Learning a noisy musical instruments

[briantrumpet]

It doesn depend a *lot* on the instrument though. Grade 8 singing is considerably easier to attain than Grade 8 piano in my humble opinion.

That's the outlier, I think. I think I *probably* could get G8 singing without any lessons but with my musical training elsewhere, and it is possible to learn all the repertoire by ear, as you don't have to press down random sequences of fingers to get the notes. Don't get me wrong, to have a really nice voice *is* technical (not least as there's no recourse to buttons), but G8 would be achievable with an in-tune-but-not-beautiful voice being used by a good musician.

Let's put it this way: I think a G8 violinist with a half-decent singing voice could get G8 Singing without additional lessons, but a G8 singer wouldn't get G8 Violin on the same basis.

 

[MontyVeda]

Good indicators for musicality are:-

• Musicality within the family. Doesn't have to be you, could be granny, grandad etc. But there is often a familial strain of musicality
• Exposure to music
• Exposure to musical instruments

The second is important. ...

Exposure to musical instruments is good if there's someone to help you understand how they work, eg. point one, a musician in the family.

When i growing up there was the 'family' guitar; nylon strings, floating bridge. No one in the family had any idea how to play it, or even where the floating bridge should be positioned. We had the 'tune a day' book for guitar with simple tunes and chord shapes... but with no concept of intonation, everything sounded terrible. I grew up thinking guitar players were wizards.

 

[briantrumpet]

Exposure to musical instruments is good if there's someone to help you understand how they work, eg. point one, a musician in the family.

When i growing up there was the 'family' guitar; nylon strings, floating bridge. No one in the family had any idea how to play it, or even where the floating bridge should be positioned. We had the 'tune a day' book for guitar with simple tunes and chord shapes... but with no concept of intonation, everything sounded terrible. I grew up thinking guitar players were wizards.

Thankfully Youtube can save people from getting it totally wrong, but there's no substitute for a good sympathetic teacher who can monitor & correct stuff that videos can't. And yes, I know good music teachers are expensive, but we're worth every penny 😉

 

[briantrumpet]

FWIW, I know I've changed the course of some people's lives, which is both lovely and scary.

 

[MontyVeda]

Thankfully Youtube can save people from getting it totally wrong, but there's no substitute for a good sympathetic teacher who can monitor & correct stuff that videos can't. And yes, I know good music teachers are expensive, but we're worth every penny 😉

I had one guitar lesson aged about 12 and the teacher's main mistake was trying to make me play right handed when what they could have done was said ah you're a natural lefty... and given me the options of learning to play with the strings inverted, or restring the guitar.

Pretty much everything apart from the basics I've learnt has been from YT.

 

[icowden]

I had one guitar lesson aged about 12 and the teacher's main mistake was trying to make me play right handed when what they could have done was said ah you're a natural lefty... and given me the options of learning to play with the strings inverted, or restring the guitar.

I've never thought of being left handed as being a problem with guitar as the left hand is pretty busy doing all the technical work while the right hand is strumming or picking...

 

[MontyVeda]

I've never thought of being left handed as being a problem with guitar as the left hand is pretty busy doing all the technical work while the right hand is strumming or picking...

opposite way for me

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I've never thought of being left handed as being a problem with guitar as the left hand is pretty busy doing all the technical work while the right hand is strumming or picking...

That is just playing it right handed

 

[icowden]

That is just playing it right handed

Precisely. when playing right handed your left hand has to be pretty good at doing stuff. Your right hand can get away with just repeating a pattern unless you are a classical guitarist when both hands have to work hard.

 

[MontyVeda]

Precisely. when playing right handed your left hand has to be pretty good at doing stuff. Your right hand can get away with just repeating a pattern ...

I've had RH players tell me that I should play right handed so my dominant* hand is on the neck, which suggests they should be playing left handed if it's so important that one's dominant hand is on the neck... but they don't seem to agree.

*all i do is write with it... it it really that dominant over the other hand, just because of a pen?

 

[briantrumpet]

I've had RH players tell me that I should play right handed so my dominant* hand is on the neck, which suggests they should be playing left handed if it's so important that one's dominant hand is on the neck... but they don't seem to agree.

*all i do is write with it... it it really that dominant over the other hand, just because of a pen?

Remember right-handers make the rules that us lefties are expected to obey.

I always say that right-handers use a knife & fork the wrong way around for them, as I think it makes much more sense to have the fork in your better hand, as it's the one doing the delicate work of inserting food into your gob without harpooning your lips... the proof is that if a right-hander puts down the knife to use just the fork, the fork goes into their right hand.

In other words, they are just too lazy to learn to use the knife with the left hand to do all the brutal chopping stuff.

 

[MontyVeda]

Remember right-handers make the rules that us lefties are expected to obey.

I always say that right-handers use a knife & fork the wrong way around for them, as I think it makes much more sense to have the fork in your better hand, as it's the one doing the delicate work of inserting food into your gob without harpooning your lips... the proof is that if a right-hander puts down the knife to use just the fork, the fork goes into their right hand.

In other words, they are just too lazy to learn to use the knife with the left hand to do all the brutal chopping stuff.

that's the odd thing with me and my brother... I hold my knife in my left hand and fork in the right, but my brother is right handed and holds his knife and fork the opposite way. I don't know what the 'proper' way is supposed to be.

 

[Profpointy]

Precisely. when playing right handed your left hand has to be pretty good at doing stuff. Your right hand can get away with just repeating a pattern unless you are a classical guitarist when both hands have to work hard.

For the horn, for historical reasons the valves are operated with the left hand. This is because before the invention of valves uniquely amongst brass instruments, the right hand was used in the bell to fill in some of the missing notes: you can flatten by about a semitone and surprisingly if you stop the bell more or less completely you can go up a semitone too giving you near enough a scale at the mid to high range. Once valves came in they were naturally played right handed for trumpets etc but put for the left hand for the horn as that is the way a horn was already held. It should be mentioned that the tricky bit for brass instruments, above all horns, is pitching the note with your lips, and working the valves is easy enough.

So, preamble out of the way, I found I could easily swap to play a trumpet right handed (initially I'd played it left handed) when once called upon to play one when we didn't at that point have a trumpeter in the school orchestra. My other hand already "knew" the fingerings without having to re-learn

 

[briantrumpet]

that's the odd thing with me and my brother... I hold my knife in my left hand and fork in the right, but my brother is right handed and holds his knife and fork the opposite way. I don't know what the 'proper' way is supposed to be.

The 'prescribed' way is knife on the right, fork on the left, unless you put the knife down. Then it is de rigueur to put the fork in the right hand if you don't want Aunt Maud to remind you about table etiquette.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I tried to learn the vuvuzela, but every time I practiced, loads of football supporters would turn up.