Classical piano and guitar. Rock drums.
Guitar: some fingerpicking, some flatpicking. Favorite tunes: Winin’ Boy Blues (inspired by Jorma Kaukonen) and You Win Again (inspired by the Grateful Dead).
Some harmonica, mostly just blues riffs, nothing outstanding.
My music teacher inspired the guy from the Simpsons. But he smelled bad too.
So, I have learned (and totally, utterly repressed) how to play the trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, and guitar.
My strat sits in the corner trying to make he feel guilty.
But… I can dance like death!
I spin and play the drums.
I have played drums for about 18 years or so.
I have played guitar for about 10 years and bass for about 8. I play a little (very little) piano as well. I spend a lot of time as a “1 man band” recording at home. The only instrument I play with a band currently is drums though.
Took piano lessons as a kid for a couple years, switched to violin shortly after. Had stopped playing by high school, when I switched to the trombone (that stopped when I graduated high school) finally picked it back up again shortly after getting out of Georgetown. I lack the discipline to practice daily, for which Mamma O give me no end of grief. And deservedly so. My favorite pieces are some songs by a Swedish composer named Carl Michael Bellman and that’s about it.
I also have a mandolin I bought twelve years ago that is apparently strung with guitar strings at the moment; it, like Valkyrie’s banjo, sits in the corner and completely fails to make me feel guilty. Once I get the discipline to practice the violin daily, then will it be their turn. I especially want to get Valkyrie jealous that I’m doing better on the banjo than she is.
In chronological order:
Piano - elementary school & senior year HS (actually I’ve always had a keyboard around but would never consider myself a keyboardist) - my current fave: the Adagio from Bach’s Italian Concerto (F major)
Baritone Horn - elementary school. can’t remember any faves.
Drums & Percussion - elementary School until now (pushing 40) Drums faves: Rush, Genesis, Yes, Crimson, Zappa, Dead. Percusson Fave: Suite for Marimba by Alfred Fissinger. Also Bach violin music translates well to Marimba so there was always some Bach around.
Guitar (primarily fingerstyle) & Bass - college until now.
Guitar fave: melancholy British stuff - Bert Jansch
Bass Fave: I’m trying to figure out Habib Faye’s bass parts in Eyes Open by Youssou N’Dour. Not having much luck, but they’re awesome nonetheless.
Never did anything for my math, unfortunately.
I learned to play guitar and banjo fairly late in life. I’ll never have the skills that develop when one begins at an early age. But even so, I’m glad I learned to play a little.
It was especially exciting for me to be able to play the Beatles’ song “Blackbird”, because it was always one of my favorites. Not very impressive, I know, but it makes me happy to be able to experience the music.
Started with piano, and played organ at the local chuch, also played mallet percussion and French horn in high school.
Went to college for music, switched from piano to voice. Learned most of the other instruments (except oboe and bassoon) for class instructions.
Took guitar lessons while I was employed as a teacher - necessary if you are teaching elementary school music.
Now - voice (mezzo-soprano) and picking up recorder again in a small ensemble. And I have an electric piano in my very crowded condo.
And to think that I chose the glockenspiel in 5th grade beginning band because I wanted to be unique (not just another in a sea of clarinets and trumpets.) I’ve never come across so many fellow keyboard percussion (aka bells, mallets, etc.) players outside of All-State band auditions.
I picked up timpani and the other auxiliary percussion instruments (other than snare) as needed to pick up the slack when I was part of a very small percussion section in NC State’s British Brass Band in college. I became very fond of Gordon Langford’s brass band arrangements there, because they were very melodic, and had well-written percussion parts (as opposed to a lot of the other brass band arrangements we played, which were clearly done by folks who didn’t like or know percussion very well.) I’ve also always been very fond of playing Sousa marches.
It was not unusual in high school band for the arrangements to come without bells parts, so my director usually just let me play the flute part instead.
Learned to play recorder and read music when I was 5 after my parents bought me a plastic recorder and a book of easy-to-play songs from The Little Mermaid for Christmas.
Took two weeks of piano lessons from the church organist when I was in third grade; then he absconded with some stolen money and I never saw him again. I continued to teach myself using the lessons out of the workbook.
Took flute lessons at school for two months, until my sister (whose flute I was borrowing for lessons and practice) got married and moved away, taking the flute with her.
Taught myself to play clarinet in one evening at a friend’s house in seventh grade; haven’t played since.
