Or have you played something else in the past? What’s your favorite piece to play?
Edit: thanks for everyone that has replied. This has been so heartwarming to read :)
My favorite thing about me playing an instrument are the cheers and frenetic applause of my neighbours when I stop it.
Really really inspiring.
At least they notice. Nobody around me notices anything. Sometimes I’ll play something really nice on my guitar, and I’ll ask what those in the room thought, and they all look up from their phones and say, “I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening.”
Well, it was really good, and you missed out, Losers.
Is it the skin flute?
Not at all - just be having a good time.
I play guitar casually since a little before COVID. Becoming more fluent with it every time I play is an amazing feeling.
Getting into a groove, putting my own spin/expressing myself with songs I like, and jamming with friends are experiences that are unmatched in enjoyment for me.
Making up my own silly songs on the fly is fun too.
Learning to play is the best thing I ever did. I had to get over the idea that it would be hard work to get good, or the idea that I’d never be as good as someone who started as a kid, or that I’d ever even be technically good, at all. Letting go of that stuff allowed me to enjoy each moment playing, and just have fun.
When I was a teen, music was how I made money. When my friends were flipping burgers or bussing tables, I was playing in multiple bands, and playing 3 or 4 gigs a month. That gave me enough pocket money to take my girl out.
So music and income became tightly linked for a long time. I got a degree in Music History, and worked for record labels for a few decades. Then I got out of music for a couple of decades.
When I took up the guitar again during the pandemic, I had absolutely no intention of performing ever again. I just wanted play for my own entertainment. To a certain extent, I also really wanted to conquer the guitar. I played it as a kid, but I never got very good. It beat me, and that always bothered me.
I’ve been playing again for 5 years, and I’m getting pretty good. I’ve far surpassed where I was as a kid, and can credibly call myself an intermediate player. The main thing is that money is no longer involved, I’m just doing it for fun and that took some getting used to. I just do it for love of music, self-satisfaction, and mental health.
Buying all these used guitars is costing me a fortune, though.
That’s awesome you got back into it for pure enjoyment!
Gear acquisition syndrome is real though. Fortunately for me I was able to recover from it in the context of guitars. Unfortunately for me I picked up photography as a hobby…
I’ve been having fun with the vintage guitars. I find old beat up ones, repair than, clean them up, restring them, and play them for a while, then sell them when I get something new. I’ve got a few that are my core collection, and the rest are just passing through. It’s fun, and I make a little money to support my hobby.
One day, I’ll get into building them.
I have been playing acoustic guitar since childhood. I like when I listen to a piece that marvels me, then I work on it a few minutes every day for months, and eventually I start to render part of it good enough that I can find the same pleasure as listening but from the other side. One of my current study subject is Prelude n⁰1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos. https://youtu.be/Pmry5uquwDI
It’s such a classic, I played it some years ago when I still took classes. It’s not difficult on the left hand except the part where you have to slide a subset of fingers (around 1:13 in the video) while keeping your index planted I used to absolutely dread. Maybe that’s just me, in any case the version you linked is really excellent
I’ve been playing many instruments for over 25 years. Sometimes professionally. My favorite thing to do with them is just explore the sounds they can make. Really listen to the nuance of it. A plucked or strummed string, for example has such a complex waveform. When you get to know how sound works on a physics level, it’s truly amazing.
Drums. I got a used electronic kit, a lower-end Roland model, and only play it for me. I learned the basic rhythms so I can throw some tunes on my headphones and try to play along. More meditation than anything else.
Kinda basic, but my favorite is the bass. I play guitar too, but it’s a bit easier to play bass and people are less aware when you make a mistake !
People have to be listening to us to notice there was a mistake in the first place!
As someone who doesn’t like being in the spotlight, switching from guitar to bass was very liberating
I’ve been learning piano the last 3 years, and now I’m either solo or at least more front and center and dealing with that has been as challenging as learning the instrument.
Still playing with others I feel is the most fun thing about any instrument. I think I learn more and learn faster doing it as a group, and it’s just a lot of fun making music with people.
I used to program electronic music and play live keyboard until I wrecked my hearing on stage.
I picked up playing drums 1.5 years ago and love it. I’ve been teaching drums for almost 2 months now at a music school.
Drumming relaxes me a lot, it’s a good workout and even with my impaired hearing I can still play them.
Hopefully you’ve picked up some ear protection since then! Drums are loud AF and if you’ve already got hearing issues, drums will make them worse. +1 for Loop earplugs if you need some.
