Cello.
I play guitar badly now, my second choice would be to master guitar, electric blues, blues rock.
I’d say it’s a toss-up between bagpipes and sax. Both are so insufferably cool that I just can’t decide between the two.
I am also fascinated with the Anglo concertina, but my musical talent just isn’t up to the challenge. I love to listen to them though.
Lute. Which is truly pointless as the only people who appreciate lute players are Ren Faire types and Ren Faires just ain’t my scene.
Guitar. My skills have deteriorated form competent to rudimentary. I want to be a virtuoso (without all the time, sacrifice and practice, that is).
…or harp, because I love the sound.
I think I would have to go with the cello.
Pipe Organ.
Tough choice, but probably cello.
Or piano.
Or cello.
Or piano.
Ok, cello. Just have to get me a piano sidekick, like these guys
If only. <3
Just curious, Czarcasm - why do you eliminate voice from our possibilities? Granted, it isn’t an instrument and a singer uses a strange blend of some of the skills of a musician and some of the skills of an actor, but it is a discipline well worth pursuing, and difficult to master.
As the question stands, I’m divided between piano and guitar - both are instruments I’m working on, and so I’m painfully aware of my limitations and what it’s going to take to exceed them. Both have a wealth of fantastic repertoire that remains beyond my reach and my grasp, and both are immensely satisfying in those rare moments when a performance goes as well as you could have hoped. Choose one over the other? That’s like choosing between my two kids…
I play both the mandolin and the piano; both well enough to know a few pieces and sound reasonably competent, but neither especially well. I love bluegrass, but if I had to pick one to master, it would be the piano, since it adapts to a wider range of music.
The banjo. And I’d like to own one with a fiddle-shaped peghead!
Piano. I just about mastered the clarinet and saxes, but still was limited without piano training.
The reason why piano is so notoriously difficult to master is that the keyboard is hard wired for C major (and the church modes). When you want to learn another key, all of the hand shapes for the scales and chords change. Therefore, it takes years of practice to become proficient in all keys. It’s similar to the Qwerty keyboard where a bad design becomes the standard and it becomes impossible to change because millions of people are used to it.
The solution is isomorphic keyboards where all musical intervals have the “same shape” on the keyboard.
One day I will get a MIDI capable isomorphic keyboard. For now, I can barely play keyboards in a couple of keys and enjoy fooling around on this cheap isomorphic concertina. Of course, my skills would improve if I actually practiced.
Violin, for the same reasons as Freckafree. It’s portable, has various styles, can be solo to ensemble, and sounds good alone.
Maybe I would say piano if I didn’t already know how to play. I don’t play well, or when anyone can hear, except my kids when they were too young to know I wasn’t very good. I didn’t take lessons long enough to learn any theory or even chords, and cannot play by ear or change keys. It’s just for my own entertainment.
I do credit the training with making me a very fast typist,though. Sightreading notes and letters are about the same.
Either the violin or the theremin.
I find the violin to be incredibly expressive.
Theremins are just cool.
Organ first and the rest nowhere. I have grown fond of the trumpet since “accidentally” taking it up ten years ago, but the organ’s the love of my life and likely to stay that way. Although pipes are great, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a really good electronic.
Electric Guitar; the greatest and most flexible instrument ever created.
Right now I’d say oboe. I’m just very taken with the haunting quality of its sound.
Violin - I saw Midori and Itzhak Perlman in concert, and it was there and then that I thought that to really be able to master it and to perform it all over the world on the scale that they do, must be one of the best jobs ever.
Trombone. I already know how to play it (or at least I did, years ago) and it would be wonderful to master.