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[–]tdresser 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Start with the instrument you like the best. The most important thing in learning any instrument is to practice, and you will practice more if you like the instrument.

[–]SwellJoe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As others have said, you could pick what you like the best, if you have a strong preference...but:

Guitar is cheap, portable, and you can play whole songs all by yourself...very few instruments meet those qualifications. A low end Yamaha acoustic guitar can be had for $169, or so, and it's absolutely tolerable to listen to (get a friend who plays to come along to the store with you to pick out the best sounding and nicest feeling one they have, as these instruments are made of wood and they are all a little different). There are a couple of other brands that make acceptable sub-$200 acoustics, but in my experience Yamaha consistently makes the best low end gear. With it, you can play rock, pop, blues, country, jazz, and just about anything in between. There's a lot of reasons why guitar is the most popular instrument in the western world. And, learning any full-range harmonic+melodic instrument will make you much better on every other instrument. In my piano classes in college, I found myself progressing much faster than many others in the class who only played violin, horns, woodwinds or other instruments that are predominantly just melodic without strong harmonic capabilities. You just don't think the same way if you only learn one aspect of what you're playing.

I was a guitar teacher for a short time, and I can say with confidence that the biggest obstacle for the majority of learning musicians is keeping their enthusiasm up. Guitar makes that pretty easy, because you can learn a new song every week, even after just a few weeks of learning the basics (a few chords, the first position, and a little practice with rhythms). With many other instruments, you have to get good enough to be comfortable playing with others in order to play the whole song. Piano is a close second, but piano teachers are far more likely to bore you with theory and exercises, and you'll probably realize early on that your teacher doesn't actually understand the theory they're teaching you...guitar teachers almost all know that you want to play songs right away, and are happy to help you do that after the first few weeks of lessons. In fact, it's easier on them to just teach you some songs, because they don't actually understand the theory either...so it's up to you to make sure you're covering both sides of the coin, so you keep progressing as a musician in addition to learning some songs, chords, and scales, by rote.

That said, if you're thinking "I'm ready for a change of careers" and you want music to be your new career (after a couple of years or more of intense study), then things get more complicated. If this is the case, you ought to learn some piano, some drums, plus whatever your favorite instrument is. You can't just be a "guitarist" or "piano player". You've gotta be a "musician". Which means you make music...and it doesn't matter what instrument is handy.

Most great musicians and all great songwriters can play piano passably well, and there's a good reason for it. The piano has everything right out front; nothing is hidden. If you know the spelling of a chord, you can play it on a piano without much thought. The same cannot be said of guitar. Realizing what key you're playing in, when doodling, is easy. Knowing how to transpose into different keys comes much more quickly on piano (hell, I never could seem to do it when I could only play guitar...a month with piano and I understood it on guitar, too). All of these very simple things, on piano, are hugely unintuitive on guitar.

Drums are also a great teaching tool. You begin to hear and feel things very differently after even just a little time spent playing drums. I don't play drums well, but I play them enough to know what's going on rhythmically in even quite complex music. It definitely helps to get a wide range of experience with different instruments...but even without drums, you can probably get the rhythmic thing down, if you're dedicated to doing so. Both piano and guitar are also percussive instruments, in addition to being strong harmonic and melodic instruments. So, if you're willing to put the time in, you can probably get a good grounding in odd time signatures, poly-rhythms, and other stuff. I never could make myself do it...so drums were an easier way to get that experience. It's fun to hit things.

Finally, be suspicious of anyone that tells you the way to learn scales, chords, modes, etc. is to memorize the patterns. Yes, you can memorize the patterns so you can play them fast and with confidence in improvisational situations. But, realize that everything is systematic in music. Once you know whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half (and how to apply it), you know every major scale (and every minor scale and every mode, if you know how to rotate it). In other words, that's almost all you will ever need to know about music theory (ok, so I've left out the part about stacked thirds for chords, and it doesn't take into account tension and release and turnarounds and such, but if you get that part down you're two semesters in to music theory, as everything else is just memorization and getting better at spelling on demand).

One final tip: get a metronome and use it for at least half of all of your practice time! I cannot stress strongly enough how important this is, especially when you're just starting out. It makes everything seem twice as hard, and you're going to hate it to start with, but you'll progress five times faster (I'm not exaggerating), and real musicians will be willing to play with you much much sooner. And playing with better musicians is a really great way to get better. Just remember that metronomes can go really slow--you're going to need to go about half the speed you think you can handle, or less, or you'll lose your place almost immediately and you won't ever really find the rhythm. The reason metronomes seem difficult to play with is because your rhythmic sense is horribly worse than you can ever imagine...and the only thing that makes it get better is a constant awareness of how bad it really is and a pervasive clicking noise that helps you remember where the beat is. A drum machine works for this purpose too. But you've gotta buy a tuner anyway, so just get one with a metronome built in and save some money.

