This thread was inspired by my fellow violinists amati and Olentzero.
We’ve all heard about how being taught music increases brain power (I think especially in math and sciences). Since you all are the smartest people I know, I was wondering how many of us have had lessons in playing an instrument or singing. Ah, what the hell, let’s include dancing, too. Also, what’s your favorite piece written for your instrument? Feel free to brag about your talents!
I took piano lessons for 7 years, but quit after a new teacher made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t really count myself as a pianist.
I’ve taken violin lessons for 7 years also, but I am considerably better at it than piano. I love Sarasate’s Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen (I don’t want to go upstairs and look up the technical name right now).
I was a tap dancer from the age of 3 to 13. When we moved to Illinois, I quit tap and started taking up Irish dance. I did that for about a year and a half until classes started conflicting with HS cross country, and I quit that, too (although, I’d love to start up again).
What started as a joke was my routine.
I know a lot of local bands and I know obscure songs, so every now and then I get asked to do a cover. When I first did this my friend suggested, jokingly, that I should play the triangle doing the guitar solo. I did, everyone chuckled a bit and it was stuck.
I smashed my triangle on stage when no one laughed anymore, that got them laughing again. I’m sure I’ll bring it back someday.
Piano, French Horn, all sorts of different glockenspiel type instruments, and a little bit of drums. I’ve also been in drama and singing. Lemme tell you, I shouldn’t have done the singing.
Classical piano, for lots and lots of years. Then I grew up and, while I still own an electric piano (MUCH easier to move around than a real one) I tend to use it as a convenient place to set my mail
Also learned out of necessity or boredom: Clarinet, bassoon, melodic percussion (Bells, xylophone, chimes, etc…).
I can pick out the right hand stuff on a piano, but I just never mastered that whole left hand thing. Now, my brother never mastered the right hand part. Together, we rocked.
A little guitar, but nothing worth writing home about.
Drums for 17 years. Though many musicians will tell you that’s not a musical instrument. Favorite “piece” written for drums: N/A, although I do enjoy playing “Baby Got Back”.
Music and I live together every waking hour. Even in my dreams there is music. Music is a vent for me. It can make the worst day feel like the best.
I took piano lessons for four years. Oh, such bliss! My fingers flying across the keyboard was a perfect stress reliever(even in 3rd grade). Stopped because I am a perfectionist and I hated getting ready for recitals. Hitting one wrong key during my practice and I started all over again. Even if I were at the end. Didn’t sound right otherwise. I sometimes play, but not enough.
I sang for my sucky Junior High choir. Not a very good one, but at least I was part of something. I then tried out for my High School choir my junior year. I had never had that much fun. It was the lowest choir but the director made us seem like the best. We sounded like a choir should be - perfection. And many found a new appreciation for music. I then went into the same choir senior year(I suck at sight singing). The previous director got offered a job at a Texas university and moved. I hated (really) the new teacher. He was so bad that no one learned anything. My second semester I got so fed up(actually threw my song folder down and left), I left the class. He didn’t seem to want me to leave the choir. I think he was afraid of what people were saying about him. I didn’t care because there was so much happening in the class I had to see the school counselor (I was crying at one point). Singing had that much importance in my life.
I don’t belong to any choir now (because I know I suck), but just sing along with my CDs. Not much of a musical talent, but hey, I get by. Oh, and music is about the only thing that can get me choked up. Except for the death of a close family member or friend.
I took ballet(at 6), broke my arm(not in ballet, thank goodness!) and decided not to go on. It wouldn’t have helped anyway, I am too short.
I played the guitar, but it was so damn hard and confusing that I thought it would be better to just smash it and see what sound would come out of it.
Oh, and the recorder is played every so often. Elementary school introduced me to that little instrument. Loved it.
I would love to try a harpsichord at some point in my life.
[sub]Sorry if this post was lame, but this is the extent of my musical tutelage. And sorry if it was too long.[/sub]
I started playing the violin at age seven and was switched to viola the next year continuing on to to age thirteen. I don’t remember the names of my favorite pieces and it would take a couple of hours of searching through the garage to find my trunk of childhood keepsakes to find the old sheet music and lesson books. I recall having two favorites. One was a very cheerful, dancey feeling waltz and the other was a classical piece that I hated practicing with a passion. One day I heard a recording of myself playing it and suddenly realized that I had grown to love the piece. I’m struck right now by the irony of my enjoyment for those pieces then and the fact that for the life of me I can’t recall the name of either at the moment.
I took a few piano lessons, but never got beyond simple songs like “Lightly Row”, “Volga Boatman”, and “Jingle Bells” so that probably doesn’t count.
