Can anyone here play a musical instrument?

Indeed, I need to add those to the list. haha

Piano, clarinet, bassoon. One of those high school bandies, though I didn't do marching band. I usually flubbed those piano grade exams.

This has been a nice discussion here again last weekend.
I'd really like my kids to play a musical instrument. I bought some whistles and such for them to play with and they liked it but not very much...

School offered lessons so that seemed like a good opportunity but the kids were not interested.
This weekend I brought it up again and asked if they would like to play a musical instrument. Then Quinn said, 'Hmmm, I don't know, perhaps just piano or guitar'.


Yay! I think that's great. Then I asked Julian but he is a bit younger and not really thinking about these kind of things. I suddenly thought that percussion might be something because he has a lot of energy so I mentioned that and he was very excited! And when we talked a bit more about music he said 'Drums would be nice. Or cello.'


Don't know where he got that cello from, but anyway, they are a bit interested now. So I'll go find out what they can do. There is one extensive music school here in town, a very good one, with many dislocations in different areas, but it's a bit expensive and I think you need to start in september. So I need to find out if there are other music teachers who work independently and maybe a bit cheaper.

When I grew up my parents always said to me 'you can do one sport and one musical instrument' and that's why I did. I started with different instruments in a bagpipe band and later on I played guitar for a couple of years and that's it. It would be nice to pick something up again, maybe I can play along with the kids then, although I don't want to push them to do the things I never did.

Or even better: they could teach me.

A way to create your own piece of music: http://wwww.inbflat.net/

I'm self teaching myself guitar.

Day one

Managed to tune it and I can play E major.

Day two

I can play A major as well

I can remember the fingering for D major but it's so painful to play I've had to take a break. Come on calluses! Die skin!

Not really sure what that means, but he was never that big a guitarist, in my eyes, at least not in later years. I saw the Stones live in 2007, and he screwed up every other note. Which is part of the Stones' slightly askew charm, of course, but I wouldn't necessarily call it good "guitaring".

I whistle.




Actually, I used to play piano as a kid. I played lots of Hisaishi/Miyazaki music, including a piece from Laputa at a recital... it was a duet with my teacher, who played much louder than me, so the audience didn't hear me hitting wrong keys

I quitted going lessons when I was a teen, because I lost my interest in music at that moment (even though I usually enjoyed "music in films"), and also because I wanted to disobey anything my mom said

Since then I've never touched a piano for almost 10 years...

I started out by playing the piano (but forgot everything about it, except how to read sheet music).
Then I played a bit of transverse flute, which I also didn't continue.
Now I only play a bit of guitar (let's just say I know all major and minor chords and every chord that has a seven in it, what makes that? 35 odd chords or so) and I sing along with it.

Elin

Cool! Nurture your child's talent, Bregje. When I was kid (from age 4-5), I fooled around on the piano too and clearly had a musical talent as I easily learned melodies, composed my own and even found out chords (without the aid of Synethesia or anything else). One of my regrets is that my parents didn't hear or see this properly and failed to arrange lessons for me. If they had, who knows where I would have been? Maybe a practitioning musician?

The Piano and keyboard (e-piano; vintage organs; melotron; vintage synth pads and leads).

I (almost) can't read music and its all playing by ear, so my abilities are pretty limited. It's enaugh though, to impress little children, to be of some musical use at school, on birthdays and on Christmas. I master C,D,F,G and A major, A and D minor, everything else needs practicing.

At one of my last graduation balls I played and sang Alphaville's "Forever Young" for my leaving students and that caused everybody to cry. They asured me it was due to the song not to the performance ...

My parents made several attampts at having me learn the piano properly, but my ability to memorize and reproduce melodies got in the way of that. I just saw no sense in learning what I thought I already knew.

I don't really regret that. As long as I enjoy myself playing the piano my way, all is fine.

David spends quite a bit of time in his room playing on his keyboard (not a euphemism) and, like you Bregje, we don't see him for a while then he comes to play something.

David tends to record what he plays and we have to guess what he has done. Morricone (Dollars trilogy) and Zimmer (Inception) are favourites of his at the moment.

When Rachel used to play the cornet she did a great rendition of the Titanic theme - which was great.

Me? I sometimes try to recreate themes on the keyboard. But I have had to label the keys and build the theme from trial-and-error.

Will definitely give Synthesia a go!

David just does it by ear, listening to the music and finding the appropriate note on the keyboard.

Well? Pianist, what's your answer to my question then? :

What do you think of programs like Synthesia? And how do you feel about self-taught playing?

Bregje, I think it's very important that the child have some control over the direction their musical "education" takes. your daughter is really self-motivated right now, and that's a great thing. This is the first I've ever heard of synthesia. From what little I now understand about it, it seems that synthesia is more in the business of distributing fish, rather than teaching you how to fish. Is that an accurate assessment? If that's true, then that would be your biggest reason to go for a formal teacher, as long as they were a good teacher. However, if formal lessons would make your daughter less excited about playing music, then maybe it would be best not to do them. I think helping our kids make informed choices is best for their musical talents.

I responded very well to having formal teachers. My brother did not. He got far better at the piano after he quit lessons and just started playing the things that he likes. He found formal lessons too limiting. I will say, though, that because he didn't stick with them, he's not as skilled a pianist as I am. But he plays everything he wants to play - he's not interested in the harder classical stuff anyway. He found his own way and I think it suits him really well.

That never would have worked for me. I wasn't motivated enough to practice on my own without the accountability of a teacher. That kept me practicing, and practice is the single greatest contributor to skill with any instrument, imo. My first teacher was also able to teach me to play in ways that I would not have figured out on my own. I took lesson from her for 9 years. By the end of those lessons I think she had taught me most of what she knew. Once I started studying at a university I took lessons from a professor there for a semester. He was amazing. He taught me ways of looking at a piece of music that I had never thought of, things about fingering, dynamics, and practice techniques that led to incredible gains in a short time. Had I been learning from him from the beginning I think I would have been a much more technically skilled pianist than I am. At the same time, he noticed elements of my performance that were unique and exciting to him - elements that I think would have been trained out of me if I had taken lessons from a man like him from the beginning.

I agree with Martijn that there is not a right way. I do think teachers can teach us things we can't teach ourselves, and that every teacher (as long as they are a good teacher (and I don't think the importance of the quality of teacher can be overstated)) will add something different to our talents. Formal musical education isn't for everyone. Some find the structure too rigid and limiting. Those in the beginning stages may find lessons to be less enjoyable than just learning on their own however and whatever they would like. Something I think that a lot of people don't realize, though, is that while taking lessons may require a person to sacrifice a little "freedom" in the short term, those who stick with it will develop a skill set that gives them greater freedom to play whatever they would like to play in the long run. Of course if what they want to play isn't technically difficult, then maybe lessons aren't so important.