Joined school chorus in sixth grade, stayed in until my junior year of high school. I didn’t have room in my schedule to take it as a senior. I was lead alto and had to keep my section in tune.
Attempted to play harmonica at age 15. Failed.
Started teaching myself acoustic guitar two years ago, and acquired an electric last year. I’m not too great, but I try, and there are a few songs I can absolutely nail, like “The Thunder Rolls” by Garth Brooks and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica.
Bought a fiddle last year in hopes of learning to play. Unfortunately, the fiddle doesn’t stay in tune, due to the cheap-ass nature of the bottom two tuning pegs. The top two strings are fine; however, this limits the sounds I can produce somewhat drastically. I can play the fiddle line to the Dixie Chick’s “Cowboy Take Me Away” and that’s it.
Attempted drums last fall, but I don’t have the necessary rhythm.
Yo so un bassist. I’m in two bands, Rocksuck and Requiem, the first is a hardcore band that’s just a lot of fun, and Requiem is my serious band that sounds sort of like a cross between radiohead and tool. They’re both a hell of a lot of fun.
Ooops, screech-owl, I missed your post. It must’ve showed up while I was still composing mine.
Does malleting lead to straight doping?
Any other oboists here?? Huh huh huh?
(Also play piano, and I sing.)
Elly
First instrument was cornet, which I continue to play (and trumpet, too) in a ghastly fashion.
Second instrument was pipe organ. I have no access to churches any more, but I purchased a baby grand a few years ago, so now I play the piano like an organist. (“Gee, I have to keep hitting the damn key for the note to continue to sound. And what am I supposed to do with my FEET?”)
Changed from trumpet to tuba (well, sousaphone) in seventh grade. Purchased a fine old Conn CC upright concert tuba, piston valve, when I was 17, which I still have and continue to play. Major instrument through college.
Picked up various recorders during high school, when I organized a number of Olde Musick ensembles. I still have good quality sopranino, soprano, tenor, and bass. Cheap plastic alto, because my friend Rog the Bass Player always took the alto parts back then, so I let HIM buy a good one.
On graduating college and moving to NYC, took up the flute, which took up less room in a miniscule Manhattan apartment than the tuba. I now have both a closed-hole and an open-hole Gemeinhardt.
When I turned 34 I treated myself to a Beuscher tenor saxophone, dating from the late 1950s. This one I actually STUDIED, with the head of the jazz program at the Brooklyn Conservatory. ALways secretly wanted to be a sax player; for impressing the babes, it’s magic. Try it, guys…much safer than riding a motorcycle.
The great thing about my current unemployment situation is that I’m getting pretty damn GOOD on all these things.
Oh, yeah, I sing, too. Baritone.
12 years of cello playing here, sadly now gone to seed due to lack of practice, although I still have my lovely cello.
Favorite pieces include the Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano, the Bach cello suites (but of course!), the Shostakovich concerti and the cello/piano movement from Messaien’s “Quartet for the End of Time”.
Mostly these days I sing in choirs, and am pretty darned good at it if I do say so myself. I don’t do much in the way of solo singing, not because I can’t but because I have neither much opportunity nor much inclination. I used to do a lot of early music stuff, but have of late been stuck firmly in the 20th century, musicwise.
No ukulele? I sense fraud going on here…
Nope, nothing with strings. Unless you count the piano. You see, my breath is like that of the heavenly angels, so I limit myself to the brass and woodwind families.
I tried learning the five-string banjo when I was 17, but it didn’t take. I did figure out how to strum the guitar chords to “Mister Tambourine Man” a year later though, when I dressed up for Halloween as the 1965 Dylan.
I am a cello man. I’ve been playing for eight or nine years, and I love it. Played with school and youth orchesras, including the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra (arguably the premier youth orchestra in Michigan). For me there is nothing comparable to the incredible bliss I feel when playing with a good orchestra that sounds great. Orchestral favorites are most likely Scherezhade(sp?) by Rimsky-Korsakov and Mahler’s First Symphony, and fav cello pieces are Elgar’s concerto #1, Elegie by Faure (right on Cyberhwk, and I forgive you for being a violist), and Saint-Seans concerto #1.
Also, I’m with dlgirl, music is my bread and butter, there is nothing that I feel as strongly about as my music, wheather it’s the rock that I listen to on the radio or what I play, I love music.