Piano or Guitar?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve decided I want to learn to play music again (I played trumpet in high school a loonnnnng time ago in the late 70s). I’ve narrowed it down to piano or guitar as I have both in my home. So… What would your choice be; Piano or Guitar? And why?

On a side note I plan on paying for lessons; however maybe not at first. So you can comment on the ease of getting started on the basics without lessons. Like maybe a beginners book. Oh and I just thought of this… My late wife learned music through the Yamaha method? What’s that?

Haha I’m remembering the old advertisement for the Roy Clark Big Note Song Book or something like that.

2

For totally non-musical reasons, I would pick guitar. Main reason: portability. If I’m going away for a weekend, I can still practice. I can practice outside. I can take a guitar camping.

3

I play both and the above would be my answer also. Being able to take the guitar anywhere makes it easier to practice, and it’s fun to just grab a guitar. I haven’t touched a piano in 5 years (:eek:)or so because I just don’t have access to one right now and I can’t justify spending the money on a good keyboard, but my guitars follow me wherever I go.

I think it is slightly easier to learn the basics on piano if you have a background in music already, but only very slightly easier. I think after you get over that first hump, it is easier to become a proficient (good enough but not impressive) guitar player than it is to become a proficient piano player. After you get past that first level of proficiency it’s all pretty much the same (so I am told. I am only a proficient pianist. I am a much better guitar player.)
If you go the guitar route, there is a TON of stuff free online that will help you get started. I don’t know if that is true of piano or not.

4

I’m a guitarist, so I have some bias. All I can say is that I picked guitar over piano.

5

If you already read music, this doesn’t apply to you, but for other people who might be asking the same question - WAY too many guitar players don’t really read music very well, if at all. Piano will definitely teach you to read, which is why I think it’s a good choice for children as well.

6

Moved IMHO --> Cafe Society.

7

They’re both bitches. I play piano badly; I’m hopeless at guitar.

I guess it depends what you want to do. If you want to play with people, both are good; if you want to play alone, piano is probably better. You essentially have an orchestra at your fingertips.

Piano is better for learning the nuts and bolts of music: you can do more harmonic/contrapuntal stuff, and it’s all laid out in front of you. It takes no time at all to know the notes on a piano; on guitar it isn’t so easy, and that’s even if you just stick to one tuning.

Portability is, of course, a huge problem with the piano, and any decent electric keyboard will be a huge pain to move. This not only messes up going to gigs, it also confines you to one practice place all the time. That can get pretty boring.

For music types, the guitar owns rock, co-owns the blues and folk, is usually weaker in jazz (IMO), and very weak in classical. The piano is usually weaker in rock, very weak in folk, co-owns jazz and blues, and is very strong in classical. Both are great for country.

I personally think the guitar is the more pleasing instrument to listen to overall. I’d drop the piano and switch to guitar if I weren’t so awful at it.

8

This is a personal choice. What kind of music do you like? What do you want to accomplish from your music lessons? Do you want to play for or with others? Do you want to write songs?

I play guitar, and I’ve taken piano lessons as an adult. They both have their strong points. If you like classical music or Elton-John style singer/songwriter stuff, you might want to play piano. If you like Rock, Folk, or coutnry, you might like to learn guitar.

If you want to play with others, go for the guitar. It’s a lot easier to find somewhere to play if you’re bringing a guitar with you. You can find lots of amateur adult musicians who like to get together and jam informally. There are open stage nights in bars and lounges. You can take a guitar with you camping and play in front of the fire.

When do you like to practice? A piano is a pretty loud instrument (unless you have a digital piano with a headphone jack). You might find that your playing is constrained by the times in which you’re not disturbing others.

One thing about guitar which has always caused me to put it aside for longer periods than I want - you have to build up calluses on your frettnig fingers, or it rapidly gets painful and more difficult to play. If you stop playing for a while, the calluses go away and then you have to spend time building them up again. Also, at least for me I have to keep the nails of my fret hand very short, which means I have to prepare to play, which inhibits that spontaneous late-night pick up the guitar and play a tune thing.

Guitar is going to be easier to get to a point where you can play a song in a way that sounds competent. You’ll spend a lot of time at the piano playing scales and songs like “Camptown Races” before you can play much that sounds current and complete. But on guitar, if you can learn the C, G, D, E and Am chords, you can strum along with an awful lot of popular songs. However, once you get past that point, the difficulty level goes up and guitar gets to be as hard as piano.

There are other instruments you might consider. If you played trumpet, you might consider something like an Akai EWI. The USB model plugs into your computer. It’s a professional grade instrument that can be played like a sax, a clarinet, or even as a trumpet (it has a setting for playing brass valve fingerings). You can have a lot of fun with this thing, because it’s connected to your computer. So you can do multi-track recording, you can get play-along tracks for it, you can make it sound like anything with software synths, etc. I have an EWI 4000s, which is the higher-end model with built-in synthesizer, but they play pretty much identically. I absolutely love mine. I play it pretty much every day.

So really, it comes down to a lot of personal details that only you can decide.

9

I play, or have played, both. I think the guitar is much more difficult at the very beginning which can make it frustrating in a way that the piano is not. It can be a challenge just to get a nice clean note out of a guitar where as with the piano you hit the key and it sounds a perfect note. But that hurdle is overcome very quickly as well and then it’s easier on the guitar to be able to play simple pop songs.

Overall I prefer playing the piano because it is a complete instrument that allows you to play bass, harmony, and melody without relying on any other musicians. That can be done to some extent on a guitar but you need to be better at it and it still has severe limitations.

