Learning a musical instrument.

[northernladuk]

Personally after playing a brass instrument most of my life I would say either guitar or piano. Anything else then you are limited to playing your on instrument (as per the rumours!!). Nothing more impressive than someone finding a piano or guitar and banging a tune out.

[hyperD]

Pondy, get yourself a nice looking axe in black, learn a few licks and you'll be beating the groupies off with a tulipty stick in no time!

Ask Clippy, he'll tell you!

[Pondlife]

Looks like stringy thing is the way forward.

Top job all.

[Bunk]

Out of those the piano probably has the easiest learning curve. The action of playing a note is simpler than the others. Once you get over the initial physical hurdles there's not a lot between them, although obviously the drums involve a different theory to the others.

Agree with cliphead though, don't get a really cheap guitar because it will make mincemeat of your fingers and put you off at an early stage. Once you've played for a while your fingers will be like leather and you can play anything but it's a false economy to start off like that.

[ChrisPackit]

One instrument I wouldn't recommend through personal experience is the Violin / Fiddle. I kind-of cracked the ukelele first, then the guitar, then I thought it would be cool to try some of the indie-folk stuff on a fiddle - thinking Levellers / Wonderstuff / Mumfords.

Harder than it looks and it sounds terrible when you're not used to playing one.

[Pondlife]

Harder than it looks and it sounds terrible when you're not used to playing one.

Selling the dream there.

How easy was Uke compared to Guitar?

[NotAllThere]

I'm with those recommending a ukulele. Cheap and cheerful. I bought one with a pickup for £65 last summer. Connected to a MicroCube amplifier it's a lot of fun.

I'm fairly sure Stairway to Heaven was written on a ukulele - it's a lot easier to play than on guitar.

Once you're fairly competent on the uke, get a decent electric guitar.

[Normie]

I ordered one of these yesterday - £8 delivered:

Stylophone

Probably the limit of my musical ability. Hopefully the kids will like it.

[ChrisPackit]

Selling the dream there.

How easy was Uke compared to Guitar?

Much easier to learn the uke rather than guitar IMO, for many reasons; less strings, strings closer to fretboard, many one / two finger chords on the uke - not that many on the guitar, hundreds (thousands) of chords to learn on the guitar, whereas you can play the whole George Formby catalogue on about 10 chords on the uke

Superb instrument though the Uke, especially with proper metal strings rather than nylons. Mine was actually a Banjelele though - a la George Formby which sound sweeter than the traditional Uke I think.

[DS23]

piano will hurt less (or not even at all). be prepared; the guitar will be quite painful. if you've never tried before it will hurt and you will get very cross with your fingers as they will not do what you are telling them to do. you need to want this to get over the hurdles. 20 mins every day is right.

i think it would help to have a musical style / direction / sound. whatever instrument you choose you should decide on the sound that you want to create. it helps in determining all sorts of stuff. for example, if you select guitar do you want to play finger style or plectrum strumming? or rather; do you want to play classical, folk, pop, blues...? decide that and then you need to get the right instrument; acoustic steel, classical nylon, resonator, uke, banjo, mandolin, electric... after that a teacher would be good idea but you need the right kind of teacher (technique: modes and scales v results: play a song type)...

good luck. i've been playing since the mid 70's. i love it. you never stop learning. i actually just had an acoustic guitar built for me.... its fantastic!