I am interested in possibly learning to play a musical instrument. My three main choices are fiddle, banjo, and tin whistle. As you might be able to tell I am mostly interested in playing Irish or Bluegrass music.
Thanks a lot.
The tinwhistle is by far the easiest to learn. End-blown flutes are easy.
It depends on the music, really. There’s an enormous amount of music for all of them. There’s probably more published music and instruction for violin, as it’s generally the object of more formal training.
I don’t actually play either, but I’ve talked with people who play both violin and fiddle styles. The difficulty of the transition between the styles seems to vary from person to person, but if you can learn one, you can learn the other.
Any form of end-blown flute is a good instrument for a beginner. You can buy them cheaply and quickly learn to play a few recognizable tunes, which is encouraging early in the learning process. The fingering is simple and embouchure (lip shape) is relatively unimportant.
Alternatively, piano/keyboard lessons are good, mainly because they provide a solid grounding in reading music. The instrument itself isn’t that well suited to your interests, though.
To finish rounding out your selection, you could try melodic percussion with a hammered dulcimer. I like them, but I can’t play one worth crap.
I’ve learned to play both violin and guitar, which I guess approximate loosely to fiddle and banjo. No doubt about it, any guitar/banjo kind of instrument is going to be easier than violin/fiddle. By a massive margin. I’d imagine tin whistle is easier than both, but I’ve never learned a wind instrument.
I find wind instruments easy, but then I’ve played flute for about 20 years. The recorder is a fun, easy wind instument to play, and I play mine along with my bluegrass buddies often.
As far as dificulity of the other instuments goes, I would honestly say that the banjo is harder to pick up then the violin/fiddle. My husband is a professional musician and has tried both- he seemed to have an easier time with the fiddle. The banjo uses finger pics and requires a LOT of practice to get a good “play along” sound.
With the fiddle, you can start by learning basic tones that you can play along with the rest of the group and move on to basic bluegrass style techniques. My husband used the Mel Bay http://www.melbay.com/index.asp method to learn fiddle (he used videos) and made out quite well with them.
Enjoy!
Zette
You could try the harmonica.
Heck, Alanis Morissette plays simple single-note and groupings on harmonica in concert and on her videos. It ain’t that hard.
But (Southerner speaking here!) don’t be discouraged if you blow into it and “Dixie” doesn’t immediately come out.
Firstly, I’d like to add a thought about which of your choices is easier to play. I’d agree that the tin whistle is going to be easier to play than either the fiddle or banjo, but to try and decide whether the banjo or fiddle is easier to learn is next to impossible without trying them youself, due to the nature in which each is played.
In Bluegrass banjo, you will be required to play with three fingers, plucking the notes with one hand, while using the other hand on the neck of the banjo. Furthermore, the banjo is a fretted instrument. On the other hand, the fiddle is a fretless instrument and, as I’m sure you know, involves the use of a bow to produce the instrument’s sound.
My advice to you would be to decide which of these two you really want to play (assuming you don’t choose tin whiste). If you are learning the instrument you really want to know how to play, you will be more motivated to practice, and have a more enjoyable experience overall.
Harmonica is a good one, but of course it’s not so easy to sing and play at the same time (though not impossible).