10

I’ve played both.

As a kid I took a several years of piano lessons, and I can read sheet music; I liked playing piano, but didn’t like the classical music I was being taught very much, and gradually lost interest.

As a young teenager, I was drawn to electric guitar, and took lessons for about a year until I knew enough to just teach myself. I loved playing guitar, found friends to jam with, and it was great fun. I played guitar into my late twenties, before I gradually lost interest.

In mid-thirties, I was at someone’s house and there was a spinet piano, and I sat down at it and was really drawn in by the sound of the instrument, it really spoke to me. Shortly after, I got a piano and started taking lessons again, and it was very fun. I did this for some years, until at some point I realized I hadn’t been playing much and it just petered out.

In my mid-forties, I pulled out my old guitars from the closet, restrung them, and loved that sounds again. I started playing guitar again seriously, and here I am today. I play guitar every day, and found another instructor and I’m once again learning new stuff, and its great fun.

Anyway, IMO you should pursue the instrument that you are most drawn to and will keep you coming back for more, if that’s piano, guitar, glockenspiel, whatever. In some sense, the instrument chooses you.

11

For me, it’s a whole lot easier to understand what’s going on musically on a piano. And you don’t wind up having to twist your hand into funky shapes or getting callouses. I’m pretty sure I could teach you decent pop piano in few months.

So I say you should go with guitar. Piano is easy enough you can pick it up later. But, I’d still suggest getting a familiar with the piano while your learning guitar. Too many guitarists don’t understand the theory at all. Even the most basic pianists seem to.

12

I recently switched from piano to guitar. Guitar has an incredibly steep cliff in place of a learning curve but once you reach that first peak, the view is beautiful.

I enjoyed piano for years playing mostly classical stuff but never really got good enough to just jam along with any current music and make it sound credible. I got to that stage in a couple of months on a guitar.

If you plan to play rock, pick guitar. If you prefer classical, pick piano.

13

Learn both.

I’ve been playing guitar for over thirty years. I started playing piano six years ago. There are things that I can do with guitar and singing that I would never have been able to do without having taken piano - there’s something extremely valuable about opening up the neural pathways to playing multiple voices at the same time.

What the heck? You’ve got a piano at the moment, right? Why let that go to waste? No matter which instrument you pick, it’s the dailiness of your practice that matters, not the length of time you play on one particular practice session. Half an hour a day of each - why not?

A side note - the number one with a bullet hardest thing about teaching/learning as an adult beginner is keeping the repertoire beyond your current grasp but within your reach. We are surrounded by music that is artificially perfect, because that’s the nature of recording now. Hearing all that recorded music makes us want to take on things way beyond what we can do. There’s no point in studying Trigonometry if you haven’t mastered division, and there’s no point in trying to play Liszt if you can’t play Clementi. That’s one of the big problems with Classical piano - you don’t hit the fulfilling stuff until about Grade 9.

But it’s worth learning…

14

Adult piano student here. I never had instrument lessons of any type as a kid, so I was pretty much at “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” level when I started, just shy of my 49th birthday. My aims were personal enjoyment and exercising a previously undeveloped part of my brain – I wanted to keep my middle-aged years from being a time of stagnation. Guitar lessons would have fit the bill for me, but I just liked the sound of the piano and the expansiveness of it. 88 fucking keys! Arms going in opposite directions! Deep bass and delicate high notes! Guitar could likely take me to those same places, but the piano just spoke to me.

Fortunately, I found a teacher who understands my motivations, and an excellent series of instructional materials aimed at the adult learner. That is to say, instead of learning “The Farmer in the Dell,” I had beginner pieces like “Lean On Me” and “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”

Three and a half years later, my enthusiasm is still high. I wouldn’t call myself proficient, but I can look at a page of sheet music and know how the notation relates to my instrument, the timing, the dynamics. And with practice I can offer up recognizable (and satisfying) versions of pieces by Scott Joplin, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Billy Joel, and many, many more.

In short, which instrument draws you like the piano drew me? What kind of music do you want to play? Go with your gut.

15

I play both, and would recommend piano, all other things being equal. As others have said, it’s easier to learn about music on a piano. But if you’re just going for “fun factor”, maybe guitar is best.

Of course, there is no reason you can’t start out on piano and then add guitar later. That would be my recommendation. It’s what I did, so it must be right. :slight_smile:

16

This guy is quite the example of why I chose guitar. I’m not quite to his level but I’m working on it.

From Gordon Lightfoot:
Don Quixote

Song for a Winter’s Night

17

This is exactly the point I was going to make.

I play both and I think the piano is easier at first to be able to play something resembling music, but once you get good at the guitar, it is more versatile if you can progress beyond strumming a few chords.

Plus, the guitar is so much cooler.

18

There are musical considerations to be made in this choice and many people here have discussed those. Another way to look at the choice is through your hands. I love holding a guitar. I love the feel of my fingers on the strings. I love the feeling that I am ‘squeezing’ out music. I also like the feel of a keyboard, but it has to be a high end keyboard where the keys give just the right amount of resistance and are very responsive (i.e. you have a lot of control over the dynamic range). High end keyboards are not cheap & I never really had access to one, so I play the guitar. A well made guitar is not cheap either, but in my opinion they are more attainable than an equivalent piano.

My experience with pianos is rather old & there may be good alternatives out there now that I am not familiar with.

19

Can a midi keyboard substitute as a practice instrument for piano?

I’ve thought about taking piano lessons and using the midi keyboard I bought 10 years ago. It’s been in the closet too long.

20

Or you could just learn to play a keytar…:smiley: