What Instrument?

[LittleFish]

Okay, who here plays a musical instrument, and what do you play?

I play the piano, and right now, I'm mostly working on Brahms pieces after finishing Debussy's Deux Arabesques, although I have taken up learning Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor again.

[Fusion]

Piano, and as you know im still knocking in those inventions. I didn't buy invention #25 yet but i hope to get it soon.....looking forward to playing it. Uh, ill let you know any new pieces that i come across.

[geoMan]

i used to play a piano....and a guitar....none of the properly...but i cud make up any tune i wud like easily..i sorta understod everything..

i wud love to have drums...

those who love drums listen to Linkin Park's "session"....u'll love it!

[Dr.N]

i play the clarinet
but with my damn braces , its been almost a year that im not playing :(

[Chris-3DT]

I'm trying to learn to play the tin whistle a bit - ultimately I want to learn how to play the bagpipes! far from there though. very far.

[Vitor]

I play piano and violin. But latelly I haven't played anything.

I also play a bit of guitar and drums.

[Dr.N]

Chris-3D : bag pipes are hard in the way where u need a good and long breath
i entered a local scout once here and i took around 1 year of practise for the bagpipe ( no im not from scotland :D )

i didnt have any problems because before that i took 4 years of clarinet wich is one of the most hard air instruments , in the first phew months i had pain in my stomach and some places in my face

so if you are going to start immediatly with the bagpipe u will have as first year most proabably breath lessons and how to blow correctly

[David Ciprian]

For a few months now, I'm torturing an acoustic guitar:p

[Chris-3DT]

Dr. N, you usually don't start playing on the pipes right away but on the Practice Chanter, as you probably know anyway. That one takes less breath and power. :)

[invert]

I play guitar, bass, and drums. been playing guitar for around 11 to 12 years, bass for around 6 years, and drums for like 2 years.

[Zergling]

I play drums. Been playing them for roughly 6 years, although i'm not that good. Simply don't practice enough...

Plus electronic sets are hard to cut loose on. heh

[claWda]

I play the piano, and while some go all out trying to play debussy or Chopin or whatever, I compose my own stuff, it's much more giving really...I went to a private teacher for 4-5 years (it cost me 5$ for 1 hour :)) but then I quit and I've been playing for myself for like 4 years now...

so tell me cause I don't get it, what's the point in playing something that someone else has composed!? it's good practice sure and yes, those classical pieces are sometimes brilliant but to compose your own music is like a hundred times more rewarding, to those of you who just play other people's music, try creating your own, it's a great feeling

[David Ciprian]

True, but not all of us are talented enough (or just talented, in my case) to compose our own music...and sound good

[claWda]

hi david, come on, it's SO easy!! when I played with a teacher I was VERY limited, I just played whatever he told me to play, but when I came home and tried to improvise it sucked really bad...

nowadays, I've evolved on my own, taught myself a lot of things, and now, I can just sit by the piano (keyboard for a poor guy like me), and just play whatever and it always sounds good...

I'm not saying this to brag I think you get that, my point is, the more you play after notes the more limited your creativity becomes, once you ignore everyone else's work, you can concentrate on your own style of playing and believe me, it's great fun to be able to listen to something then just 5 minutes later being able to play the whole thing with impro just by hearing, that's when music becomes fun and creative...

just my opinions of course, feel free to debate me

[David Ciprian]

well, I have to get to that stage of evolution...see ya in 6 years:p

[claWda]

oh well good luck to you then ;)

btw, your signature is hilarious

[David Ciprian]

Double thanks. Unfortunately the signature is a fact

BTW: your's is not bad either (my kind of funny text -it isn't really a joke)

[Goj]

Trumpet and Piano. Tried to learn guitar, but I can't really play it properly. :D

[LittleFish]

claWda - $5 an hour? wow. besides the one unit piano classes at $18 a semester, all the good teachers where I live charge about $50 an hour (and they all have their Master Degrees).

