I’ll second the ukulele.
I’ve played a lot of string instruments: two kinds of banjos, guitar, bass. But lately, I’m really enjoying the uke. I just got a nice one called Fluke, which I really like.
Very simple to play, and sounds really sweet.
My point was more that getting competant and decent at a clarinet is easier than a brass instrument, not neccesarily that either were super-duper, pick it up and play it two minutes later, easy.
And AFG, you played French horn? Rock on! I haven’t met very many other F-horn players. it is easily the hardest of the “mouth” instruments to play. At least for me it was hard, but then I transferred to it from the trumpet, which in comparison is as easy as a clarinet! 
(I kid, I kid!)
I have a performance degree in French horn.
Which is why I work in fundraising 
.
Actually, I love my horn, and I’ve recently started to work my way back up to some Mozart horn concertos - it’s amazing what a few years of very little practice does. It’s got a beautiful, deep tone, but I wouldn’t recommend starting it with the idea that it’s ‘easy’.
The trumpet, on the other hand… .
E.
Whenever these threads come up, I always put in a plug for the Irish Whistle, also known as the Pennywhistle.
They are easier to play than a recorder. You’ll be playing your first tune in minutes. They’re dirt cheap (one of the best whistle players in the world plays with a $10 Clarke whistle). There’s a whole genre of music written specially for them, and if you want to try playing with a group you can always find a Celtic jam somewhere around.
Easy to play, easy to play with a good tone, but you can spend a lifetime mastering it if you really dig it. And because the whistles are cheap, you can collect them and find ones with different tones, quiet ones for playing at night, loud ones for jamming, etc.
There are also tons of good internet resources available. Chiff and Fipple is a large, active message board specifically for whistlers. And because so much of traditional celtic music is in the public domain, you can find lots and lots of music online.
You can pick up a whistle starter kit at any music store for under $20, containing a whistle, an instruction book for beginners along with sheet music, and a CD so you can hear what the songs sound like and play along. You can also order them online from a place like The Whistle Shop, which also has some free tutorials and music.
If you want to hear some awesome whistle music, listen to Paddy O’Malley or Mary Bergin. You can also hear whistles in quite a few pop and rock songs.
What about the harmonica? Similar to a number of the other instruments mentioned here, it’s not too hard to get a reconizable tune out of one, and there’s no fingering involved.
I always think that the guitar can’t be too hard to learn. But then again, I’ve been playing for ten years and I’m still not that great- so maybe I’m dead wrong! :eek:
Yeah, one might think… however, I know better first hand.
I bought a harmonica a couple of years ago from a peddler on a subway in Seoul for, IIRC, about $3. I had in mind learning to play it and ditching this whole “working for the Man” crap (having failed rather spectacularly with my guitar chops).
I took the thing home and commenced to wail out some meaty blues… for about a second and a half: long enough for the plastic housing on the top to rip out about a quarter of my mustache.
I threw it into the corner of the room, and as soon as I stopped bleeding from my upper lip, surrounded it with burning incense and crucifixes.
Far as I know, the satanic harp is still there in the corner of a 10th floor dorm room in Seoul. I pray for whoever got that room after I left…
Never again.
Yup…liked it quite a bit. Very comfortable to hold, which is one reason why I liked it. I tried the Baritone too but I hated that thing with a passion. And it easily had the most disgusting spit valve in the universe.
As the sister of a former clarinet player, may I just say, this is a serious understatement. A good tone out of a clarinet is pleasant. A bad tone is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, and for reasons not entirely clear to me, carries further than the good tones. If you’d like to learn to play clarinet, be prepared for a lot of squeaks and squawks at the beginning.
Recorders, by the way, have similar problems. I know they’re a popular choice for mass music education in elementary schools, but I think they’re a poor choice. Tough to get music out of them, as opposed to noise.
Oh, which instrument is easiest? Damned if I know, I played trombone
You beat me to those. Add a mouth organ aka jews harp, penny whistle, and an ocarina in that order.
Personally, I think the piano (or an electronic keyboard of some kind) is the easiest instrument to play, if you are only interested in playing a melody with one note at a time, or understanding how chords work. Musical scores are very easy to interpret using a piano, and I doubt I would ever have understood the concept of 1-step (A-B, for example) and flats/sharps if I hadn’t learned how the piano keys correspond to a musical scale. It’s not even very hard to learn chord-theory, based on notes played either with one hand, or only two fingers with both hands. However, it is not that easy to learn how to play multiple notes at a time using two or three fingers on two hands. It’s not impossible, but it’s not intuitive, either (for most normal humans, anyway).
If all you want to learn is individual notes in a melody, and you don’t care about music theory or chords, any wind instrument will do. You can get a soprano recorder for next to nothing, along with a fingering chart, and learn how to play a tune within minutes. Flutes, clarinets, and saxophones are a little more complicated in terms of actually producing sounds, but essentially as easy to learn. (I learned flute, then taught myself recorder.) Oboes and bassoons are slightly more complicated in terms of producing sound, and trumpets/French horns/tubas are also more complicated.
The guitar is good if you don’t really want to play each individual note in a melody. The guitar is gear toward chords–a “group” of several notes that are played at one time. It’s very good for choral singing, since you can simply play an appropriate chord that includes the note expected in the melody, and let the singers sing the correct notes.
I’d like to add another vote for pennywhistle.
It’s a rare thing to be able to get a real, performance quality instrument for less than the price of a loaded pizza.
They are deceptively easy to play…you’ll probably play your first tunes the same day you get it.
If you decide to really learn to PLAY the thing, there’s enough there to challenge you the rest of your life.
–James
www.flutesite.com
Saxophone, actually. Same reasons, but you don’t even have to learn to cover the open holes completely with your fingers, because it doesn’t have any! I honestly believe that anyone that can get a squeak out of a sax can learn to be competent at it within a week or two. I taught my roommate how to play mine, and it took about three days before her tone was acceptable and she knew the keys. No big deal.
Although, I’d like to point out that even though it is almost as easy as a recorder to learn to play, it takes a lifetime to master. I’m never going to do it.
Just to add that though the recorder’s dead easy to get a tune out of, it’s severely limited, mostly because the accidentals all need cross-fingering. Anything with more than a couple of sharps in is a bugger to play. That’s where the wind instruments with all the complicated keywork score - that machinery is there to make things easier, strange to relate.
Trumpet’s mechanically simple, what with only three valves to learn and not every combo being unique (third valve alone is near enough to 1 & 2 together that you very seldom use 3 alone), but it does need regular practice to build up the muscles. And by “regular”, that’s supposed to mean “every day” (as if).