What instrument to play? Part 2
12 June 2007Getting back to our discussion of choosing the instrument that is right for you or your child… As I mentioned before, learning the piano is very valuable, but let’s face it, not everyone will be able to take piano lessons.
To begin with, you need a piano, and pianos are big and expensive. There are portable keyboards for much less money, but most of them don’t have 88 notes and the feel of the keys is a long ways away from the feel of a piano. The feel is important because of the expressive nature of playing loudly or softly on the piano. After all, the real name of a piano is a pianofortissimo. In Italian, piano means soft, and fortissimo means loud. I’ll talk about the history of the piano in another post. The point for now is that a keyboard does not really meet the demands of learning the piano because of the lack of expression in a keyboard. If you or your child decide to learn piano, then you must get them a piano. This could be a grand piano, an upright piano, or a digital piano. We will talk more about each of these choices in a later post.
Secondly, some will not have any interest at all in a piano or keyboard instrument. Choosing the instrument that is right for you or your child means finding the one that you have a liking for.
If your child is thinking about taking band or orchestra in school, or if you have an opportunity to do this yourself, there are many instruments to choose from.
When it comes to band, there exists the choice of learning woodwind or brass wind instruments, or even percussion instruments. There are two main categories of wind instruments: woodwinds and brass. Woodwinds include instruments such as clarinet, oboe, saxophone, flute, and piccolo. Brass winds include instruments such as trumpet, coronet, trombone, baritone, and sousaphone. Percussion instruments include instruments such as marching drums, bass drum, snare drum, kettle drums, or more correctly called timpani, xylophone, tubular bells, chimes, and cymbals. Your choice should be based first, on your interest, and second, your abilities.
Some instruments are easier to learn than others, but you must have a personal liking to the instrument you choose. For example if you don’t like the sound of a clarinet, then you should not attempt to learn it. In this instance, maybe a saxophone would be a better choice. In school bands or orchestras, the music director has needs to fill to create his band or orchestra. Sometimes, he or she will ask a student to play a particular instrument based on the school’s need. You should be prepared to be flexible in that situation, or you will need to switch to another program. Sometimes, you can switch instruments after a year or two. This is most easy if you stay within the family of instruments where you started, i.e. woodwinds, brass, or percussion. These are just a few of the things one needs to think about as you select your instrument of choice.
Another family of instruments is string instruments. These include violin, viola, cello, and the string bass. These are fundamental in the classical orchestra. In the orchestra, one will also find woodwinds, brass, and percussion instruments. String instruments are played with a bow. Generally speaking, stringed instruments which are picked or plucked, such as the guitar, mandolin, lyre, or banjo are not included in the string instrument family. These instruments are called plectrum instruments. The classical guitar, which uses nylon strings, and the harp are two plectrum instruments that are sometimes included in the orchestra.
It seems that some people gravitate more toward string instruments, while others have preference for woodwind or brass instruments, and others will have a disposition towards percussion.
So there you have it - a breakdown of some of the different instruments you can choose from… does anyone currently play one or more of these instruments? If not, do you have any interest based on what you’ve read?