Don’t worry,I learnt from my past mistakes. I’ve got solid ear protection now and also wear earplugs for all concerts I’m attending.
I was a classical musician, so I really babied my ears over the years. Now I’m old, and I have a touch of tinnitus that just registers as background noise and is easy to filter out, so my hearing is still excellent.
I picked up a steel tongue drum out of pure serendipity and I can’t keep my hands off of it. The good quality ones that are hand tuned by an artisan and crafted from the highest quality steel will sound good no matter how you hit it. I started just bopping random notes with mallets, then tapping patterns with my hands, and whatever I do it sounds great and feels zen and beautiful. I don’t really play any songs on it, just patterns, but it’s like the audio version of a warm bubble bath.
There are mass market dinky derpy ones off of Amazon and they’re completely different instruments. If it sounds like a gong or a bell it’s a cheap one. If it sounds like the ethereal thrumming of the deep forest magic it’s a good one.
I used to play the recorder as a teen (it’s still deeply engraved in my mind), I even got to play on a contrabass recorder (about 1,7m tall!) but I’ve been a guitar player for about 20 years now. I got this bad girl about six years ago :
The lower strings below E are D, C, B, and A. D is super handy for medieval pieces, others relatively less frequently so but you can always tune them a little bit for any chord progression
Recorders sound incredible in consort! I play the tenor myself. Glad to see another player of early music around here.
I love recorder music. I have degree in Music History, and baroque recorder music is some of my favorite stuff.
I’ve played the trumpet for 27 years now, and have played the pipe organ for 3. Both of them professionally, and the issue with picking a favorite is there’s a ton of fantastic music!
On the trumpet I’d recommend a listen to Bugler’s Holiday, or Great Gate of Kiev. Possibly my favorite gig as an anecdote was an old Catholic Church in a poor part of the city. They had built an elevated stretch of subway what felt like inches from the church and the priest had to stop his homily every 5 minutes so the subway could go through. The organist ended with the Hallelujah Chorus and it might be the reason I have tinnitus but it was the most heavenly sounding space to play in!
On the organ, I played Schriener’s adaptation of Louis Vierne’s Maestoso in C. Straight from the get go it’s a fantastic piece to rattle the floors and wake up a church. I’d also recommend Scott’s arrangement of Hymn of the Cherubim as it is much softer and a good idea of the breadth the instrument can cover style wise.
I’d like to learn to play the organ. I have an old Allen MOS-2 in my workshop that I started doing a MIDI conversion on and just haven’t had time to finish it.
It is an incredibly rewarding instrument! I rewired a conn 650 for midi to practice at home, but most of my practice and learning came from where I got lessons. Since they’re not exactly a portable instrument if you talk with an organist/music director if they don’t have an organist there’s a good chance they’ll let you practice on the church’s instrument.
Over my lifetime I’ve learned to play like 8 or 9 musical instruments, from “can squeak out Mary Had A Little Lamb” on a harmonica to reasonable on the piano. I took band class in middle and high school and was a reasonable trumpet player, though it’s been awhile.
I’m mainly a guitar player. I’ve tended toward 6 string acoustic, finger style. I tend to like the guitar because it can hold up on its own, it can be a solo instrument in a way that a trumpet can’t. Show up to a social gathering with a trumpet, see if you’re allowed to play it, compared to showing up with a guitar.
My favorite piece to play on guitar is probably a solo guitar arrangement of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer. This is what I aim for with it, and I’ve got…most of it, not quite that clean.
Yep, grew up playing trombone in band, and string bass in orchestra, and played guitar and electric bass in basement rock bands. I went to a conservatory for college and stopped playing guitar and bass. Got a degree in Music History, went into the classical/jazz music biz for a couple decades, then my own non-music biz for a couple decades, and never played anything for all those years.
Then I was going stir crazy during the pandemic quarantine, going nuts from daytime TV, so in 2020 I took up the electric guitar, and got back to it.
I improved quickly, but about 18 months ago, I got into fingerstyle, and now I’m obsessed. All I ever wanted was to be able to play well enough to get through entire songs, and entertain myself. With finger picking, I can do that. I have a strong music background, so I don’t use tabs, I just create my own arrangements.
The result has been amazing for my mental health. I came to realize that I had been operating with a low-grade depression for a long time, maybe most of my life, but playing the guitar has lifted most of that. That’s how I knew I had been depressed - when it improved. It had just become my baseline existence.