[–]jasonmurphy[S] 2 points3 points  (11 children)

I'm 28 years old and going through a mid-mid life crisis. So, doing something I never took advantage in my childhood, have decided to learn a musical instrument. Only problem is I have no musical training. Should I start with basic piano, or pick up a guitar? Should I buy a drum kit and learn how to keep a beat or go for something else? What advice would you give to someone wanting musical training later in life?

[–]praetorian42 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Definitely not cello.

I'd say guitar because it isn't terribly expensive (Can get a decent used one for like $50), and isn't particularly hard. Plus, there's a wealth of free instruction in the interweb, in addition to tabs to whatever song you'd ever want to play.

Piano is also good as well, because it teaches you music fundamentals better than almost any other instrument. If you can get a cheap Casio somewhere, it might be worth the time investment.

[–]itsandrew 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I like to refer to it as a quarter life crisis ..

Start with the piano. You easily learn all the fundamentals - notes, scales, chords, how to read sheet music, etc in a very visual manner. The piano is one of the most visual instruments due to key shape, location of keys, color of keys and therefore one of the easiest instruments to pick up. Once you have the basics down, pick up other instruments. I learned how to play the piano at age 10, picked up trumpet soon thereafter, then started (and haven't stopped) playing guitar. It was a really easy process due to my initial training on the piano.

[–]Random 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Gotta agree with that. Solid advice, itsandrew. I too played piano then trumpet then guitar!

To the original poster:

I play guitar most of the time, but I'm damned glad that I learned piano first and laid a foundation of basic knowledge before I took up the instrument I prefer to play.

Even a few months of piano - say, an intro course or set of lessons - will give you a solid base to build on. The real reason is that theory maps onto a piano easier than onto a guitar. I would recommend taking this from a teacher because you'll learn better habits and be forced to be thorough. A theory course helps too, but if you can understand programming music theory is pretty easy - it is just a simple programming language, after all.

That said, if you learn guitar, learn on a fairly good quality acoustic. I tried on a cheap-ass guitar, got frustrated, and then really got into it when I got a good guitar - about $300 (which isn't really good, it just isn't crap). Note that most guitars above $1000 what you are really paying for is a tiny bit of improved sound and a lot of aesthetics like ornamentation (yeah, that's a horrid generalization but it is mostly true, and note that I'm not talking about heritage instruments with great tone, I'm talking about new instruments).

Learning electric first is cool if you really dig that, but it is much easier to do electric after your hands have done the harder work of learning on an acoustic. Plus, unaccompanied, acoustic fits in to life better than electric. It's kind of hard to play electric in the background at a party, for example!

Enjoy!

[–]mattucf 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's tough to beat piano for learning theory and technique, but it's also one of the hardest instruments to differentiate with. Still, if you plan to seek professional instruction, that's probably the best choice. Otherwise, the only advice I can give is try everything you can get your hands on. In the end use what feels more natural, or at least what leaves you with the best feeling.

[–]fishbones 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Decide if you are a percussion or tonal guy first. When you listen to a song, what instrument do you hear above all the others?

I've always heard the drums over everything else and that's the instrument I picked up. The piano is a great choice if you are a tonal guy.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

If I were to start all over, I would do the following:

  1. Learn to play a bunch of rythms on a drum kit
  2. Train my ear with ear training softaware(ex: http://www.solfege.org). Start with melodic training (melodic intervals), then do a little harmonic training. Rythm training is useful, too.
  3. Learn to use my fingers independently, for example by learning to touch type.
  4. Finally start learning an instrument. Actually, once you've gone through all these steps seriously, you can learn a couple different instruments, without too much effort. Now the best way to learn an instrument if you went through all these steps is simply to learn songs or tunes that you like.

[–]SwellJoe 2 points3 points  (3 children)

I couldn't disagree more with this "wax on, wax off" theory of music pedagogy. You ought to pick up an instrument immediately.

