I dislike the flute when it comes out wheezy. I can’t stand it. I want the boldness of a fife.
I used to like the harpsicord, but lately it’s been getting on my nerves. There was some piece by mumblemumble Bach on the radio this morning that had a harpsicord twangling frenetically away on top of a full orchestra and it just sounded like a steel-stringed guitar being repeatedly dropped down the stairs.
That Casio synthesizer sound made so popular on Dr. Dre’s albums. Eminem uses it too in stuff like “The Real Slim Shady.” It is the single worst musical instrument sound ever conceived. Nails on a chalkboard. Maybe I feel this way because I had some crackhead neighbors who never slept and felt the need to blast The Chronic at 8am on a Saturday. I grind my teeth just thinking about that keyboard sound. :mad:
Anyone who’s ever been through Toronto’s elementary public-school system can sympathize along with me when I say, with all my heart: the recorder.
I don’t know if it counts, but I think there should be a voluntary recall of all vocoders. It may be the worst effect for guitar ever concieved. Unless you are Peter Frampton, and you are playing “Do you Feel Like We Do”, and even then it should be somewhere that I don’t have to hear it.
With the possible exception of Sidney Bechet, Roland Kirk and Phil Woods, I could easily do without any more soprano saxophone hacks of the Kenny G, Candy Dulfer, Dave Koz, David Sanborn ilk. I blame it all on Coltrane’s overwrought performance of “My Favorite Things”, easily one of the more disposable jazz “classics” of which the likes of Ken Burns become easily enamored.
Otherwise excellent sax players (viz. Wayne Shorter) seemed to feel obligated to pick up the soprano as a “tribute” to Coltrane, but it seldom produced any memorable [del]jazz[/del] music.
Close the thread… we have the definitive winner! 
The oboe. It sounds like a diseased duck.
An ugly diseased duck.
The Jew’s Harp has a range even smaller than Geddy Lee, and I don’t see why anyone would play one.
Only a handful of people on the planet can play the freehand Theremin well, and even they sound a little odd. The one they play on Good Vibrations is modified, with a scale attached so the player can see where to put his pitch hand.
The highland bagpipes were an instrument of war, originally, meant to scare one’s opponents on the battlefield. Many folks still have that reaction. The smaller cousin, the illen pipes, is a more melodic instrument. It has an elbow-powered bellows (so the player can sing,) and it lacks that yowling rank of drones that the highland pipes use to overpower the melody.
Brass. All of it.
Especially in those cheesy Vegas Rat Pack arrangements where it comes in like a full frontal assault to punctuate every phrase.
someday blast
when i’m awfully low blast blast
when the world is cold blast blast blast
I will feel a glow just thinking of you [no blast but get ready to hit the deck]
and the way you look tonight BLAST BLAST BLAST BLAST
Double nitpick:
You’re right - the Beach Boys used a Tannerin, aka Electro-Theramin
Uilleann pipes.
I’ve liked Cannonball Adderley’s soprano playing, granted that I haven’t heard a lot of it.
I like most of the instruments listed here (saxophone, flute, piano, oboe). Can’t say I’m too fond of the bassoon though.
Well, this has been interesting. I’ve been keeping track of the comments on the bagpipes, and here’s what we’ve got so far:
Pro:
silenus (post # 11): “love the bagpipes!”
OtakuLoki (#26): “favourite instrument”
SurrenderDorothy (#27): “love bagpipes”
delphica (#35): “love the bagpipes”
Con:
Loopydude (post # 8): “sound to me like someone is violating a goose.”
Beware of Doug (# 13): “carbohydrate bloating”
panache45 (#18): “cats being tortured”
Rodgers01 (#23): “screeching noise”
Kalhoun (#29): “never considered them an ‘instrument.’ They’re more of a torture device for me.”
Kilvert’s Pagan (#37): “They sort of mosey around whatever note they’re trying to hit, and eventually, sometimes, they hit that note once all the other nearby ones have been attempted.”
