which musical instrument is easier to learn, or more fun to play?

im thinking of learing electric guitar, but it looks like a pain in the butt to learn

12/22/2009 11:00:37 PM

piano if you want to be a real musician

guitar if you want to get laid and/or play stairway to heaven.

12/22/2009 11:01:22 PM

guitar it is then

12/22/2009 11:03:02 PM

^^ lol perfect

12/22/2009 11:03:26 PM

whats in it for me if i become a "real musician"
a badge?

12/22/2009 11:05:10 PM

bass



FREE JACO!!!

12/22/2009 11:05:58 PM

Like most, I made myself learn to play acoustic guitar in college for the women and to kill time. With a few chords and ultimate-guitar.com you can jam on most of your favorite rock songs in a couple weeks. Lead(electric) guitar takes much more patience and skill. It's much like piano lessons, you need to practice your scales every day, lots of memorization, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I started playing piano more recently, and I haven't touched my guitar since. I started playing "rock piano"...playing by chords much like guitar. Unlike guitar, you can't just strum, you have to learn patterns and riffs to keep the rhythm going, and a certain amount of improv is downright expected with your right hand. Every style you switch to needs a new set of riffs and tricks. But it's much more rewarding I think, and plenty of people still have pianos in their homes or community centers so you can occasionally sit down and have some fun in public.

My advice, buy a cheap Casio as well a guitar. When you're learning your guitar chords, learn the piano version as well. Just looking at how piano keys are laid out will help the guitar make more sense.

Also: Bass guitar is the top four strings of a regular guitar. Much like playing lead, you need to learn your scales and memorize positions. The only difference is how you thumb the strings, more or less.

[Edited on December 22, 2009 at 11:15 PM. Reason : .]

12/22/2009 11:12:00 PM

Quote :

"piano if you want to be a real musician guitar if you want to get laid and/or play stairway to heaven."

well played, sir, well played

12/22/2009 11:20:39 PM

^^thanks, you've taken all the joy and excitement out of learning music

[Edited on December 22, 2009 at 11:22 PM. Reason : .]

12/22/2009 11:22:04 PM

in all seriousness, piano will give you a better foundation if you are serious about wanting to learn to play music. i don't necessarily agree with the classical approach, but its important to have at least a cursory understanding of music theory.

Guitar players that rely on tabs, 'licks', and or drop D tuning all end up sounding like Nickelback.

12/22/2009 11:26:53 PM

i cant imagine playing piano for "rock" lol
its like doing square dancing to rap songs

12/22/2009 11:29:39 PM

what? lots of rock bands have a keyboard player. how do you think that organ/synthesizer/piano sound gets there?

12/22/2009 11:32:17 PM

Quote :

"in all seriousness, piano will give you a better foundation if you are serious about wanting to learn to play music."

QFT

12/22/2009 11:32:39 PM

12/22/2009 11:33:52 PM

12/22/2009 11:40:59 PM

Speaking of him, I picked up "The Great Gig in the Sky" the other day. Took me about an hour. Most of that whole album is just bouncing between a couple chords with blues solos and some neat chord transitions.

Personally I'd much rather just play organ/synth/whatever.

Quote :

"lots of rock bands have a keyboard player. how do you think that organ/synthesizer/piano sound gets there?"

I hate it when bands go on tour, hire a killer keyboard player but hide him behind the drums or something. Muse does that shit. You don't have to make him part of the band or anything, but at least let the audience see him. Might as well be playing with a recording. HELL, THE FUCKING BEATLES HAD A KEYBOARD PLAYER DURING THE ROOFTOOP CONCERT, BUT THEY WOULDN'T ALLOW HIM TO BE FILMED.

[Edited on December 23, 2009 at 12:00 AM. Reason : .]

12/22/2009 11:56:24 PM

I have a friend who likes to fuck guitar players. I was also at Rum Runners with some friends one night and saw one of the piano players get surrounded by girls after he stepped off the stage to take a break. If you're trying to learn so that you can pick up girls then you can't go wrong with either.

12/23/2009 12:57:25 AM

^ i play guitar.... whats her name

12/23/2009 1:08:46 AM

boys that play piano are the hottest

and this one is my favoritestestestest <3

12/23/2009 1:34:34 AM

I play piano and guitar

12/23/2009 1:36:09 AM

12/23/2009 1:36:31 AM

<3

[Edited on December 23, 2009 at 1:37 AM. Reason : ^^ thats hawt ]

12/23/2009 1:37:15 AM

when will the bass player get love

12/23/2009 1:40:05 AM

when all the guitarists and pianists are dead?

though honestly i'd do the drummer before the bassist. that's just me though

12/23/2009 1:43:18 AM

LOL

12/23/2009 1:45:57 AM

damn i learned the wrong instrument... 12 years of frustration

12/23/2009 1:49:05 AM

i mean the fact that you can play anything is still awesome. I can't play shit. i wish i knew piano. i loooooooooooove piano. it's so pretty.

also i want to learn how to play all of the SoCo and JM songs
/fangirl

12/23/2009 1:53:06 AM

guitar ftw

12/23/2009 1:57:19 AM

When you play guitar you can get away a little bit easier with being a shitty singer. If you can play piano and sing on key, the ladies will swoon.

