most difficult musical instrument to learn and/or play?

Great Debates
1

In a novel, I once read that “the oboe is the most difficult instrument to learn.”

How do they figure that? I’m not a musician, so I can’t give a professional opinion, but personally I think that brass and woodwind instruments are more difficult because of the lung power needed, in additional to the manual dexterity. So I could see perhaps the oboe, but then why the oboe instead of, say, the bassoon, or the trombone? Actually the trombone seems hard to me because of the slide used for different notes, instead of valves.

What’s the straight dope?

2

Oboe and bassoon are double reed instruments, which are more difficult to control in terms of tone quality than are the single reed instruments like the clarinet and saxophone. The smaller reeds needed for the oboe require more control than the larger bassoon reeds.

The french horn is considered the other “most difficult instrument” to play. Again, the difficult part is the embouchure, or control of the mouth muscles, that makes it difficult. Fingering of keys, valves, and slides is the easy part for woodwind and brass instrumentalists.

3

Any idea why the French Horn as opposed to a Trombone or a Bugle?

All three depend upon the same sort of lip muscles control, but the French Horn has keys that are essentially digital (you either depress them or you don’t) whereas the Trombone has an analog slide and the Bugle has no other controls, depending solely on mouth control.

Having studied (I won’t say “learnt” :slight_smile: ) the French Horn at High School I can agree that it’s a pig… but why the most difficult?

4

What makes the horn more difficult is the fact that it is played in the register that would be the equivalent of the “high C’s” for the trumpet player. Brass instruments are typically played in a three octave range. While the trumpet and trombone, (and probably the bugle, although I don’t know too much about that) are usually played in the lower two, the horn spends all its time in the upper two. Playing in the upper register for any instrument requires a lot of lip control, to produce the notes with good tone, and to keep pitch; it’s very difficult to keep from “breaking” and playing the wrong harmonic. Playing in the upper register all the time, as horn players must do, takes a lot of stamina.

The trombone slide looks difficult because it is unmarked, which means you have to remember the exact positions. But it just becomes natural after a while, like fingering the valves of a trumpet.

5

**
So I could see perhaps the oboe, but then why the oboe instead of, say, the bassoon, or the trombone? Actually the trombone seems hard to me because of the slide used for different notes, instead of valves.

What’s the straight dope?
**

I played the trombone and in my opinion it’s probably one of the easiest instruments to play. There are only seven slide positions, the mouthpieces is large so there is room to shape the mouth as necessary. Also, I found that music written for bands or orchestra’s do not have difficult trombone arrangements. The instrument is used musically to create the foundation, usually doing this through long notes or nice steady rythyms. This leaves intricate melodies to the woodwinds or trumpet/french horn sections.

The only music that I found to present any sort of challenge to a trombone player was Dixieland, where it’s an integral part of the melody, and jazz.

Probably went a bit beyond what you wanted to know, but it’s not often I can dust off my old band skills and put them to use anymore.

6

These examples all pale in comparison to learning to play a pipe organ. You’re not expected to play chords on an oboe, or arpeggios with your feet on a trombone.

7

I’d vote for the bagpipes, which I am in the process of learning. It’s almost as if they are perversely designed to be fiendishly difficult.

  1. What are the most sensitive parts of your fingers? The tips of the first knuckle. So, in piping you don’t use the tips, but the second knuckles - the fingerholes are spaced in a way that you can’t use the tips of the fingers.

  2. What is the standard western scale? The octave, diatonic do-re-mi thing. So, in piping you don’t use it. The pipe is designed to play a scale that is either pentatonic or hexatonic, or possibly one of the ancient Greek modes - there’s a lot of dispute about exactly how to classify it. At any rate, to someone trained in Western music, the pipe scale always sounds out of tune. The difference between the notes is not always a tone or semi-tone; the intervals between the different notes are not a consistent value as you go up the scale.

  3. In Western music, how do you get a lot of variety? By the number of notes that can be played, including sharps and flats. So, on the bagpipes you only have 9 notes, and you can’t choose to play sharps or flats - two of the notes are always sharp, the other seven are always natural, so to speak.

  4. How do you write down music? There’s the familiar staff notation. But, as a consequence of 2 & 3 above, plus the fact that by convention the notes are written down roughly a semi-tone lower than they actually sound (an A is actually closer to a B flat, and so on up the scale) the musical notation does not accurately represent the actual sound of the piece. As well, by convention the two sharps are ignored in the staff notation, so it looks as if all pipe music is written in C Major, when really it has two sharps.

  5. How do musicians on most wind instruments control the sound? One of the keys is correct breathing, including (in some insrtuments) the use of the tongue and lips to control the wind. So, of course in bagpipes that is not available. You blow into the bag, through a one-way valve, and then the wind leaves the bag and hits the chanter and drone reeds in a constant stream, so breath control is impossible.

  6. As Arnold and Gilligan have already noted, one of the reasons for the reputation of the oboe as a difficult instrument is the oboe reed: a double-beating reed that is difficult to control. So, the bagpipes have 4 reeds: a double-beating reed in the chanter, and a single-beating reed in each of the drones. And, each of the drones has to be in tune with each other (one bass drone hitting a very low note, with harmonics, and two tenor drones hitting a different, higher, note), and also with the chanter.

