful instrument. Also, I like string instruments for exemple violin, viola, cello and also saxophone is very nice.

Shouga

David

I am a saxophonist and I also play the bagpipes.

Loic

To those who play a musical instrument, how often do you practise?

For me, I only practise at the eve of the exams. I just can't be arsed to do so on normal days and a lack of practice shows whenever guests come over and I am asked to do a little performance. Errors'd inevitably crop up and it is only with the stiffest poker face I carry that convince my audience that all is well.

Shouga

I practice a lot. Even if I can't be bothered to play scales or learn an exam song, I sit down at the piano nearly every day and play at least something, whether it be just perfecting a well-learnt piece, or sightreading something new.
Other instruments I do not practice so much.

Loic

You are either very self-disciplined or you are really passionate about what you do.

How old were you when you started to play the piano? Have you heard of the Suzuki method?

Shouga

I started formal instruction when I was six, although I had a piano before then. And yup, I'm familiar with the Suzuki method.

Loic

Ahh..the same age as I did! Were you even able to reach the pedals back then when you were sitting down? I couldn't and I had to stand and play until I was about 8, I guess.

Ahem....you are speaking to a failed experimental unit of the famous Suzuki method here. It was postulated that young children could be taught to develop aural abilities from a young age, but I am still pretty much as tone deaf as a deaf adder.

Benjamin [inactive]

I spend seven hours a week doing an organised musical activity (orchestra, wind band, clarinet ensemble, clarinet lesson etc.), and then I will usually do 2-3 hours a week of individual practice, mainly my Grade 8 exam pieces which I seem to have been practicing since forever now.

Shouga

Harrenys Targaryen

I started violin at Grade 5, or when I was ten, and played in the school orchestra for seven years until I had to acknowledge that perhaps this was not the instrument for me.

I've since moved on to piano, which, in a span of a season, has brought me more joy than dozens of months of violin. (I still fiddle, but only on family occasions.)

I'd like to learn electric guitar next...

David

During the summer, I practice sax about 4hrs/day.

During the school year, about 1 hr/day.

Daniel

I used to practise up to 3 hours a day.

But now thanks to the hectic schedule, I now only practise/play at least 8 hours a week.

I have two violins. One the violin (for classical music) and the other the fiddle (for folk - Scottish in particular - music).

Why do I have two violins and what really is the difference between both?

There's no difference. The model and the shape are identical, the only difference is the name. But in folk music, Scottish particularly, the scordatura tuning is often altered - for example, certain pieces of Scottish folk tunes require the scordatura tuning to be attuned to AEAE, ADAE or AEAC sharp, whereas the normal tuning is GDAE. In order words, the G string is raised to A and the D string is raised to E if AEAE scordatura tuning is required, and so on.

Not only that but also the bridge of the fiddle tends to be less curved than that of a classical violin to allow for double or even treble stops to be played simultaneously.

Some Scottish folk fiddlers carry two fiddles (one that is used for scordatura tunings and another without), such as me, because scordatura tunings take a lot of time.

Double (and occasionally treble) stops are very common in Scottish folk music, especially in the Shetlands, because they reflect the Hardanger fiddle of Norway (which has five sympathetic strings below the regular strings that resonate when a tune is played on the upper strings). Remember, the Shetlands were a Norwegian stronghold until a few centuries ago when the islands became part of Scotland, and the distinctive Nordic music survive to this day.

Personally, I love playing double stops because they sound heavy, beautiful and haunting.

Shouga

You must be very good Daniel. How long have you been playing for? What standard would you consider yourself to be?

Daniel

Shouga

Pauline

Shouga

I think the viola can be happy! I play it, and because I'm bad at it, it sounds neither happy nor sad at the moment, but the viola can definately sound happy if you're good at it.

I don't think you need to have a different string for a violin just because that string is raised. It's like guitar; you just tune the note a tone higher. Then again, I may be wrong. I've never played folk violin before; I'm just going by my experiences on viola and guitar.

Uriel

I've never played an instrument, and the few times I tried taking lessons on one or another, it became pretty apparent to me that I had neiother the aptitude nor the interest. I'm completely musically disinclined.

As for classical music: Never liked it. Ever. Just can't get into it. Once upon a time, in a drawing class, somebody with highbrow tastes put it on for the entire two and a half hours ... I guess they were thinking artists would have more refined tastes in such things, but I was thinking, Just kill me now...

Shouga

How come you don't like classical?
A lot of students from my school have 'Bebo' homepages, and under the 'Music' category, most of them say 'I like anything but classical!'. I think it's more of a case that they've never actually listened to classical, more than the case that they actually hate it...