Favorite things to play? I’m all over the place, from classical tunes, to modern songs. Some of my favorite pieces to play are two songs by Stephen Foster - a lullaby called Slumber My Darling, and a beautiful ballad called Hard Times, Come Again No More, which was Foster’s own personal favorite, and the song he used to sing in taverns for free drinks as a broke, degenerate alcoholic.
It’s so satisfying to sit on the front porch on a sunny late afternoon, looking out over the pond, and play my own music. If I was a religious person, I’d say it was one of God’s greatest gifts.
Finger picking came fairly naturally to me, and I got to the point where a pick feels wrong. I can do more interesting things without.
My favorite to play is the acoustic guitar, because it’s largely unchanged for a couple hundred years.
You don’t need to plug it in, just strum or pluck. It’s incredibly versatile, highly portable, and it sounds amazing.
My favorite thing to do is playing chord melodies. Basically, I’ll find chords to a song online and then play part of the chord and the melody on top of it. It’s a quick & dirty way to arrange an instrumental version, though I do like to sing and play too.
Yeah, the acoustic guitar is an amazing instrument. Beethoven loved the guitar, and called it a portable orchestra.
I have a degree in Music History, so like you, I like to do my own arrangements. Sure, the first draft is basically just the chords with the tune on top, but I always try to add little ornaments, deedly-dees, walking bass lines up and down, cool little turnarounds, imaginative intros and endings, etc., I usually try to arrange at least one passage that is beyond my ability, and then torture myself for a few months to master it. That’s how I know I’ve improved. I look over all my arrangements, and all the hard passages that I wrote, and then conquered, and I have actual proof of my improvement. That’s satisfying, right there.
i love to learn the theremin. but i like drums as well. i find it challenging keeping timings on each hand and foot.
But when you lock in to a new rhythm it’s like a mini orgasm in your brain.
Viola! I like its range of sound and the fact that we get our own (alto) clef makes me feel special. But you end up playing a lot of lame parts when the violins get all the melodies and solos.
Viola sounds amazing but yes, fun pieces are written for violin.
Do you know any great viola music that is on par with great violin music?
Mozart famously loved violas so he frequently gave them some love and he wrote Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major where they are the star of the show.
Beautiful piece, I can see why you love to play it, too! Must be super fun to bounce back and forth with the violinist and carry the melody.
I think one of my biggest regrets is stopping playing violin. I will pick it back up one day when I have more time, nothing else has brought me the same kind of joy, not even the other instruments I’ve learned over the years.
That dark velvetiness that violas have is gorgeous. It is too bad that not much is written for it, but at least you can adapt violin or cello music.
I grew up playing trombone. There’s no good music for that either, and you can’t even adapt other stuff well to it. I never enjoyed playing it back then, even though I love music. Today, I’m a guitarist. Much more satisfying than trombone.
Is it the same instrument that Jordi Savall plays and adapts for ? in french it’s called Violle de Gambe so not 100% sure it’s the same thing
I play early music, and what we call a viol de gamba is a different thing; the viola is fretless and held under the chin like a violin, while the viol de gamba is a renaissance/baroque-era fretted instrument that is held between the legs and comes in treble, tenor, and bass sizes.
Savall plays the latter.
To further confuse the matter, there’s a renaissance-era instrument called the vielle that is played more like a modern violin or viola.
Thanks for the disambiguation… I could have sworn that the viol de gamba was fretless ! but after looking it up I can confirm that it’s not.
Yup, they use wrapped gut frets. They’re moveable so that the musicians could adjust intonation in the period before equal temperament was invented.
Can you imagine having to shift individual frets, untying and retying them to get the instrument in tune?
What a pain in the ass. No wonder they went extinct.
I play the renaissance lute, which also uses tied frets. I just play in equal temperament because its easier and my ear isn’t that good. I’m merely an ambitious amateur though, maybe I’ll get into it one of these days.
I play guitar, but I’ve never held a lute. I’d love to try one sometime. They are astonishingly beautiful works of art. I love everything about them.
Goddammit, now I have to buy a lute.
While they look similar, the violin and the gamba family are separate branches, sort of musical cousins.
Of all the stringed instruments, the upright string bass is the closest in shape to the gamba family, and is technically evolved from that. The shoulders on a violin, viola, or cello, come straight out from the neck, while the shoulders on a string bass slope down. That’s a typical characteristic difference in shape between violins and gambas.
I play ukulele because when I miss a note or get a beat wrong it just makes me laugh because it sounds so silly. I got a banjolele too and that thing is ridiculous, but when it works it sounds awesome.