AskNott (#49): The highland bagpipes were an instrument of war, originally, meant to scare one’s opponents on the battlefield. Many folks still have that reaction. The smaller cousin, the illen pipes, is a more melodic instrument. It has an elbow-powered bellows (so the player can sing,) and it lacks that yowling rank of drones that the highland pipes use to overpower the melody.
So, running 7:4 against the highland bagpipes, with the remaining ~ 40 posters not commenting. That’s not too bad, actually, as I’ve found that bagpipes evoke strong reactions, one way or the other. And it’s interesting that those opposed express themselves more poetically.
I found the comments by Kilvert’s Pagan and AskNott the most interesting, since they gave more specific reasons for their distaste. Kilvert’s Pagan, are you referring to the grace notes when you mention “moseying around”? The grace notes are the accidentals that are played inbetween the melody notes and are one of the characteristics of the bagpipes. Or do you mean that you think the notes themselves are not steady?
AskNott, if the drones are overpowering the melody, then that set of pipes is not set up properly. A well-tuned set of pipes is designed so that the drones produce harmonies with the melody from the chanter pipe, not overpower it. Bagpipes are a very difficult instrument to tune and keep set up properly, so it’s not unusual to hear the drones overpower the melody. That’s a fault of the player, not the instrument. But there’s no doubt that it’s a very loud instrument, meant for outdoors play. I wear musician’s ear-plugs when practicising indoors, to protect my hearing. (Oh, and the Uilleann pipes do have drones - just not as powerful as the drones on the highland pipes, since the Uilleann pipes are meant for indoor play.)
Well, if we’re going to let this morph into a bagpipes poll – I guess I’ve never really listened to them. Of course I’ve heard them as background music on movies and television, and I think they can be very effective, haunting, and interesting that way. But I can see where they’d start to be wearisome after a while. I’m not planning to go out and buy the K-Tel Greatest Rockin’ Bagpipe Hits six-CD set or anything.
Northern Piper - count me as pro-pipes. Even highland pipes (as long as you can still accept the jokes, and as an advocate of violas, I know about all that 
)
Oh. We’re being graded on how poetically we post about our most favorite instruments? :smack:
I’ve always been fond of a comment about bagpipes I’d read a few years back: “I love the way their {the audience’s} eyes go wide and wild when they first hear them.”
Part of the reason I love the pipes is that I learned to talk in Fergus, Ontario. If you don’t know what that means, it’s the home of the Canadian Highland games. I was corrupted at a young age.
Seriously, I find that the skirling of the pipes reaches inside my bones and gives me a good shake, and starts me moving purposefully to the music. Not surprising since they are, as others have mentioned, war instruments. (BTW, has anyone else ever heard the story from D-Day of the pipers who routed a German unit out of their fortificatons without firing a shot? I love that story, I hope it’s true. The only reference I can think of, at the moment is that I’d heard that there’s a section in Avalon Hill’s Adavanced Squad Leader game with morale rules for bagpipes in honor of that incident. Of course ASL is more than a little insane with all its rules…)
When I was in high school one of our teachers was a piper, and at home football games he’d walk the lines playing his pipes. Grand fun.
Hey, it’s Café Society, man! everything’s up for critical appraisal on style!
I’ve got a friend who’s heavily involved in ASL. I’ll ask him.
I don’t mind bagpipes. I come from Scots people, maybe that’s why it doesn’t drive me screaming from the room. The only bagpipe music I own is on the single of “Amazing Grace” and Paul McCartney’s “Mull Of Kintyre”. Speaking of which, when he’s played Toronto, the time always came in his show when he sat out front with his acoustic guitar to sing that song, and then the Pipes and Drums of the Peel Regional Police force came marching onto both sides of the stage, blowing at full bore, to gather behind him. It brought the house down! If that doesn’t move you, nothing will.
Steve Lacy kicks major ass.
Try Paris Blues, his two-man collab with master arranger Gil Evans.
Oh, yeah, the recorder. Hated it. It didn’t put me off musical instruments (I can play most percussion, including mallets and timpani, with a fair bit of skill) but it put me off woodwinds forever.
I’m not fond of the autoharp.