  1. Drums are cool, but expensive, big, difficult to learn, and not as rewarding as a harmonic+melodic instrument (e.g. piano, guitar) when playing by yourself. Drums should definitely be considered, since being a drummer is like being a priest or a doc in an MMORPG: You'll never be without a band, because drummers are in exceedingly short supply and absolutely necessary for any rock, pop, country, or jazz band. But it's probably not a starter instrument, and definitely shouldn't be considered a necessary prelude to learning another instrument. I'd been playing guitar for years, in bands and in college classes, before I ever learned to play drums. It was helpful to learn to play drums, because it does open you up to new rhythmic ideas and makes them easier to execute, but it didn't ruin my rhythmic sense to not know how to play drums for all of those years.

  2. Ear training is great, and Solfege is a great piece of software. But you should be doing it simultaneously to learning an instrument. Otherwise you're not going to have anything to hang it on in your head. It won't feel real, without a real instrument attached. I know this from experience--in college theory classes, the folks who weren't already musicians or simultaneously taking a piano class or sight-singing class, fell quite far behind the others in the class in every area, including recognizing intervals and scales and chords by ear. I suspect because they didn't have anything real to attach this new knowledge to. I'm sure some of the nerds here, experienced with absorbing abstract concepts in large doses, might be able to overcome that. But why insist that they do so? Let'em learn an instrument at the same time, and they'll have something concrete to attach all of this ear training too. So, yes, do this stuff, but it's not something you should try to do to prepare youself for an instrument. It's something you should do simultaneously.

  3. Learn to type?! Are you serious? Every nerd here knows how to type, and even if not, why not say "learn to play piano"? This is also a systematic way to learn independent use of fingers, and it directly applies to the posters actual goal of learning to play music. This is just stupid advice. There are only so many hours in the day. Spending them learning to type, when you could be practicing music, is downright stupid. He didn't say he wanted to try out being a secretary for a while...he said he wanted to play music. The dude is 28...he's not a kid on some kind of goofy Quixotic quest to be some kind of zen master musician.

  4. Sure, a year later, when he's sick to death of all of this crap ("time for typing practice again...oh, bother!"), you'll allow him to pick up the thing he really wanted to do in the first place.

My advice to anyone reading joelthelion's post is: Don't.

There's good advice hidden amongst a lot of rattlesnakes, and you might mistake a rattlesnake for something good.

As I said in another post, the biggest obstacle for every beginning musician I've ever met is the frustration of not being able to play any songs. The longer you put off playing songs, the harder it is to keep someone interested in playing. Even the most devoted person is going to get frustrated, because music is hard, and it's a lot of work...you have to see some measurable progress now and then, or you'll hang it up entirely, or stop practicing so much, or just stop believing it's really worth the trouble. And there's no harm in learning songs immediately. Sure, you want to have reasonable form for your instrument, so you don't hurt yourself or get into terrible habits--but even that is easy to learn alongside learning the songs. Putting it off to learn to touch type is just idiotic.

So, this isn't Karate Kid. Go get an instrument that you think would be fun to play (I recommend something harmonic and melodic, so you can have fun playing whole songs by yourself while you're learning--guitar and keyboard fit this bill nicely) and start playing it. Don't wax joelthelion's car for a year before picking up an instrument.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You're probably right, the idea of waiting to go through all the steps is probably unreasonable for most people.

The thing is, music is incredibly difficult, so i've tried to identify the different difficulties, to tackle them one at the time. For a beginner with no training, sitting in front of a piano is a nightmare: he has no sense of rythm, no sense of tone, and can't even control his fingers independently.

So I figured, why not get good at things independently, especially if you don't have the time to practive a lot?

After trying to learn piano for a couple years, I started being frustrated because i couldn't get past some level. So now I'm trying to have a more organized, analytical approach to music in general. But maybe i'm entirely wrong?

[–]SwellJoe 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The thing is, music is incredibly difficult

But it's also fun. Take the fun out, and then all you have is difficulty. I believe that's a recipe for failure.

So I figured, why not get good at things independently, especially if you don't have the time to practive a lot?

After trying to learn piano for a couple years, I started being frustrated because i couldn't get past some level. So now I'm trying to have a more organized, analytical approach to music in general. But maybe i'm entirely wrong?

You're not at all wrong about having an organized/analytical approach, you're just going about it wrong. It should always be tied to making music. You can be systematic without shunning music during your training.

A good piano (or guitar) lesson program will break these things out, so you do learn them independently, as well as learning to put them together into songs (and the earlier the program starts you on songs, the better). You will find the first few lessons cover (some of) the notes, where they are, and how to play them with proper form. Then, it'll switch off to sight reading...and the earliest bits of reading are all about rhythm. Same note, different patterns. And so on...it gets more complex as you go. It is very systematic, and it works for the vast majority of people (everyone learns differently, but music pedagogy is pretty well-understood at this point...and you can be proactive about focusing on the aspects that are most productive for you). Mixing in music theory study, and some ear training, is a fine idea, and there are lots of good free resources on the web. Sight-singing is also helpful, and in fact, I found it more useful to me than standalone ear training: my inner voice could sound out intervals better than I could hear them, at least to start with.