Chris - bagpipes, eh? Sounds like fun and I'm glad you live in Germany. (no, seriously though, I've never heard of anyone learning the bagpipes. it seems more like something that just comes out of nowhere

[claWda]

yeh littlefish, I had like no money back then AT ALL, and I insisted on paying myself so I more or less had to find a cheap place...

anyway, people who hear me play think I went to musical schools (makes me so happy) so that kinda only shows the teacher isn't really THAT important..though, of course, if I had had a better teacher, I would be a better pianist, naturally...the expensive ones know crazy techniques and tricks that the cheap ones often don't ;)

btw, would love to try out bagpipes sounds like a lot of fun

[LittleFish]

yeah, i know what you mean. when i auditioned at the city college that i'm at now, they figured that i had had a teacher. actually, I i had learned the first movement of "Moonlight Sonata" (the only name I knew it by then) by memorizing it measure by measure. when i had a measure memorized, i moved on until the whole piece was memorized. i learned the piece for a talent show ("gong show" style - gotta love the brutality of those things). right before the show, maybe a week, i asked my beginning piano teacher (at the city college i was currently attending, 1st or 2nd semester piano class) what the big problems were. she said "bring out the melody with your little finger." anyway, about a year later, when i auditioned with it, it sounded good enough.

so i guess that no teacher can replace dedication.

(note: the expensive teachers are often trying to detract the scum of the students and would have too many students except that they raise their prices accordingly)

[Chris-3DT]

actually the bagpipes have a strong tradition in scotland (of course), greece (they invented the thing for all i know), germany, switzerland and so on.

It's a beautiful, at times very sad and sinister sounding instrument, which i so love about it. Unfortunaltely i doubt i'll ever learn more than one song ;)

But that's cool, can't be good at everthing anyway, gotta pcik the raisins out of the cake ;)

[claWda]

cool with that audition thing littlefish, I actually turned in a piano song I'd recorded and composed about a week ago to my music teacher in school and she listened to it, then went behind my back and asked 3 of my friends if I had really composed that (like they would know anyway)...pissed me off at first but when i'd cooled down it's a nice compliment...have you composed your own music? about that teacher thing, you're very dependent of them in the beginning, but once you've learned basics and got semiadvanced, you evolve on your own and then they just give you tips on how to play songs or whatever, as you say, no teacher can replace dedication

[skink]

I play an alhambra water jug (pete, it's just like a cheap djembe drum), didgeridoo (insect, malik, and bear), a vietnemese mouth-harp (spike), and I attempt acoustic guitar (stu). I also name all of my musical intruments, in case you couldn't tell, lol.

-skink

[Fusion]

Ok, well in the mean time im playing Invention #4. I like it a lot, its a nice challenge especially at the speed you have to play it at not to mention the 16th notes are all stacato(16 or 18 im not sure, gotta take another look at the sheet music:roll: )

[LittleFish]

Fusion -- regarding Invention #4 - my teacher, who is about 90, learned the Gemrna hand fingering from his teachers, who were German, and he had me learn the Invention with the 16th notes legato, and the 8th notes staccato (unless they are a step apart, in a melodic line, and then they are played legato as well). anyway, good luck on the left-hand trill (it took me probably a month to be able to play that)

claWda -- yeah, you do gain dependence from your teacher. at my school, i can pretty much pick from two faculty. my teacher teaches me a German style of playing (and something that the school accompanist calls "control and efficiency"). The other teacher (which i had for a semester while my teacher was out for knee joint replacement therapy) teaches in more of a common style, and while you are playing or not playing, she never stops talking, making comments on your music and whatnot. That was helpful, especially when I was learning the first of Debussy's Deux Arabesques. And then I had to perform, and my teacher wasn't talking, and I couldn't think for myself too well. Oh well, there's drawbacks to both ways.

