What Musical Instrument do you wish you could play?

When I was young (very young) my parents hoped I would learn the piano. (My father played well.) That didn’t last long as an idea - doing scales every week just bored me.
The only other instrument in my early life was a violin - my grandfather played and my brother (briefly) tried to learn with the same level of success as I had.
Then as an adult, (briefly again) I tried a guitar.
But this … oh wow , this would have been fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgQQ7k30Ti4

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She’s a great showman - every member of the band is, in fact. And being in a band is fun … though did you notice how the place started jumping only when the bass came in? Je dis ça je dis rien :sunglasses:

But too old to learn? Jay Metcalf (who lives somewhere in the South of France) doesn’t agree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnZdN1dHiI4

I learned a few years ago. Get a teacher (though you could probably try lessons on YT, as a late starter you’ll find proper lessons more encouraging) and a cheap alto (which is what Dulfer plays) because they’re smaller and more manageable than tenors and much easier to play than sopranos.

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As a child we weren’t allowed to do music or arts, but extra maths instead. So I yearned to play a musical instrument and at 25 could finally afford a (tenor) saxophone and some lessons. My teacher was a Greek Cypriot who had a children’s orchestra, which he nagged me into joining so for several years I played frantic greek music at weddings and so on in an orchestra where everyone was about 2 foot smaller than me. But it was fun!

Sax is still here, but haven’t touched it for a few years (I am not a very good player) but perhaps I should!

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Piano, violin and cello :violin::musical_keyboard:
Love the Sax and clarinet.

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Cello, or guitar. Apparently, I won’t be playing french horn in any local fanfares unless Covid-19 and the threat of aerosols from wind instruments comes to a resolution. Wow, what a desolate thing to consider, no more blowing my horn in public :thinking:

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Mozart’s clarinet quintet is one of the most beautiful pieces ever written. Clarinet for me, close second to sax. :slight_smile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mKUYMQsFwM

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I had another (brief) fling with a recorder - we all (I think all) had to play them at school. Again, got bored. I have friends, over 50 years on, who still play!!! It has the benefit of being the sort of instrument you can carry around in your back pocket / handbag if you suddenly get the urge for a bit of Vivaldi.

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I would love to be able to play the organ. Such a majestic instrument, although that name does not befit it.

I once worked at an old mental hospital/asylum in the deserted dusty Chapel of which there was an organ that still operated. It had a dusty, fruity, oaky smell, yellowing tiered keyboards and mysteriously named stops. But it was throaty-mellow-musky in tone, and filled the deserted Chapel with sound when I experimented with its potential in the early hours of the morning and no-one was around to investigate…:shushing_face::upside_down_face:

What a good topic! I had piano lessons but I struggled - my fingers never coped very well and I got stuck at Grade III. My parents both played piano, Mum better than Dad - she taught herself and had a very good ear. Dad played the organ in lots of churches and I got to have a go from time to time - what fun. No other instrument had tempted me. However I have sung in various large and small choirs and ladies barbershop and these days I very much enjoy writing music.

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Bagpipes. Have tried several instruments over the years, with varying degrees of success and determination - violin (my poor mother, bless her, 3 kids all learning at the same time, drove her spare), recorders of varying sizes (at school in a quartet no less), dabbled with guitar, my Dad’s Hammond organ, synth at school, piano, actually learned to play the saxophone (alas, great teacher who moved on to a greater career, causing me to drop out). Was intrigued by Chinese string instruments on my last visit to China, particularly the guzheng.

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My father too. :slight_smile: He only took it up in his sixties having played the piano from a very young age. He became the deputy organist at our local church and then would get “lent out” to the surrounding villages when they needed someone. He would also do the Christmas morning carol service in our local cottage hospital. A very different kind of organ - just a tiny portable thing. Loved those services. :slight_smile:

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I still remember marvelling at my choirmaster’s skill in Tewkesbury Abbey, and the vibrations from the organ were body piercing - Bach’s toccata and fugue in D minor. Turning the pages of the sheet music was an honour.

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OH started learning tenor sax about ten years ago. I thought my guitar was loud…that saxophone made your ears bleed. Unfortunately :wink: she had a tendon problem and had to give it up…
Me, I’d like to be able to play harmonica.

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I was forced to play piano - my gran was a concert pianist. I hated it, and was crap. When I went to grammar school, it was expected that you learn an instrument, I wanted a sax, I got a bloody clarinet ffs. Hated that too. All I can play these days is an air guitar…:sunglasses:

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Before we moved to France we had a couple of holiday cottages overlooking the estuary at Alnmouth, Northumberland. One guest asked if he could play his bagpipes out in the garden. In the still evening - broken otherwise only by the slap of ropes against boat masts, or the occasional cry of a curlew - his playing was far from the harsh noise often miss-associated with bagpipes, but was, in fact, hauntingly beautiful.

As for me - I’ve played guitar for over 50 years, but the sad fact is that I’m no better now than I was at 17 (life intervened!) - so my wish is to go beyond the old pop songs and simple blues fingerstyles that have made up my repertoire for decades, and learn some ragtime and classical pieces…

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I had forgotten this, I used to drive my family cranky playing Frère Jacques :joy:

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Aagghhh no…horrible memories just just been reawoken :scream:

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The guitar.

I played the violin/viola at primary school. It was never a “social” instrument.

Playing the guitar would be much more satisying because it is a much more “social”.

Where are you in France? Brittany, Auvergne, Berry and Limousin all have fantastic bagpipe traditions and some good teaching. Plus apart from Brittany where the Scottish pipes join the native biniou koz, the other pipes are all much easier blowing than the Highland pipes.

I play cornemuse du centre (Berry) and chabrette (Limousin) when I’m not playing oboe, recorder, bassoon or flute.

And you know what? I really, really wish I could play stringed instruments, but they just don’t “take”.

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Oh yeah. The instrument everyone should learn. The theremin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6KbEnGnymk

If you don’t have the ondes Martenot

Wonderful instruments!

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