Self-taught guitarist. I play mostly in solitude for my own pleasure, it helps me relax, and if somebody else happens to hear it and like it, that’s nice too. If anyone asks, I describe myself as a stone-fingered campfire guitarist; Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler have nothing to fear from me. I took piano lessons as a wee lad for about five years, at the insistence of my parents, who thought it would be good for me. I hated every second of it, mostly I think because the teachers were always cranky people who breathed heavily and didn’t seem to like me much, but it gave me the basics that enabled me to teach myself how to play a guitar, so I suppose I should be grateful for that. But I’m not, really. Most days I think my parents’ judgement ought to be investigated.
What I’m best at is voice. I’ve been told, and I have no reason to doubt it, that I have a powerful and pleasing baritone. I use the guitar just to keep me in tune. My mother thinks I could have trained for opera and made a success of it (she’s a trained coluratura soprano herself); I think she’s out of her mind. Except for a very few pieces that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up (e.g. The Depths of the Temple tenor duet from The Pearl Fishers), opera says nothing to me.
Guitar. Badly. But I tend to keep it to myself. Very little else in the world can compare to the feeling of being in the middle of a song that’s coming out well, that’s doing what you want it to do.
Tuba. Amateur player, with a paying gig once in a blue moon.
I started late - 9th grade. Only studied privately in high school, but have kept it up since then. I play in several community and school bands, a random brass quintet when it pops up, and on occasion some weird one-time gigs that come my way. Don’t play piano (wish I did), and can’t play too well by ear (wish I could). Ah, well…
I can play the trumpet (badly) and the bagpipes. I sing Irish/Scottish tunes in accent pretty good, and can also do metal type singing, but you get me with a balad or something. Ewwwww.
I started off in 4th grade with the songflute [recorder, whatever you want to call it]. Then in 5th I played the
saxaphone, and was told I was actually very good at it. But I couldn’t take the wood taste of the reeds anymore, and
switched to trumpet in 6th. From 6th-8th I played trumpet, and quit after that because I didn’t want to go into the
marching band in high school. I’m thinking of taking up the trumpet again, actually.
About 2.5 years ago I asked a friend to teach me the guitar. He taught me the Emaj open chord and I learned the
rest on my own. Started playing bass guitar [which I’m better suited for] about a year ago.
I’d like to learn the drums, as I find them fascinating, but my parents won’t let me, at least not while I live with
them. I can’t really blame them, but I find it supremely disappointing.
I started playing Violin in 5th grade and played it until I was a Junior in High School when I switched to the Viola. I’ve been playing Viola for a few years now but I’ve been playing for a total of 8 years now.
And for my favorite pieces…
Violin: Havanaise - Saint-Saens
Viola: Concerto in G Major for Viola - Telemann Elegy - Faure [sub]This song is Fantastic[/sub] Song Without Words - Mendelsohn Prelude from Cello Suite No.1 - Bach
::OK so the last three were written for cello but we violas get the best of both worlds::
I have played guitar badly for several years and know exactly one song. Recently, I have begun an ambitious quest to learn a second song, and MAYBE even a third. Watch out!
alright, maybe i should tell you about my playing experiences? i started violin when i was 8. i played in school orchestras only until freshman year, when i joined with a wonderful group (that i now teach for) called Tucson Junior Strings. TJS is teh best thing to ever happen to me. so i was in the third of 6 groups when i started, and in a semester’s time i made it to the 5th (or second best) without lessons. however, the director told me he wanted me to take lessons, so i started, second semester of my freshman year. now i’ve been playing for 12 years, and taking lessons for 5 1/2. i just got accepted to university of oregon and arizona state university, and will be going to asu in fall as a music ed major, with emphasis in performance. i have no favorite piece but tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D maj is close. my favorite pieces i’ve played are: the bach chaconne from his partita no. 2 for unaccompanied violin (i’d like to point out that itzhak perlman recently said that this is the hardest piece to play for the violin), saint-saens cto. no. 3 in b min, and beethoven sonata for piano and violin no. 1 in D maj. my favorite thing to do is play chamber music, as those of you who have read my profile already know. i’m going to a great camp in august on mt lemmon outside of tucson that i’ve been going to for years. i get to play chamber music outside in the mountains every day for a week. if any string players are interested, they should email me, soon. ok, i think i’ve rambled enough…pretend like you care, ok?
Grew up on trumpet, learned mellophone and french horn, tenor I, and was a choir director for 7 years, plus a little community theatre thrown in for good measure.
In middle and high school, I played flute (was in a rock&roll band that did lots of Jethro Tull covers) and various saxophones and clarinets. My favorite was the contrabass clarinet, though it was bigger than I was and I could hardly carry it. Also tympani.
In my 20s and 30s I played guitar, mostly fingerstyle. Last year, at 43, I switched to mostly acoustic bass guitar, and I’m now looking around for a fretless acoustic bass. I remember back in middle school, the band & orchestra director wanted to teach me to play the double-bass, and I turned him down. I was stupid–that would have been a fun instrument.