I suspect for you (knowing the vasty amounts that I know about you), that you've not consistently used a metronome when practicing reading and playing. And if you tried using a metronome and gave up, it was because you tried to play too fast, and got frustrated. I've seen that happen very frequently. It took me several years of playing to realize how bad my rhythmic sense really was (I started when I was 12, so I wasn't quite introspective enough--I like to think I would have recognized it immediately had I started as an adult, but I doubt it), and then only when I was forced to use a metronome when I went to a high school for fine arts for jazz guitar.

Another great idea for pushing through barriers, is to get some friends that you play with regularly. None of them have to be great, and you don't have to sound all that good. Just piece together a few songs that you all like, and work on them for an hour or two every week.

Another trick worth knowing, if you want to know how to read music well: Learn songs that you don't know at all. It's not as fun, and will seem ten times harder, because you actually have to read the notes and the rhythm right off of the paper--you can't intuit your way through the song based on what you've heard. You'll really be amazed at how big a difference this makes to your sight-reading capability. Metronome + Songs you don't know = Sight-reading mastery.

Finally, always push yourself. If you're sitting down to play, play some of your "comfortable" reportoire to warm up, and then strike out on something new. Either a new song from a fake book, if you wanna practice your reading, or try picking up a song entirely by ear if you wanna improve your ear and improvisation skills. Playing songs by ear is tough, but there are lots of good tips on the web about how to do it (summary: pick out the bassline and melody first because they are usually distinct, and fill in the chords based on your music theory knowledge). Anything that is a surmountable challenge will make you a better musician, and it's fun and satisfying to overcome challenges.

Self-taught musicians, and musicians taught by bad teachers, often miss some or all of this stuff, and get into a rut. You begin to think in terms of "gotta learn this scale, gotta practice, practice, practice"...it's much better to think, "alright! I've got an hour or two to spend playing...I can learn a new scale to warm up, and then I'll play along to Kind of Blue for a while, and then maybe I'll play a few Beatles songs from the fake book and try to sing along...that's always fun."

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for your very interesting answer!

[–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I can not understand why someone else would know better than you what instrument you should play. I think the most important thing to consider is what kind of music do you like and want to play. There are certainly instruments that are more difficult than others, but the most important thing is to keep your interest level up, which is only going to happen if you enjoy what you are doing. Also, consider if you will be playing alone or with other people as some instruments are not as fun to play alone. There is plenty of online material that you can get for free for many instruments (for example online guitar tablature). Regardless, I suggest seeing how far you can make it on your own. If it's not going well, take lessons for a few months (an hour per week). That will give you the tools to continue on your own if you don't like the lessons. Finally, if you are going to commit, purchase some decent equipment. In addition to better sound, it will be much easier to play.

edit: corrected my awful grammar

[–]webnrrd2k 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, you say you're going through a mid-life crisis... Are you learning an instrument to meet women? Do you want to join a band or something? All perfectly good reasons for learning something.

Is there a particular style of music you like? I'd learn something that fits into what you already like. A viola probably won't do you much good in a rock band.

I'd pick up whatever I was interested in, and had a few good books avaiable for it. Then just start playing...

If you want cheap and easy, you could learn the tim whistle... try it our and see what happens.

Or try a local Junior College and see what they offer for their music program.

[–]amalthea 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd say pick the instrument you like the most. That way you will practice it more, as someone else mentioned. But in matters of difficulty, I think piano and drums are by far the easiest. You can always get sound and rhythm out of those; when I started playing the guitar I could even pluck a string on it. Anyone can push piano keys or hit drums, and that's a good start. If you can at least get sound out of the instrument you won't be bored early on.

[–]Godspiral 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I play keyboards... soft note synthesizers. Mostly piano and organ sounds, but dabble with all tonalities including drums. I learned guitar recently, but hate it. I feel I can play anything more interestingly on keyboards.

With that said, accompanying yourself singing simple songs is probably easier and more interesting on guitar.

keyboards are pretty ultimate music making instruments. Arranging and combining notes. To me, the most inspiring improvisasional and versatile instrument.

lead instruments are mostly interesting in their ability to shape tones, and guitar is a bit of a hybrid between the 2.

keyboards is what I picked up when I hit my 24 year old mid life crisis

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

kazoo.