Loic

Classical pieces, in my opinion, are often rather challenging to play. I usually need my teacher to guide me through a classical piece - I am never able to sightread on my own well enough.

Well Uriel, I think everyone is musically inclined to a certain degree. You can sing, surely.

Deborah

Uriel

Sing? Me? Not very well, actually. One of my friends who was a music major in college always complained that I was slightly off-key. And given that my half-sister has taken voice lessons for years, I know what real singing is supposed to sound like -- and it ain't what I'm doing in the shower!

Why do I dislike classical music? That's a very good question, and I don't know that I can answer it. (Why does anybody like or dislike anything?) I find it boring much of the time, and too complicated to follow the basic melody ... which often isn't that catchy anyway. I've just never been able to get into it or appreciate what it is trying to achieve, I guess. As something to concentrate on, I just don't have the patience or the inclination. As background music, it grates on my nerves.

Loic

Deborah: True, there are people who are worse than the deaf adder but girls usually have a very pleasant and melodic quality to their voices that I enjoy hearing. I think women are naturally disposed to solfege - how else can a mother instinctively coo and hum to her child?

Deborah

I'm the opposite -- I sing on key but my tone quality leaves much to be desired. I usually limit my vocal expression to humming, at least in public.

Uriel

Not sure humming is instinctive.

And given the bewildering variety of what passes for music around the world in so many different cultures, I doubt whatever our australopithecine forebears did to quiet their kids down would have passed for humming -- at least, humming as we know it!

Daniel

Pauline

Daniel

No, it was a normal school. There were 1,200 students and they were all hearing. Only 8 students were deaf, like me.

Walker

When I was a kid you could start out with either the mandolin or the recorder. I, like most kids, chose the latter instrument. I played it for a year after which time I started playing the baritone. That was in 4th grade. Like most other baritone players I switched to the euphonium after a few years. The euphonium is basically the same instrument as the baritone but larger. I played in four different orchestras/bands (as you get better you move up the orchestra ladder). I liked playing in an orchestra but there were hardly ever any people in it that I particularly liked. Our repertoire was pretty varied; we played marches and various other kinds of compositions like some popular music and film music. I was never that good at practicing what I was supposed to practice. I often found much more joy in playing stuff I'd heard and learned by heart without notes. I remember that Slave Children's Crusade from Indiana Jones - The Temple of Doom was one of the favorites. However, after I'd finished my first year of High School I decided I'd had enough and quit after seven years of playing the baritone/euphonium.

*sigh*

Something that always fascinated me in the orchestra was the drums, and especially the drum solos that the percussionists played inbetween marches. We, the orchestra, took part in Swedish Tattoo (big music event) one year and the Swedish Army Music Corp was there, and let me tell you, those guys knew what they were doing. Damn... So, after I'd quit the euphonium I started playing the drums which I continued doing during my last two years of High School. Since High School I've played in one or two bands but as of now I don't play at all, unfortunately. That doesn't mean I won't play again, though. I own a beautiful drumset that's at my parents' house where it's waiting. I take some silent pride in having been called "a living metrotone" by two people who've never met each other.
I still pick up the recorder sometimes when I'm at my parents' house. I can't play it very well, but hey, it's fun. It's actually a quite beautiful instrument.

My first instrument is the drums. After that comes the bass (electrical), and on third place is the guitar. When I lived at home with my parents I used to play the piano sometimes and I learned a few pieces, but by now I've forgotten most of them. When I visit my grandmother she always insists that I play something on the piano from a song book, even though I can't play by notes just like that.
Then of course there is my singing voice. My father says I could make a career out of it. But I've never seriously considered it myself.

Pauline

I'm fed up today because i was practising the piano, during about 1/2 huor but then it told me that it's sufficient, because it was fed up that I played it!!! That when my father play piano it's okay, anywya it was telling so much of this osrt of complaining that it (the piano) wanted that we will leave it alone, it was annoying. i knwo that a piano dioesn't talk, of course, and the voice was from inside the piano underneath the keyboard so I tried to open this part. evidently there was a person who was hiding in the piano to watch and then pretend that he's the piano who's talking. during I was trying to open the piano (what's impossible I think, as it's wood, and under the keyboard there isn't a way for open it). Then someone told that it was the TV telling me those things. i checked the TV and my sister was watching, so possibly those people said those things. i got out the electric plug of the TV, despite of my sister was very annoyed but this was a necessity. So, it's a mystery what happedn. I would like to play piano but trluy i don't like such complictions as then it's not possible to be clm. Myebe I will leave the piano some days adn play it next week. (don't tell me the piano can't talk pleas, I know this, and if yuou have crfeuly read what I wrote you will notice that i put htis fact. )