No skill music playing?

March 11, 2008 2:54 PM

I don't play music. I want too. What instrument should I learn?

What would you recommend for someone who has never played? I cannot read music and I have never played music before. Even back in Music class in school while everybody else played flutes, I pretended. Now I'd like to learn something. A guitar would be cool, I've thought about a harmonica, drums, and trumpet as well. A problem is that I get frustrated quickly if I don't see results. What would be the best instrument to learn to play rather quickly? Low startup cost is a huge plus.

posted by TheDukeofLancaster to Media & Arts (28 answers total)

A starter guitar costs about $100, and you can learn three chords in a couple hours, with which you can play rudimentary versions of many, many songs.

You'll be able to entertain yourself faster than you would with a piano, trumpet or drums, but to get good, like any instrument, you'll need lessons and lots of practice.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 3:02 PM on March 11, 2008

Guitar. A cheap guitar will be sufficient for learning, and you can learn enough of the basic chords to butcher some pop songs in a few weeks. Recommend lessons - although not strictly necessary, a good teacher can help you learn faster.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:04 PM on March 11, 2008

You sound like there's a ukulele-sized hole in your heart. They're super easy, super fun, great for singing along alone or with friends. They're portable, inexpensive and you'll sound great after, oh, an hour of mastering a few chords. There are a gazillion online resources for learning chords, strums and fingering. If you decide you don't like it, you're not out a whole lot of money.

But you'll like it.

And if you DO like it, you can move on to the guitar or bass.

The uke is for you, I'm telling you.
posted by hollisimo at 3:05 PM on March 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Guitar. I faked it through learning the recorder in fourth grade and never learned to read music. Guitar tabs (i.e., notation that tells you which fret on which string to play, rather than telling you A flat, e.g.) are ubiquitous online, as are chord progressions (i.e., notation that tells you by name, rather than by notes, which chords to play). Much of pop/rock is just E, A, D (G), so once you train your hands to make those chord forms, you can play a lot. Plus, you can pick up a pretty serviceable first guitar on the cheap--check craigslist. I've tried my hand at harmonica and drums, too, but guitar is relatively easy to pick up, and you can 1) sing while you play (assuming you can sing--I can't) and 2) you can make melodic music by yourself (hard for drums, although fun).

Good luck!
posted by Admiral Haddock at 3:07 PM on March 11, 2008

My brother-in-law went through a variety of instruments before finally settling on and learning harmonica. He liked the extreme portability, although he had to own multiple ones to play in different keys. It helped that he was a fan of many harmonica players and thus had tunes to practice and players to admire. Harmonica would be very cheap to start up with. I'd suspect it would be easier to pick up harmonica than trumpet, having played trumpet. There is technique and endurance with lips and lung power to be gained before harmonica becomes easy.
posted by dr. fresh at 3:09 PM on March 11, 2008

I'm entirely biased towards acoustic guitar-- start with Ring of Fire and work your way up. Good chord guide here and look for songs at Ultimate-Guitar.com.

You don't need to be able to read music to play the guitar, chords and tab are your friend.

Also, blues harmonic in Bb could be fun. Some excellent tutorials on Youtube. The best being KudzuRunner who has a whopping amount, and he's rather good. The first one is here with the others following in a similar naming form (Gussow.XXX) where XXX is the lesson number.
posted by Static Vagabond at 3:11 PM on March 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

Avoid any instrument which routinely requires you to drain spit from its innards.
posted by wfrgms at 3:17 PM on March 11, 2008 [3 favorites]

I suggest piano. If you can play the piano, and learn to read music, you can play mostly anything.
posted by nikksioux at 3:18 PM on March 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'll second wfrgms about the spit-removing. Or any other instrument that requires regular maintenance anytime before, during, or after playing it. I myself have only gone for instruments that require the occasional dusting.
posted by Xere at 3:24 PM on March 11, 2008

Guitar. Easier to play the first few chords well. that gets you going like nothing else--early playing of actual music. It is an easier instrument.
posted by Ironmouth at 3:32 PM on March 11, 2008

Start with an instrument that you like the sound of and one that suits your hands. For example, if you have short stubby fingers with fat fingertips like me, a guitar or uke is just not going to work with you, where drums just might.

A problem is that I get frustrated quickly if I don't see results

Then it really doesn't matter what instrument you pick up, because a big part of acquiring any degree of musicianship is always and forever finding new ways to hear stuff you wish you could do better, and doing better takes endless, endless practice. Occasionally you will get one of those "Aha! I can do that now!" moments, and they are beautiful things, but by and large improvement is just going to be gradual and slow.

So, learn to make a friend of frustration. Learn to accept that you will feel it almost constantly as a learning musician (and there is no other kind of musician), and learn to let it motivate you toward more and more practice.

