Learning a noisy musical instruments

[Yellow Fang]

I fancy getting an upright piano for the sitting room. I gather most pianos are digital these days, but you can get analogue pianos. I think a lot of them are second hand. Are they a pain to tune? How often do you have to tune them? Do you need a set of tuning forks? I'd have thought some sort of frequency analyser would do the job, maybe even a phone app.

 

[icowden]

I fancy getting an upright piano for the sitting room. I gather most pianos are digital these days, but you can get analogue pianos. I think a lot of them are second hand. Are they a pain to tune? How often do you have to tune them? Do you need a set of tuning forks? I'd have thought some sort of frequency analyser would do the job, maybe even a phone app.

You will easily find second hand pianos. It's worth finding someone you know who plays the piano to assess whether you are getting something that should be consigned to the scrapheap.

You can't tune them yourself without training and tuning wrenches (You need more than one). It's hard to do as once you get out of the deep bass notes you are looking at two or three strings that have to be tuned harmonically to produce a single tone. The strings are also under enormous tension - you really don't want to snap one. You usually pay a professional piano tuner to do it. It costs upwards of £60 depending on where you are in the country. They only need tuning maybe every 3 years or longer if they are kept in a normal heated room. Mine needs doing, but hasn't been tuned for 5 years.

The hard bit is getting the piano transported to your house. They are very heavy. Digital pianos are really good now, but they never have the action or character of a real piano..

 

[stephec]

I fancy getting an upright piano for the sitting room. I gather most pianos are digital these days, but you can get analogue pianos. I think a lot of them are second hand. Are they a pain to tune? How often do you have to tune them? Do you need a set of tuning forks? I'd have thought some sort of frequency analyser would do the job, maybe even a phone app.

My little girl played for a while and we found a second hand one quite easily, and her teacher came along with us to view it.

She plinky plonked for a minute and then encouraged us to quickly stump up the cash.

We found a specialist piano movers who also tuned it once it was in our house, all in quite painless.

 

[derrick]

6 months into playing the saxaphone, neigbours have never complained, although they both said they prefer our playing now, as appossed to six months ago.

 

[Drago]

6 months into playing the saxaphone, neigbours have never complained, although they both said they prefer our playing now, as appossed to six months ago.

My old neighbours complained about my bass playing. They were sanctimonious gits so I responded to their complaints with several weeks practicing Grand Funk Railroad on bass before finally taking a sneaky night time Forest Gump on their car bonnet and moving house the next day.

 

[Yellow Fang]

In the interest of building up a collection of instruments around the place the boy might take an interest in, I bought a tin whistle. They're not very expensive. I have been trying to tackle 'Dirty Old Town'. However, the boy is more interested in banging things with it.

 

[briantrumpet]

You will easily find second hand pianos. It's worth finding someone you know who plays the piano to assess whether you are getting something that should be consigned to the scrapheap.

You can't tune them yourself without training and tuning wrenches (You need more than one). It's hard to do as once you get out of the deep bass notes you are looking at two or three strings that have to be tuned harmonically to produce a single tone. The strings are also under enormous tension - you really don't want to snap one. You usually pay a professional piano tuner to do it. It costs upwards of £60 depending on where you are in the country. They only need tuning maybe every 3 years or longer if they are kept in a normal heated room. Mine needs doing, but hasn't been tuned for 5 years.

The hard bit is getting the piano transported to your house. They are very heavy. Digital pianos are really good now, but they never have the action or character of a real piano..

This.

Some pianos go out of tune by the next day, some (generally the better ones) will go for some time. In fact the piano I've got here in France was last tuned about 30 years ago in Devon, has been in three different houses, and been transported 850 miles in a car trailer to get here. It does need tuning now. And it's definitely a job for a pro - I learnt to tune my harpsichord, as essentially they need tuning/tweaking every few days, but the temperament I used is much easier to do than equal temperament (that pianos are tuned to), and the mechanics also much simpler.

Obviously they are much nicer pieces of furniture than an electric piano, but there are reasons why people virtually give them away these days. If you do get one and then decide it's not getting used and taking up a lot of space, then they are a nightmare to shift on.

 

[furball]

In the interest of building up a collection of instruments around the place the boy might take an interest in, I bought a tin whistle. They're not very expensive. I have been trying to tackle 'Dirty Old Town'. However, the boy is more interested in banging things with it.

The first one is never expensive but once you get hooked, there is a thing called whistle acquisition syndrome.
If you persevere and get half decent at playing, your lad might take an interest.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I have abandoned the ukulele for the tin whistle. I have been trying to master Dixie for the last month. I can see why they teach the recorder at school. It is cheap. You get to play the tune. It is easier to relate the hole covering to notes, so it is a better tool for learning to read music than some instruments, I am guessing. With the ukulele, you tend to strum chords, and it is more an accompanying instrument to singing. However, the recorder sucks, while the tin whistle may be considered cool, as it was used by the likes of The Pogues and The Dubliners. I noticed some tin whistle books which include music for the tin whistle and an accompanying guitar. That sounds like an idea. When the boy gets a bit older, I will try to get him to play the tin whistle and I will accompany him on the guitar, which means I will have to start learning the guitar in the next year or two.

 

[icowden]

I have abandoned the ukulele for the tin whistle. I have been trying to master Dixie for the last month. I can see why they teach the recorder at school. It is cheap. You get to play the tune. It is easier to relate the hole covering to notes, so it is a better tool for learning to read music than some instruments, I am guessing. With the ukulele, you tend to strum chords, and it is more an accompanying instrument to singing. However, the recorder sucks, while the tin whistle may be considered cool, as it was used by the likes of The Pogues and The Dubliners. I noticed some tin whistle books which include music for the tin whistle and an accompanying guitar. That sounds like an idea. When the boy gets a bit older, I will try to get him to play the tin whistle and I will accompany him on the guitar, which means I will have to start learning the guitar in the next year or two.

The difference between a tin whistle or penny whistle and a recorder is that a recorder can play in any key as it has more holes. A tin whistle player often has a collection for different keys - you can have 10 whistles each of which covers 4 keys (A D whistle will work for D, G, B minor and E minor). Then of course you have to choose between soprano, alto and tenor whistles :-)

 

[Drago]

I'm glad you've jacked it in. I can now say that it isn't a proper instrument without causing offence.

 

[ColinJ]

I can see why they teach the recorder at school. It is cheap. You get to play the tune. It is easier to relate the hole covering to notes, so it is a better tool for learning to read music than some instruments, I am guessing. With the ukulele, you tend to strum chords, and it is more an accompanying instrument to singing. However, the recorder sucks...

I made that mistake too but I had a very good music teacher who soon noticed my mistake. Once he told me that I was supposed to blow through the instrument, it sounded a lot better...

 

[Drago]

I made that mistake too but I had a very good music teacher who soon noticed my mistake. Once he told me that I was supposed to blow through the instrument, it sounded a lot better...

Was the oboe pink?

 

[Yellow Fang]

The difference between a tin whistle or penny whistle and a recorder is that a recorder can play in any key as it has more holes. A tin whistle player often has a collection for different keys - you can have 10 whistles each of which covers 4 keys (A D whistle will work for D, G, B minor and E minor). Then of course you have to choose between soprano, alto and tenor whistles :-)

Why does everything have to get more complicated?

 

[icowden]

Why does everything have to get more complicated?

most Tin whistlers will have a D whistle. That fits with most folk music which tends to be D / G or the relative minors. Some ay have a C and and F. It's really rare to need any of the others