Learning a noisy musical instruments

[Yellow Fang]

I shall leave that to your imagination!

Perhaps it was the trumpet. My neighbours did not like listening to me practice for the ATC cadet band.

 

[Profpointy]

A friend from school played piano to a high standard and had done grade 8 singing. As a sixth former he took up the double bass from scratch, and I'd don't think he'd previously played a stringed instrument. This was a tactical decision as he'd, correctly as it turned out, reasoned there were fewer bass players around so he'd have a better shot at making a go of it professionally. He has played bass with the Liverpool Phil for about 40 years, no doubt also teaching and doing various side gigs.

Interestingly he took up the horn in the first year but gave it up whilst I carried on after a fashion, although he quite clearly has far more innate musical ability than me. I think our rather brusque brass teacher was a bit intimidating for some, though I thought he was good fun

 

[Salad Dodger]

I think I will have to negotiate with my son. I would like him to learn a classical instrument and a folk instrument and maybe a pop instrument. I would like him to read music, and learn to play an instrument to a fairly high standard. In part this is because he might enjoy playing in an orchestra, brass band, folk bank, or pop band. I would like him to do something on the arts side, so if it's not music it can be drawing, painting, dancing, whatever. Even if he does do drawing, painting, etc. I would like him to learn some instrument to some basic level of competency. It is a life skill. Of course, he might have his own ideas.

My friend's grandson is 15, and is a good singer and a handy bass player.

He was all lined up to do an apprenticeship with a cyber security business. Which sounded to me like a nice little earner, once he qualifies....

But now he has announced that he is not going to do the apprenticeship. Instead, he is going to be.......... a musician!

 

[icowden]

But now he has announced that he is not going to do the apprenticeship. Instead, he is going to be.......... a musician!

The good news is that if that goes pear shaped, he can still do the cyber apprenticeship. It won't go away.

 

[Yellow Fang]

My friend's grandson is 15, and is a good singer and a handy bass player.

He was all lined up to do an apprenticeship with a cyber security business. Which sounded to me like a nice little earner, once he qualifies....

But now he has announced that he is not going to do the apprenticeship. Instead, he is going to be.......... a musician!

I suppose that is always a danger. However, IT is such a changeable field I would not like to say it was very secure long term. Depends how good at it he is.

 

[Drago]

Po

But now he has announced that he is not going to do the apprenticeship. Instead, he is going to be.......... a musician!

So he didn't fancy working then?

 

[Profpointy]

The good news is that if that goes pear shaped, he can still do the cyber apprenticeship. It won't go away.

A guy in my team had originally been a professional organist but ultimately it didn't really pay, and he went into IT and had a reasonable career as a senior systems designer.

As an aside he did share a nice anecdote about playing in a large scale modern choral piece. There was a section where the organ is silent and the choir continues unaccompanied for a bit, then the organ comes in with a massive chord. Trouble is, unlike with instruments, without accompaniment choirs can drift off the "correct" pitch, whilst still remaining in tune with each other. He himself had perfect pitch so was aware they were eventually off by a whole semitone, which would have made his big chord sound utterly horrible. He made a quick decision that he'd have to on-the-fly transpose the rest of the piece by a semitone so it would sound OK. I think a semitone is a quite awkward amount to transpose too, at least, it was for the horn. Of course, had they drifted only a half a semitone he could have done nothing and it would have sounded decidedly off
Anyhow, it all worked out and sounded great, but that is a serious level of technical mastery.

 

[icowden]

Anyhow, it all worked out and sounded great, but that is a serious level of technical mastery.

It really is. Ideally you want a key like C# or F# that way you are essentially reading the same notes but ignoring the key signature. If you have the patterns in your head it's not too hard to transpose on Organ or Piano - it's only when you get accidentals that your head translation has to work overtime.

 

[Profpointy]

It really is. Ideally you want a key like C# or F# that way you are essentially reading the same notes but ignoring the key signature. If you have the patterns in your head it's not too hard to transpose on Organ or Piano - it's only when you get accidentals that your head translation has to work overtime.

For horn we often transposed the parts as historically a lot of parts were for "horn in E-flat" or "horn in D" which were fairly easy as it was down a tone or tone-and-ahalf respectively and also pretty much just the harmonic series, so you got used to it pretty quickly. Was a bit of a head scratch when you had to count notes and think OK, that's up a fourth or whatever