Problem is you can't take it with you like you can with a guitar.

12/23/2009 1:59:15 AM

Play a harp.

12/23/2009 2:01:41 AM

^^ but you can do back flips off it

12/23/2009 2:03:55 AM

^I saw Billy Joel do that...while playing a harmonica. He knows how to put on a show.

12/23/2009 2:05:04 AM

Quote :

"When you play guitar you can get away a little bit easier with being a shitty singer"

+1

[Edited on December 23, 2009 at 2:25 AM. Reason : that was terrible ]

12/23/2009 2:24:52 AM

Quote :

"hate it when bands go on tour, hire a killer keyboard player but hide him behind the drums or something. Muse does that shit. You don't have to make him part of the band or anything, but at least let the audience see him"

the live performances I've seen usually have bellamy just going back and forth on guitar and keyboards himself, kind of crazy but I guess he loves to play both

12/23/2009 2:50:21 AM

^is that the singer? I thought the singer for Muse played the keys.

12/23/2009 2:51:19 AM

Quote :

"when all the guitarists and pianists are dead? though honestly i'd do the drummer before the bassist. that's just me though"

dropdeadkate

Unless the bassist is Tal Wilkenfeld--then she moves to the front of the line.

12/23/2009 3:04:16 AM

greatest bass player on earth

12/23/2009 3:17:24 AM

^definitely ridiculously good

12/23/2009 3:30:51 AM

I have a friend who's awesome at piano and likes to play soft improv stuff, I'd sometimes take a killer nap to him playing some soft piano.

no homo

12/23/2009 3:34:58 AM

problem solved

12/23/2009 3:53:55 AM

I took piano lessons for a few years as a kid...i can't really play it well nowadays (i could sit down with some music and figure it out, i guess, but realistically i'm not much of a pianist these days).

I totally agree that it gives you a good foundation for music in general. I learned how to play the clarinet in band in elementary school, and it was a pretty easy thing to learn, since I already knew all the music theory basics from piano (again, I couldn't really play a clarinet worth a damn right now, although I don't think it would take too much practice to relearn it).

From there, though, I taught myself saxophone and guitar, and have been pretty good at both of them when I'm in practice (it comes and goes depending on my schedule.


I would say that the piano is the most difficult to learn, though. If you ever want to play in a band, I recommend picking pretty much anything but guitar, though. You'll be much more useful and sought after. Guitarists are a dime a dozen--nobody is going to want you to play in a band until you've been playing for years and are pretty good, because there is really no shortage of people who can play guitar well. If you are halfway decent with pretty much anything else, you can probably find yourself a spot.

12/23/2009 1:52:28 PM

and as far as piano not having a place in rock bands? Even besides all the aforementioned synthesizers and organs, there are plenty of bands with a plain old piano. Ben Folds Five was pretty much geared around piano, and didn't even have a guitarists (although Robert Sledge killed on the bass). Warren Zevon used guitars and stuff, but a lot of his songs are pretty much piano-based. Lynyrd Skynyrd, while largely guitar driven, had a very good pianist in Billy Powell, and featured him prominently in lots of songs. Bruce Springsteen has generally had a piano in the E Street Band. Guns 'N Roses used some piano on the Use Your Illusion albums. Jimmy Buffett has featured piano in some of his songs, and hell, even Motley Crue broke out the piano on Home Sweet Home...maybe some other songs, too, but I can't remember.

12/23/2009 2:00:39 PM

Quote :

"The only difference is how you thumb the strings, more or less."

This isn't even close to being true.

Quote :

"HELL, THE FUCKING BEATLES HAD A KEYBOARD PLAYER DURING THE ROOFTOOP CONCERT, BUT THEY WOULDN'T ALLOW HIM TO BE FILMED."

Also not true. There are plenty of shots of Billy Preston during the rooftop show, just not in the music video cut of "Get Back".

12/23/2009 2:35:41 PM

Quote :

"guitar if you want to get laid"

and multiply said pussy by 10 if you can also sing

12/23/2009 2:37:17 PM

Quote :

"^I saw Billy Joel do that...while playing a harmonica. He knows how to put on a show."

Billy Joel is fucking awesome... I saw him twice his last full tour

even if the audience is mostly 40 and 50 year olds

[Edited on December 23, 2009 at 3:20 PM. Reason : don't know if you were joking or not, but I'm definitely not]

12/23/2009 3:19:45 PM

you know, i have played guitar for 15+ years. not once has it ever led to me getting laid.

i have obviously been doing it wrong.

12/29/2009 11:28:51 PM

My fingers are too small to play guitar

I personally think a man who can play the piano well is sexy as hell. Seems any douche can pick up a guitar and sound halfway decent.

12/29/2009 11:29:49 PM

well, i also play piano, but don't get a chance to practice nearly as much as guitar. i could probably still bang out "music of the night" or some other phantom gayness.

bwn?

[Edited on December 29, 2009 at 11:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/29/2009 11:31:58 PM

^^i think you've got that backwards
piano is much easier than guitar

[Edited on December 29, 2009 at 11:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/29/2009 11:32:19 PM

Pushing keys is easy. Playing piano halfway decent is not. Or at least not as easy as guitar.

12/29/2009 11:35:48 PM