  7. How do you know the piece you are playing with most instruments? You buy sheet music, and then in performance you play the piece from the sheet music, either off a music stand or one of those little clippy things that marching bands use. So, with the bagpipe you don’t use that - you memorise every single piece that you play - literally, good bagpiping is all in the head.

It’s no wonder pipers are driven to drink. (Preferably single malt - I’ll have a Tallisker or Laphroaig, please.)

8

A good friend of mine (saxaphone player) told me that one the hardest instruments to excel on was the guitar.
Maybe because it’s so easy to play pretty good. I don’t know.
Any opinions? (Yeah, right.)
Peace,
mangeorge

9

The oboe because it has the double reed (I know, someone’s already said it. Wait, it’s about to come.) AND because dedicated oboe players like to make their own reeds. This process is evidently, i have never done it, more frustating than most things we do on a daily basis. Note: The person who was telling me this became quite angry upon describing the instrument. This should say something about it…

10

The aetherphone, popularly (!) known as the theremin.

One acknowledged virtuoso, and currently only about 50 professional players (plus Jason Newstead of Metallica on Sepultura’s latest.)

11

I can answer the oboe/ bassoon business. A bassoon reed is much larger than an oboe reed, so there is more margin for error in embouchure.

There is a difference between play at all and play well. Any old hack can get a tune out of a recorder, but it takes great breath control to play it well.

My nomination would be the japanese shakahachi (sp?). This is a flute-like instrument which these days is mainly heard as a synth sound.

A former teacher of mine went to Japan to study this instrument. After a while, his teacher who had been a professional player for thirty years, said “Don’t worry if you find it hard. I sometimes get up in the morning and can’t get a note out of it.” (he gave up).

picmr

12

jti, I feel your pain, but your point 5 above (no embouchure) actually sounds to me like something that would make the bagpipes easier to play, since you don’t have to learn that whole lips/tongue skill.

Astroglide, I’m not sure that a paucity of players means that the instrument is difficult to play. All I know is that you wave your hand through the air to make “notes”, but the performer doesn’t actually perform to a score, it’s all improvising, isn’t it?

13

A.W.: A true gentleman is a man who knows how to play the bagpipes - but doesn’t. (Wall Street Journal) Sounds easy enough.

Just improvising?

picmr

14

IMO, it’s a tossup between the French horn and the violin.

The violin is difficult because it’s all so subjective–woodwinds have keys you push to get the right note, and so do most brass, and even the organ (sorry) is just a matter of mechanical dexterity (or “pedal-ity”?), but to play in tune on a violin/viola/cello requires literally years of practice and a good ear. (Please don’t try to tell me about Suzuki violins–I’m sorry but I have yet to hear a group of them play in tune.) Also, with a violin, not only do you have to get it in tune, you also have to get the right tone, or timbre, i.e. so it’s not that horrible squeaky, squawky noise. You have to make it really sing, which also takes years of practice.

Also, strings have many more “special effects” like pizzicato, etc. that have to be mastered in order to perform the orchestral literature.

The French horn is just a bastard to play, pardon my French. You can learn the fingering, sure, but then you have to continually adjust the pitch by sticking your fist in the bell, and some days it just won’t play in tune and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Some of the notes called for even REQUIRE your fist in the bell, making it an experience much closer to playing a violin than a trombone or trumpet. Also, orchestral parts for French horn tend to be written so as to emphasize its distinctive tone color, and if you’re wrong, baby, you’re 100% wrong, right out there in front of God and everybody. Even housewives from Peoria will notice if, say, the noble horn calls from various Wagner operas are not in tune.

I think the remark about the oboe being the most difficult to learn has to do with the specialized and very difficult embouchure that’s required to pinch that double reed good and hard, but without allowing it to squeak or squawk. A flute, clarinet/saxophone, and brass instruments also require the development of a special embouchure, but IMO it’s not as exhausting. Anybody can play a flute or clarinet well–but not everybody can play an oboe well. I think that’s the difference.

15

I don’t mean to say that the harmonica is hard to play, but are their any other instruments where you have to breathe in to get certain notes?

PeeQueue

16

Hash pipe.

17

The clarinet–nobody can actually play it well.

Bucky

18

A. Winkelreid said:

I agree that lack of players does not necessarily mean the instrument is more difficult. It is suggestive however.

Theremin players do perform scored music, as well as improvised music.

Perhaps narrowing down what “difficult to learn” entails?
I’m thinking along the lines of being given a simple single-note line and having to play it on various instruments of which the performer does not play. Does this help or hurt my argument?

In this case, I would consider the piano the easiest and the theremin the most difficult (among instruments of which I am familar, and of course, not counting the instrument that I play - guitar.)

This is why I wouldn’t say the bagpipes or oboe(although they both are extremely difficult to play well), as many people can muster out a fairly decent melodic line on either one.

I once participated in a similar discussion on “what is the most expressive instrument.” No hard answers, but lots of good points and opinions.

IMO, all instruments are equally difficult to “play well.”

19

Not to mention Page McConnell of Phish. He hasn’t pulled it out very often, but I did see him do it at Deer Creek, '97.

Dr. J

20

Skin flute.