And get a metronome. A good mechanical one, with the swingy arm thing you can see, not one of the useless electronic beepy faux metronomes. Practice with a metronome is vital - not because you want to play at a set mechanical speed (you don't, for most music), but because you do want to teach yourself to sync-up with a beat you're not making yourself, and a metronome will not get annoyed by your endless ability to fail at this.

But seriously: start today. The first thing you need to learn is how to just sit and tap your left foot in time with some music that you like, all the way from the start of the piece to the end, without losing track of the beat.
posted by flabdablet at 3:34 PM on March 11, 2008

If you can wait for it to be released, Guitar Rising is a Guitar Hero type game that is actually going to let you use a regular guitar to play it. Theoretically, it is supposed to teach you to actually play guitar while you play the game.
posted by slavlin at 3:34 PM on March 11, 2008

How about electric bass? It's fairly easy to get good enough to jam but it's complex enough to spend your life on if you want to. Plus bassists seem to be in much higher demand than guitarists, at least around my city.

If you really want to be in demand, learn drums. They're more expensive to start though, and a heck of a lot louder.
posted by sjl7678 at 3:41 PM on March 11, 2008

Guitar. Cheap, portable, fairly easy and very satisfying. Unless you have a band to jam with you won't get much joy sitting playing the bass (unless you happen to be really passionate about it.)
posted by fire&wings at 3:53 PM on March 11, 2008

It's always good to have an egg shaker or two around.
posted by mammary16 at 4:11 PM on March 11, 2008

I've had decent luck teaching people "Smoke on the Water" and such by tuning a guitar to an open E5 chord. One finger is all you need.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:46 PM on March 11, 2008

I agree with most commenters that guitar or bass would be the best choice -- they're both useful and easy to get started with. If you want to prioritize getting good really quickly, learn bass. If you want to prioritize developing a well-rounded sense of how music works, or being able to hold your own without being dependent on other musicians, learn guitar.

Piano is extremely difficult. If one person starts learning guitar today and another person starts learning piano, think about where they'll each be in a year. The guitarist can have fun playing awesome solos (assuming enough daily practice), while the pianist will be diligently trying to get through intermediate pieces. I just don't think piano fits your criteria.
posted by Jaltcoh at 4:59 PM on March 11, 2008

Seconding "Harmonica" (with a qualification).

Pros: If immediate feedback (in terms of "rapid increase in playing proficiency") is important to you, You can't do much better than a Harmonica. You'll be markedly better at it after the third,(even very semi-focused) 20-minute practice session. You'll be playing a song, at least. If you practice, say, 4 more times, you can fake at least one pretty-good blues riff that'll probably near-knock-the-socks off of a layman. "I didn't know you could play harmonica!" (Just... keep the fact that you're no virtuoso, and that your playing is limited to 3 blow, 3 draw, 4 blow, 4 draw a secret until you put in some more practice. That said... it's still an impressive riff, even when played at a low skill level).

Cons: Are just inverses of the pros really. It's simplicity and portability and ease-of-adoption come at a price. Chord playing is clumsy (and somewhat useless, and in the sense of banging out a song on demand... "impossible"), notation is amateurish, your song library will be very limited if you don't invest the time in mastering different "positions"... and a bunch of other stuff. Also, personal bias, but it's not a very "sexy" instrument (inasmuch as I find neither "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" [or most of the folk-cannon] NOR "improvisational blues wankery" very sexy.

Still. Can't beat the price (Buy a Hohner "Special 20" in the Key of C for $20) and some $8 book of instruction that speaks to your learning style... and you'll be making music--music that might even impress yourself and your friends (albeit in a limited and superficial way)--inside of a week.

(And then learn guitar or piano). (<--- One of these days, I'll listen to my own advice and get around to this step.)
posted by cadastral at 5:08 PM on March 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hollisimo's got it. Ukulele all the way. Cheaper, easier, and more portable than the guitar. Quick results even if you just teach yourself using free lessons from the internet. It can be played quietly while you're learning if you're shy, or loudly while you're playing with other people if you're not. You can be playing a song within minutes. The strings are plastic and kinder to tender fingers than most guitars.

There are Meetup groups all over the place, which are great even for rank beginners. You will be exposed to a wide range of music and quickly realize you can play pretty much anything on the uke if you want to. And as a group, uke players are extremely friendly and helpful to beginners.
posted by bink at 5:21 PM on March 11, 2008

Guitar for sure. I've played piano and flute extensively in the past, the piano a bit more so, and though my proficiency at guitar is nowhere near my proficiency in, say, flute, I find the guitar a lot more rewarding.

