Musical Instruments
 

I've been wondering for a while, how many of us on this forum are musical?

I play the flute and saxophone

On my flute I'm learning the Claude Bolling suite (My favorite movement) , and Badinerie from Bach's Orchestral suite in B minor (a fairly good recording)

I'm nowhere near as good on my saxophone, as I never practice on it.

I play big flutes, though, and this is my claim to fame.

I play the Bass Flute,
http://www.woodbrass.com/images/wood...A+YFL-B441.jpg

And the Contrabass, link
http://home.kpn.nl/jelinbama/images/contra/image007.png

The Contra, as we large flautists shorten the name to, is a wonderful instrument. I play one similar to the one in the photo (the one in the photo has a quatertone system!). I don't own it, but the teacher who dose was kind enough to lend it to me for a week.

How musically trained are the rest of you?

i'm super musical, just came out of a audio technician course. intend to do composition and sonic arts next

so at the moment: very amateur composer, competent sound engineer. percussive/fingerstyle guitarist. electronic music dude with heaps of uber leet 8bit music gear. basically all around awesome dewd.

No, I think you'll find I'm a very amatuer composer. Been doing composition at school for nearly a year now...

I play the sax (alto and tenor), the guitar (and bass) and the piano/other keys. I do a bit on the drums, but I'm not very good. I tend to stay away from MIDI technology, as the sound doesn't appeal to me. I have absolutely no decent recording software, as I prefer to play live. As much as I'd love to compose a complicated piece that can't be easily reproduced live, I'm just not a competent enough composer. I'll have one idea, and ten minutes later, I'll think it's shit.

I enjoy mainly to play covers. I don't compose often, and when I do, it's not so great (I did an avant-jazz piece once, which was great by my standards, but I've sadly lost the recording). Playing around with the way other people's music is played is more my kind of thing. That and sticking a first-wave ska-esque horn and rhythm section in less complicated music to create a novelty recording.

Mainly bass guitar. I fiddle around with various string instruments, like the Mandolin, Banjo, and Ukulele. I also have messed around with Reason and composed a few songs but they're boring techno shit and I need to get gooder.

I used to play the flute. I don't think I can anymore, as I wasn't very good at getting the flute to actually make noise, and I didn't enjoy it very much. I don't play guitar, but I can play improvised crap on one. I can play piano, I'm just awful with it, and I usually don't.

I love MIDI. I'm just not all that good at it. I haven't really got an ear for music, but every now and then, I come up with something worthwhile. Usually they're about... 20-50 seconds long. After that, I get a sort of fear of adding to it, thinking I might screw up the rest, or make it unworthy of the first bit.

know a couple of tunes on the piano, but then again almost everyone does. grandparents taught me.

for the record; not bloody twinkle twinkle little star or any of that crap either.

I'm a very very very poor violin player.

I'm learning Alto Sax at school, currently at Grade 3, hoping to get higher soon. I've stopped going to lessons because I need to focus on work and shit, which sucks a lot.

Charlie Parker. That's who you'd like if you don't already know him. I assume you will, anyway.

Like lightning on that sax, he was.

I´ve been on-and-off piano lessons since I was 9, played Euphonium for around six years, and am currently learning trombone, which I´ve played for about a year and a half. About a year ago, I briefly took up cello but had to abandon it due to miscommunication and the cost of the instrument and learning it, mainly the miscommunication part though. I also sing too and took lessons for about a year, but haven´t really sung much for the past few months. While I´m still in Peru, I should probably take advantage of the indigenous instruments like Cajón and Zampoña. I´ve had other brief stints with trying to learn other instruments in my life, and I´d love to seriously take up more as I get older.

I compose as well, though I´m not nearly as productive as I´d like to be.

Cool, you play low flutes. :D

I´ve played an arrangement of Sentimentale for solo flute and concert band in my town´s community band. It´s nice to find the original piece.

I can badly play the keyboard.

Quite good at Violin and Banjo. I also dabble in Bass Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Accordion and Keyboard.

Post you playing the banjo. I'm sure we would all LOVE to give our opinion on that.

No really, I have never heard much of the banjo.

Must...resist....temptation....

I own a Ukelele.

I fiddle with it once in a while.

That's violins, doofus.

Fiddle in the sense that you'd fiddle with junk laying around your desk absentmindedly.

I would say JOKE but it usually turns out to be a double bluff.

I play the keyboards (approximately 10 years) and the guitar (about 6 years-ish?). Very run-of-the-mill instruments I know, but keyboards are awesome.

I'm also into a bit of composition and recording, I would love to do a course in audio engineering but there's no way I can do it without leaving my job and moving to another city :( So I'm really just an amateur at the whole recording thing :p

I compose.
I can't play for shit. Attempting to learn clarinet, so I can then move onto bass clarinet.
Most people will tell me how its an impossibility for a composer to be poor player, but Gabe can vouch for me in saying I'm not a terrible composer (he is though http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs50/f/20...tarchitect.png)

I'm a huge fan of the weird instruments, or playing traditional instruments in a weird way (see instrument/video I posted in blog). I love deep instruments, bassoon, contrabassoon, bass clarinet, tubax, bass trombone. I also love mallet instruments, marimbas, balaphons, metallophones. Crotales also rule.