As far as composition, yeah, I wrote some music for the four semesters of Music Theory that I took at th city college. Three semesters were of theory, from learning Baroque counterpoint in the first, to learning sevenths and a lot more about harmony and four part chord work in the second, to counterpoint and orchestration in the third (I wrote some counterpoint and wrote about half of Chopin's Nocturne No. 13 out in string quartet parts, but all of us in he class were really lazy and only two of us even got that far), and in the fourth, we covered all the theroy from 1900 to present. That includes atonality, new types of chord progressions, twelve tone pieces and matrices, tone rows, and more. at the end of that semester, we could either analyze a piece (BORING!) or write one ourselves. Mine came out rather badly (in some of my contrapuntal attempts) but at 61 measures, it had character and a full bodiedness. I also wrote a piece off of a tone row. That came out great and sounds atonal, which is correct, but I don't like it cause it isn't fun or beautilful to listen to.

[claWda]

well hearing from your words , you seem to be a great pianoplayer with really good teachers :) and as for composing, that's another thing that bothers me, it's like a game of soccer, I could step out on the pitch and do wicked dribblings and really show off what I can BUT, I could also play simple and dribble only when it's necesseary, it's kinda the same thing in piano, just because you know how to play really advanced pieces doesn't mean that you should try to create something just as difficult, you'll end up sounding fake...besides, what you know and what you listen to affects you anyway, so at least for me I never "try" composing anything, I just come up with some basic melodystrings, put them together and add some final touches, just like I work in 3D :)

[Jon]

Electric Guitar :D

[Fusion]

Thought I'd dig up this thread again since everybody must have updates :)

Im working now on the Italian Concerto - movement 3 (its my favourite :) ) and Mozart's Sonata in D. The Sonata is just too long (at least 10 pgs) so I'll probably get half way before picking up a new piece.

How is everybody else doing?

[Jason-Lavoie]

What instrument...

I am super focused on bass... since that's what I play now... but I am learning guitar... be nice to know 2 things...

I actually played the sax, piano.. the yukalay (don't know how to spell it) and i guess thats it.. tried the drums... but lol.. that didn't go all as planned...

and if you consider your voice an instrument.. well I certainly use that :)

[LittleFish]

and right now, I'm working on Grieg's Piano Concerto in A, 1st Mvmt. I have another teacher this semester, because my regular teacher (male) for the past three years is about 90 and is having a hip replaced along with all the therapy that goes along with it. My teacher this semester (woman - 50-60) called my working on the concerto "ambitious", but she hasn't learned yet that I already started it with my regualr teacher and memorized the movement over the summer. Now if only I can get it to sound good. Rest of my pieces are same old, run-of-the-mill pieces, Brahms, Beethoven (Sonata No. 5 - simple enough, hard to memorize the 2nd Mvmt. though), and Bach (Inventions 13, 14). I want to start on Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C#m and Prelude in gm, but time is not permitting, and I don't have my first lesson this semester until tomorrow, so I'll have to see how it works out.

Fusion -- is the Italian Concerto by Mendelhsson? and I know wat you mean about dropping sonatas off in the middle. I memorized, and learned at my lower level then, the first movement of the Beethoven sonata I mentioned 2 years ago (and I know the first and second movements to Moonlight Sonata (No. 14)).

oh, and for the sake of this thread, I play piano.:)

[Fusion]

Originally posted by LittleFish
Rest of my pieces are same old, run-of-the-mill pieces, Brahms, Beethoven

thats funny how you categorize the rest of your pieces as old. . . . . .all we play is classical music :D

Well the italian concerto is yet another one from Bach, I don't think I've ever heard any from Mendelhson. But the piece is very difficult. Short, but difficult(the movement that is). Its little things like holding the forth while playing with the first finger interchanged with the right hand! Plus everything is played at such a high tempo so when your scaling up and down the piano there are a lot of crossovers that always through you off when you miss one note. Thank god I dont have to deal with any trills in this piece ;)

and, Yeah, the sonatas are time killers :) I Dont know how they managed to compose such pieces with hundreds left to make.

[PhantomOokami]

I play violin and guitar. Surprisingly Violin is pretty easy for me.

[Fusion]

ah sweet, more musicians

:dance:

How long have you been playing?

[claWda]

hey was my post deleted?? this place is so weird at times, I really did nothing this time

[Fusion]

Post it again......chris is gone ;)

[Jason-Lavoie]

Originally posted by Fusion
ah sweet, more musicians


I am a musician as well... lol just thought i say that..