It's got a super-low start-up cost and you don't actually need to know how to read music in order to figure out the tabs, since tabs are ASCII-image representations of the fretboard, really. Ultimate Guitar is your friend for popular music. Classical guitar music I'm not as familiar with, you'll have to poke around a bit.

Either way, I'd recommend acoustic guitar over electric, for what it's worth. You can sound like a decent player with a bit of practice with the acoustic; with the electric, you won't sound like those awesome solo-ists without the proper amps, pedals, etc. etc.
posted by Phire at 5:58 PM on March 11, 2008

I've played (or attempted to learn how to play) several instruments in the past, and I found the piano to be the most enjoyable and easiest.

In my brain, it seems the most logical - all the notes are laid out (in order) in front of you all the time. I initially struggled with other instruments like the flute or guitar since I had to remember different finger positions for each note.

One could argue that you need to learn finger positions for the piano too, for playing chords. However, once I learned to read sheet music and knew what each position on the clef meant, it's all in order too. (Hope that makes sense, it was difficult to put into words.)

flabdablet has a great point though. "Start with an instrument that you like the sound of and one that suits your hands." I've got long fingers, so it makes reaching from one piano key to another six keys down fairly easy.

Good luck - my mom teaching me piano and taking lessons is something I really appreciate now.
posted by youngergirl44 at 7:59 PM on March 11, 2008

Recorder. Single line instrument on one clef much easier to learn before piano, and the recorder has the fewest number of issues (no rosin to buy, hand positions to fret over, etc). Flute another option along these same lines. Good luck!!
posted by Melismata at 9:12 PM on March 11, 2008

I love the guitar, but the ukelele is definitely easier if you want fast results. Unlike the guitar, it won't hurt your fingers even when you're just starting out,
posted by tdismukes at 9:18 PM on March 11, 2008

Piano. Visually, the link between what you're doing with your hands and the sounds that result is the most straightforward, making the basics easy (though expect to plateau for a while after that), and giving you a good grounding for any future instruments. Having experience with piano is what enabled me to pick up guitar quickly.
posted by regicide is good for you at 9:46 PM on March 11, 2008

Ukulele. Cheap, easy, comes in different sizes, excellent gateway instrument to guitar but cheaper and easier to learn.
posted by primer_dimer at 5:59 AM on March 12, 2008

I've played piano for 45 year but six months ago started learning guitar. The learning curve on the guitar is a lot faster. I'm playing things on the guitar in six months it would take several years to get to on the piano. That being said, the piano is more rewarding on the brain. Unless you're a top flight guitarist, at any given time you're either strumming or soloing. The piano allows you to play bass and lead simultaneously. I can also see how you can learn the guitar without knowing much about music, but the piano somewhat demands that you learn more about the thing you're learning ... and thus, ultimately, will be more rewarding and lead you more easily to other things. Also, some people who want to sing as they play find the piano – since you'll be playing the melody with your right hand – helps keep you on key, wheras with guitar, you have to assert a little more unguided vocal control. In short (and, yes, this is a broad generalization): Guitar is fast. Piano is deep.

But, dang, do learn something. I can't tell you how playing an instrument, any instrument, improves your life.
posted by lpsguy at 6:22 AM on March 12, 2008

if you're still in school (high school or university), buy a bass and join a band. it's dead easy to play bass, and if you join a reasonably decent band, you get the glory/buzz of getting on stage and playing to a crowd without having to spend years learning your craft (you could probably get up to speed at playing simple stuff in a rock band with 3 months of dedicated practice)

once you're playing bass in a band, if you find you have any musical talent, you'll wind up switching to whatever more complicated instrument takes your fancy as a matter of course, and doing a side/solo project - it's inevitable. if you find you don't really have a lot of musical talent, you can just keep playing the bass.
posted by messiahwannabe at 10:33 AM on March 12, 2008

I'd say it really depends on whether you want to play music by yourself or with others.

With others: bass, drums, harmonica could be very rewarding.

By yourself: guitar. Maybe piano. Ukulele if you're more casual about this whole thing.

What kind of music do you like? If it's Bach, you're better off with piano. If it's Radiohead, guitar's a better choice.

I'm another piano student (took a few years of lessons, never got good) who moved on to guitar - I can play a few songs very well after 6 months, and can play pretty much any folk/pop song to some degree.

I also spent a year trying to learn bass, but found it endlessly frustrating-- very sore fingers, and there are very few songs you can play convincingly using only a bass. The "Peter Gunn Theme" gets old after a while. Guitar hurts the fingers less and even with two chords you can manage to play a few songs well enough for people to sing along.

Guitar has been endlessly frustrating - but also rewarding. I think the two go hand in hand.
posted by mmoncur at 12:15 AM on March 13, 2008