As of right now I'm a budding musician trying to find a voice. I take elements from all kinds of contemporary composers (particularly Elfman, Schyman, Beltrami, Taylor). I try desperately to avoid resorting to the usual motifs you hear in music today, and want desperately to create my own motifs that make me identifiable as a composer. I think my use of basso instruments helps in that department.

And Gabe, don't even TRY to say Jay Easton beat me to it. I will rape you while wearing a clown costume, I swear.

I just like to use Cellos and Basses to turn the bow into a projectile weapon.

Dammit Justin! How come you get a cool psychedelic avatar and your own title?

*sobs*

Do you know what I had to do to get all of this?

Things.

No, but Vinny Golia sure did. :tard:

Strangely enough I don't like his work that much.
Usually I'm a sucker for the low stuff, but for the most part I'm only annoyed by his work.

I can plonk arround on the piano a bit. well 've been doing it for four years. Also I can also pluck my twanger.

i am starting to learn how to play a keyboard ( i have an old crappy one) but nothing would thrill me more than to learn ELECTRIC GUITAR!!!!
but since we r cheap , after school i'll be going to a "Guitar Lesson" , hopefully i'll learn electric there.

If you want to learn metal or some other form of rock,(which I expect you will, as that's what most people I know learnt it for - pardon if I'm wrong), it's piss easy, so you'll have no bother. On top of that, people think you're great if you can play it, so you get praise for playing endless fifth chords. You'll love it.

What a cuntish non-guitarist thing to say. OOH LOOK YOU KNOW WHAT AN INTERVAL IS*


*BUT NOT IT'S TECHNICAL GUITAR TERM, the "POWER CHORD"

Just thought I'd say, even though there are a lot of rock/metal songs that have the "endless fifth chords" (or power chords as Leto pointed out), I play electric guitar, and while I am into my rock and metal I also do a fair bit of jazz, classical, reggae, etc, and I know from experience that some of the metal is actually just as technical and challenging as the other types of music. So don't knock it before you try it! :p Though I would say reggae is probably one of the easier styles I've played, but again I'm sure there are difficult reggae pieces as well.

I think just having sound knowledge of music theory and a good ear for music is more important than being able to play an instrument when it comes to composition. Especially now with things like MIDI where you can just enter your notes into a program and hear it played back to you instantly.
And if we all had to be able to play the instruments before we could compose, would that mean we'd have to be able to play every instrument in the orchestra before we could compose music for it? :confused:

I have tried it, I found it easy, I didn't enjoy it, and I have knocked it. All I am saying is that it is easy to become popular with your friends and other people you know who don't know how to play by being able to play fifth chords. I never said "all rock guitarists are shit".

Regarding Leto's comment, I understand that the fifth chord is most often referred to as the "power chord", but, for reasons unknown, and as pretentious as it may be, I much prefer to use the term "fifth chord".

I've always been of the opinion that music doesn't need to be technically impressive. Remember when you were a kid, and you would hear music, but you didn't know what the instruments were or hard it would be to play a certain piece? You just enjoyed music for the music. Not because it was difficult to play.

yes.

my mate gets like that. i suspect he likes ACDC mainly for the talent of Angus Young, i don't mind them myself, but my opinion has nothing to do with the skill of the musicians. then he got into another band that consisted of long-haired, big-headed, pretentious 'cunts' as i like to call them, and i hadn't even heard of them. personally i found the music to be shit; 10 minute electric guitar battles between two band members that apparently had broken records for simply playing the guitar 'really fast'. not my thing.

Oh come off it, Dragonforce aren't that bad.

True, but I also think in addition to 'technically impressive' that real musicians don't need pyrotechnics, lasers, and smoke machines to enhance their performance.

Oh, I agree that it is easy to just play fifth chords and impress people who don't play guitar, I just wanted to point out that learning rock/metal doesn't necessarily mean that's all you want to do.

I guess I sort of enjoy music on two different levels, I do really enjoy just listening to music that has a good melody, catchy tune etc. And that's really the important part, because if it doesn't actually sound good then I'm not really interested in the technical side of it :p But if it does sound good, I'm the type of person that really likes to get into it and that's when I quite enjoy finding all the technical bits of it, like interesting rhythms, style changes, etc. The interesting thing though, is how a lot of really cool parts of songs that are also very catchy are not actually that hard to play.

I'm not saying that music shouldn't be enjoyed on a technical level. I just don't think that it's the only criteria to judge music by. The Beatles had songs that contained only one chord, and those songs were fucking amazing.

No, quality always takes precedent over quantity. The works of Satie and Arvo Part are great examples of the power of simplicity. However, while creativity and knowledge of theory is obviously necessary to compose good music, it certainly helps if you know the instruments you're composing for. My friend asked me to play a piece he wrote for piano, and it just didn't feel right, and he's not a pianist. I'm far from being a fine pianist myself, but I've played enough to know that Bach and Mozart knew their shit when they wrote for piano (or harpsichord, perhaps).