Tambourine. Childhood television has irrevocably associated this instrument with either:
The child band member who wasn’t talented enough to play anything else but you couldn’t kick her out of the band so you gave her (it was invariably a girl) one of these; or
The cute/hot chick (often the girlfriend of one of the band members) who had to have something to do but couldn’t be trusted with a “real” instrument.
I remember as a kid being annoyed a lot because the female band members were always stuck playing either the tambourine or the keyboard. I wanted a female *drummer *or lead guitarist, dammit!
I dislike the tuba. It just sort of always sounds…well…DUMB, to me.
I also don’t like the string bass as a solo classical instrument. It definitely has a function in an ensemble (and I don’t mind it in jazz), but I’ve never heard a solo bass piece that I liked.
I don’t dislike bagpipes, but I have heard badly played ones, which is definitely awful. There was a guy playing them near the booth I was working in at the Renaissance Festival, and I seriously considered paying him to go play somewhere else. (By the time I was ready to, though, he’d already left.)
Yeah, in the back of my mind I knew it wasn’t a normal theremin, but it always seems to be the example trotted out by people who say that some theremin music can be enjoyable.
Actually I forgot my all-time least favourite instrument, the Didgeridoo. God, what an awful sound. Not helped by being taken to too many corroborees as a child in the stifling heat and dust and having to listen to the damn instrument for what seemed like hours on end.
Didgeridoo is the one I was going to mention, too, before I got distracted and my thoughts ran away from this thread. I actually have one sitting in my living room, from my aunt who lives in Australia. Never could figure out what the hell to do with that thing.
To be fair, playing period instruments is very difficult - we’re basically researching what they might have done and what it might have sounded like. If done right (and there are very, very few orchestras who can) the sound is very slender and elegant. (I can’t play the YouTube clip in Germany, unfortunately - what is it?)
If you’ve ever listened to a 1930s performance of Bach’s Matthäuspassion, you know why this movement was highly necessary. That music was not written to be performed by an 80 piece symphony orchestra with 160 singers.
However, I agree: unless you’re going to do period instruments right, don’t do it!
Pedal steel - That distinctive twang is pretty much synonymous with “Bad country song” as far as i’m concerned.
Fiddle - Ditto.
Acoustic guitar in rock songs - Unless it’s supposed to sound like Bob Dylan, the acoustic is either unnecessary, or it gets washed out by the electric instruments and percussion anyway.
Rock saxophone - As the above poster noted, it always, always, ALWAYS sounds cheesy.
I must be the most musically intolerant person around. Here’s what I hate:
Accordion.
Harmonica.
Harp, when not part of an orchestra.
Any instrument, when a child plays it (even if it’s a prodigy).
Saxophone, when playing something other than jazz.
Zurnai and shawm.
Sitar .
Acoustic guitar.
Trumpet, when played with vibrato.
Actually, any instrument (including voice), when it’s played with vibrato.
Didgeridoo.
Melodica.
Flexatone.
Temple block.
Clarinet in E-flat.
Piccolo trumpet.
Steel drums.
Hawaii guitar.
Jew’s harp.
Xylo-, vibra- and marimbaphone.
Strings/violin. I hate the way they rise up out of a perfectly good song and overwhelm it. The 70’s were particularly bad about this in pop and country songs.
As another posted said though fiddle is good. I guess fiddle and violin are the same instrument, but fiddle just played differently, like in “Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
Piccolo. Too damn high. Ice pick through the eardrum.
Vibes is my second favorite jazz instrument to listen to (it would have been first except I play the guitar). I guess other posters have explained how vibes really work so I won’t rehash that. But the point of electrification is not always to distort or play loudly, it’s just that a certain genre of music uses it that way.
Part of the sound of the harpsichord is it’s lack of dynamic range, no notes softer or louder than any other.
That’s one of the reasons the piano was so revolutionary, the full name is pianoforte, meaning soft-loud.