So, I'm nearly 40. I used to play guitar, bass and drums a whole lot in my early years - mostly in punk, ska, or raggae bands (or some weird varients of) But I have never taken a music theory course in my life.
Then after college I stopped noodling with instruments and carried on living my life. Marriage. Career. Kids. etc.
But now I'm at that "omg I need some me stuff again" state. And my first instinct is MUSIIIIC!!!!
I'm the guy at work with gigantic headphones on in his cubicle ignoring every angle of corporate social engineering to be plugged into spotify soaking in whatever I'm in the mood for.
But I'm really REALLY REEEEEAAALLY feeling a sudden but very deep interest to take a legitimate serious stab and learning practical music but in a real way. Not in a "play then pause the CD to figure out the chord progression 100x" way.
So, I hope this is the right place to even spill this gripe / giant wall of text, but here we go:
I have a natural acclimation to music. I've never taken lessons, but I can play some semi-complicated things by either memory, pattern recognition or in most cases intuition. My strongest (by a gigantic margin) musical gift was drums.
I've spent less than 10 hours in my life on the throne of a drum set, but I can sit down and play a Dream Theater album to 95% accuracy simply from memory and natural inclination.
Now as you've probably gathered the issue is I'm not a young man: I have kids and a household and all that good stuff. I can't just go and get drums and wail on in the basement keeping everyone awake.
Thankfully my interests are strong and varied. My "gift" was drums, but I feel no remorse in wasting them to pursue another musical avenue. I played guitar and bass in some ska bands (which is fun and has its' own merits of complications) but I want to sort of get involved into something more pure. More traditional and....forgive me for sounding like a total hipster asshat: more pretentious and of a higher skill ceiling. Something that I can spend the next two decades learning and studying without hitting a ceiling.
I have a deep respect for Jazz and Classical music. I've always wished I had a traditional middle-upper class upbringing where I was forced against my will to take piano or violin lessons or something and that when I hit this stage of my life, I had something tangible to fall back on.
But I don't and that's ok. But I want to start now. Better now than ever I suppose. And hopefully it'll leak over to my kids in the coming years.
So here are my thoughts, dilemmas and questions, spewed completely randomly after a gallon of beer and youtube:
I have an interest in the following instruments or disciplines:
I like #1 because: It has always been presented to me as "the smart man's instrument" or the "gateway to music theory" so to speak. IF you're learning how to build a house, you don't start with making granite countertops: you start with a strong foundation. And piano has always seemed to be the King of instruments. Two hands functioning in complete independence has always blown my mind. The volume of music theory is probably the largest available for this instrument. Every musical genre uses Piano and for good reason.
Piano gives you an incredibly wide birth of music genres to explore but also the absolute best of technical music theory foundations to learn and build from. From Classical to Jazz to coldplay. You can cover, learn and do it all. It's hard to go wrong with piano.
Violin feels the most niche of instruments right now to me, someone who is, admittedly insanely ignorant to classical or traditional music. It isn't used as widely as the other two in terms of genres - however it is still expressive as multi-note chord. (in that I mean sax is single note output which makes it sort of easier in comparison)
Sax - My impression of sax is this: the easiest to get into - single note expressions yielding a low barrier of entry but a high skill ceiling. However that ceiling probably doesn't reach that of violin and doesn't even COME CLOSE to that of piano. But sax is used more widely than violin. I can learn jazz, classical and if I want to get weird there's Ska, fusion funk and world music. And whatever else. Also, high quality entry level saxophones can be had for only a couple hundred dollars these days.
The last thing I need to consider is outside of lesson and teacher availability I need to be able to practice this at home. In an environment where I have young kids no less. For piano I can get a good, mid level keyboard and simply plug in some headphones to it and away I go.
Sax and violin: probably not so much. At least that I'm aware. They are completely acoustic.
The one very random but fascinating thing I'm turned on about the sax though :It is the most steam-punk looking of all the contemporary instruments. It's the most bad-ass looking piece of equipment I've ever seen.
If a sax player, violinist and a pianist were stuck together during a zombie apocalypse: everyone would be hiding behind the sax player.
Heeeelllllllp!
Submitted November 22, 2019 at 12:37AM by DrSuckenstein https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/dzva1d/question_violin_sax_or_piano_lots_of_questions/?utm_source=ifttt