Instruments you enjoy playing!!!

jckson

Junior Member
Let's have some time off the regular discussions and have something else to talk about. So, let's talk about music. Music to me is a healing touch after the day's hard work and helps me rejuvenate myself for the next day.

Do you play any instruments? It would be interesting to know about the different instruments that the people here enjoy playing.

I love playing guitar and the keyboard, but I enjoy playing guitar more than the latter one.
 
I just got a Yamaha bass for $80 to try to learn on the side. I am finding it a little difficult without lessons but I am still learning so much on drums that I cannot justify the $$$ for lessons on a Bass at this time.
 
I play guitar, bass, some keyboard. But to relax, at the end of the day an acoustic guitar does the job. Just play "wish you were here". Always does it for me.
 
Good timpani playing can be incredible fun, as well as bells, as long as you have the part down when you're playing. You don't want to know how terrible it can feel when you mess up and can't jump back in for a little bit. >.<
 
Mainly a bass player by trade and a half assed guitar player. Only recently got serious about the drums. I wanted to be a drummer when I was a kid, but they seemed so far out of reach price wise that I went to guitar. It only took 30 years and buying my son his first kit to get me started.
 
I love dabbling with other instruments.

After my sister left home, she left a piano and clarinet around after some abortive learning attempts. I enjoyed messing around with piano and taught myself the first four bars of the Pink Panther theme on clarinet (with many squeaks along the way). A local friend had an alto sax and I worked out how to play the same Pink Panther line on that too :)

I especially enjoy sequencers and drum machines. The learning curve is a drag but once you've climbed the mountain and set things up they are wonderful things. Done lots of with them. I like keyboards generally and agree with Matthias re: piano.

Tried on and off to play guitar for many years but it hurt my fingers and I could never hold the strings down cleanly playing bar chords.

Love bongos and djembes of course. Love to try out timpani but haven't had the chance.

A bassist I played with taught me how to play didgeridoo (but not the circular breathing). Can be a very cool rhythmic instrument - a bit like beat box. I have one at home and occasionally play it and I don't care about the taboo against women playing them, just as I don't care about any archaic gender-based rules.
 
Well of course I enjoy playing the drum kit, but I sometimes muck about with the keys and I have always enjoyed it when my drum teacher brought out the vibraphone (metal keyed mallet purcussion thing).

Also, there is this program called Fruity Loops, you can program a 3 osc synth (Saw, Tri, Sine, Sq waves etc.) and use the computer keyboard like a piano keboard, love messing around with the synth, even though it is a software synth it doesn't matter, works with mathematical formulas just as a real digital synthesizer does.
 
I play guitar better than I play anything else (except drums), bass even less, and every now and then I try singing, but I'm useless. But hey, with practice, who knows?
 
I'd like to learn how to play acoustic guitar... but i'd need a guitar for that. And being a musician unfortunately I know the difference between a 50$ guitar from wal mart and a decent one. I don't have the ambition to be any good, just some basic 'campfire chords' as we call them in the Netherlands.
Oh, and bass. I'd like to learn to play bass too.
 
tape recorders at 8
piano at 11
guitar at 15
bass at 27 (played before, but never had a rig)
synths at 27 (played before, but never had a rig)
drums at 48 (played before, but never had a rig)
 
Piano really gets me going sometimes. I only play so i can play my favorite songs, and when i learn them, i feel so dam good about myself. And I get SOOOOOO into it while im playing a song i just adore.

But of course, drums are my real passion that just gives me a high like no other....
 
What do you mean by complete?

forgive me for jumping in, but i would say it has the widest pitch range (for example: a guitar covers part of the piano keyboard and bass another section etc. but piano covers the most range that i know of).

it plays both chords and melody - simultaneously, even. [harmonica - just chords / clarinet - just single notes / violin - only "implied" chords (a true chord is a triad...three notes, but because of the way the strings of a violin are arched, it's impossible to play more than two notes at a time - so you play the two and add the third note a bit afterwards - not an actual chord, but an "implied" chord)]

so, piano covers the most ground as far as i can tell. the only thing i can think of that it doesn't do is.....bend notes / vibrato.

as a side note, have you ever heard that Billy Joel can play so hard that he used to break PIANO strings on the regular ? that's what he said.
 
Just wanted to come in and give an answer, but I think you quite did it unfunkyfooted.
It's about that, the piano to me is a bit like a one-man orchestra. You can play up to 10 notes at a time, a great pianist can make it sound like even more.
The only thing missing is, as you mentioned, you can't really manipulate tone and sound greatly, in fact the sound is always quite the same. Except if you are a Keith Jarrett or a Esbjörn Svensson (RIP) who sometimes plays the strings directly.
 
Just wanted to come in and give an answer, but I think you quite did it unfunkyfooted.
It's about that, the piano to me is a bit like a one-man orchestra. You can play up to 10 notes at a time, a great pianist can make it sound like even more.
The only thing missing is, as you mentioned, you can't really manipulate tone and sound greatly, in fact the sound is always quite the same. Except if you are a Keith Jarrett or a Esbjörn Svensson (RIP) who sometimes plays the strings directly.

"One Man Orchestra" - yes that's it exactly !!!

on another side note - has anyone heard a projection on how long pianos will continue to be made ? nobody can afford an actual piano for one, but mainly a $300 keyboard has quite realistic piano sounds and is also quite easy to lug around. plug it into the house / church PA and be done with it.
 
really enjoy playing the Djembie, I'm sure it helps the development of chops and musicality.
 
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