The sounds of badly-played instruments

Due to hand injuries, hand-clapping hurts me well into the next day. I’ve taken to carrying cowbells and duck calls into sporting events. I was quacking at a NASCAR race, and a wobbly guy in front of me turned around. “You’re not even playin’ that thing right. Lemme show you.” After he figured out which end to blow into, he made a series of ducklike noises. Then he handed the call back to me. I laughed at him. “You think I’m trying to sound like a duck; no wonder you thought I was doing it wrong! I’m doing a cartoon duck, and I’m doing it right.” Then I duck-laughed at him. “Wack, wack, waaack!”

Clarinet: An ill woodwind that nobody blows good.

OK you guys have picked fun at all there insterments

BUT I would like to ask what dose a triangle soud like when played badly ??

SlideDidge.com has something similar. These are made of PVC pipe, though. I’m pretty sure the guy I saw either made or commissioned his own. His was a real wood didge, cut in half, with a pipe extension (probably PVC) on one side and and a socket embedded in the other.

DancingFool

Anyone had the joy of hearing an unrehearsed renaissance crumhorn collective? Very much like a field of sheep, each one slowly dying of some horrible plague

Oh, I could go on for hours about oboes. Between learning it myself and dragging along a second player once I was first oboe… oy.

This isn’t strictly an oboe description, but it occurred to me, so:

“The teaching of human sexuality in our schools can also be compared to how they teach music - most students of the oboe become proficient enough to use the equipment, but they never develop the ability to give anyone else pleasure.” - Bob Smith

A square.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=197984&highlight=squirrel

According to Belnix in the above thread:

A dropped piano goes, “BBBBBooooonnnnngggggg”

…and now I think to ask. :stuck_out_tongue:
in Mr. Holland’s Opus, a girl in the orchestra struggles with a clarinet. I’ve never tried to play one; obviously the clarinetist must do more than blow into the mouthpiece to get sound out of the instrument.

IIRC from high school, a lot of beginning trombonists don’t use enough air; they try to make up for it by pinching their lips. It sounds like nerds farting when they do.

I’ve heard an awful lot of instruments being played, both well and badly. But there is one that rises above all others in the sheer impossibility of guessing the skill level of the “musician”. I refer, of course, to the hurdy-gurdy.

I would compare the sound of a hurdy-gurdy to that of a herd of mules being simultaeously gelded.

Give me an army of beginning bagpipers any day.

The one I heard was “The best way to play an accordion is with a knife.”

Among all of the awful aspiring musicians out there, one of them takes the cake. You had to buy tickets to hear her, she was so awful. The first link contains the rest of the story, the second has sound clips. (Yes, she made a CD. Two CD’s, actually.)

http://www.maxbass.com/Florence-Foster-Jenkins.htm

http://www.counterpoint-music.com/specialties/ffj.html

Also, an alleged quote from an unnamed member of the Chicago Symphony Brass Section:

“The thing about late Schoenberg is, the better you play it, the worse it sounds.”

A badly played piano sounds like “Heart and Soul.” Or maybe “Für Elise.”

A badly played guitar sounds like “Stairway to Heaven.”

Never work in a music store. :slight_smile:

I spotted a poem about people playing the tambourine in church:

I see some tambourines here
There’s really quite a lot
Some of them are keeping time
But most of them are not

I thought that was supposed to be the saxophone?

Q: Why do bagpipers always walk around while they play?

A: They’re trying to get away from the noise.

I’d rather pretend I didn’t hear that, Sol. I prefer the sound of the accordion to that of instruments commonly used these days.