What is the Hardest Instrument to play?

Some guy mentioned the theremin. I play the theremin, so can offer some input as to how difficult it actually is. . .

What do you play on? Did you buy it, or build it?

I want one....but don't want to shell out for a 'real one'

I'd love to know how difficult/expensive it is to build your own. (i.e. is a degree in electrical engineering recommended? Or could some poor schmuck like me build one with $21.94 spent at RadioShack)

...could you hook a distortion pedal to it?

That's all I can ask for is a set of open ears!

Check out Kenny Wheeler (listen to this record), lives in London and possibly one of the greatest composers alive...effectively straddles the blurred lines between classical and jazz...

Oh God...

And there I was thinking of buying a new car or something (sic) but I will get every record now. I'm off to soho tomorrow, I promise. Somehow I think that I will pay larger tribute (no need though, I just feel this way), if I go and buy the CDs with my own hands... Then I'll sit in the middle of the night and listen to all the CDs. And then I'll find a way to contact him (Kenny) to tell him that Robin introduce him to me and that he (Kenny) should contact Robin for further ideas... :D

Or something...

Robin, I owe you a beer or something... Whenever I'm in Canade (where I'mstarting to get more nad more people to know and want to meet) I'll get you dinner or something... ;)

As for the theremin... I actually I'm not sure about the sound... :-/ Yes and ok and everything, but still that sound does not fit me... (the myspace track was awesmoe btw). Difficultt thought? hell yes!

...if I go and buy the CDs with my own hands... Then I'll sit in the middle of the night and listen to all the CDs. And then I'll find a way to contact him (Kenny) to tell him that Robin introduce him to me and that he (Kenny) should contact Robin for further ideas...

Robin, I owe you a beer or something... Whenever I'm in Canada (where I'mstarting to get more nad more people to know and want to meet) I'll get you dinner or something... ;)

You're probably in a good position to find him - he lives in London y'know! I've met him a few times (had the privilege of performing with him in Toronto a few years back); he's a very genuine and humble person... Try and track him down!

And, by all means - if you find yourself in Canada (Toronto specifically), let me know!

One of the hardest instruments to play is the armpit. After you sound off a couple of notes, people stare at you funny. If you continue you may end up with a broken arm. Well maybe that just makes it one of the more dangerous.

Personally I find the hardest intsruments to play are the ones you either blow into or have to use your hands or feet to play.

One of the hardest instruments to play is the armpit.

I hope you're referring to a person's own armpit! :P

lol. That would make it a very very difficult instrument. I can just imagine me trying to play some supermodels armpit. Truly a difficult feat.

As a person who has (learned) most of the instruments listed above. The hardest to MASTER is french horn. It's practically proven with the amount of air and perfect embature required to play the instrument. I've played piano for many years now and french horn is my secondary instrument. Piano is hard to learn, easy to progress and hard to master but not just ANYONE can play french horn.

Every instrument is equally hard. You are never good enough. You can always do better.

I'm just going to respond to most of what I've read in this thread...

The hardest instrument? The one you don't practice.

Duh.

...

This is truth. I've found guitar by far the most difficult instrument for me to learn how to play, and the hardest for me to maintain, but it's also the instrument I probably spend the least time on. However, to be fair, the first time I picked up a bassoon I had a good tone, and when I got my own I could play the full range without many intonation problems probably within a week, despite the many fingerings. Learning all the fingerings fluently took at least a month, but the more you learn, the easier it is to incorporate more of them. Right now the only ones I ever have trouble remembering are high G#, Bb, C#, and D. But then again, I probably play the bassoon two hours out of a good month. I've had more trouble getting a good sound out of an oboe, and reeds with the oboe are much more unforgiving. Bassoon reeds will play pretty much no matter what you do to them, but often times they'll be bad on the one note you need the most.

Horn I had a bloody hard time getting used to, and it still gives me trouble, despite it being my secondary instrument. It's the hardest to play the right notes on, and getting a good tone on it is noticeably more difficult than any of the other brass instruments, especially considering you can be playing at least an octave below the trumpet with the same rim size on the mouthpiece.

Tuba is easy so long as A) you don't puff your cheeks, B) you don't squeeze your throat and get a thin sound. Flute and piccolo aren't incredibly difficult. If you get winded playing the flute, ur doin it rong. It may take as much air as the tuba, but that doesn't make it the hardest instrument to play. I find oboe more difficult - you're constantly faced with the contrary condition of having more air than you can squeeze through the instrument at any given time. Learning to deliver the proper amount of air without excess is incredibly difficult to learn how to do and something other wind instrumentalists rarely have any comparable skill in simply because they never find themselves faced with that problem.

Violin has been easier for me than the guitar, but I've had my fair share of problems with it. Notably a nice singing tone. Mostly because of vibrato. I personally can't vibrate... I have put many many hours into vibrato practice and it has simply not been natural for me. With the violin, most problems either lie in the left hand, or the right hand. With me, my problems are in the right hand, or bow hand. I don't have much trouble at all with the left (fingering) hand (except the vibrato), even in the higher range or with complicated shifts. But that all really counts for nothing since my bow hand isn't generating the best possible sound in the first place.

Harp - not hard to use the pedals, not terribly difficult to find the right notes, but it takes a lot of getting used to actually plucking the strings with a good technique. This is all I know from about 2 hours combined practice I've ever had on a harp. xD

Oddly, I would combine organ and drumset. Why? Hand-foot coordination. This is what has kept me from learning these instrument. I've spent a lot of time on drumset with no avail. Likewise I've never been too fluent with adding the feet along with the hands on the organ. I can play rather sophisticated parts with my feet alone, but add the hands and I'm utterly hopeless. It's like adding the left and right hands together on the piano for the first time as a beginner all over again. It simply takes ages to gain the sense of coordination needed. However, adding two hands together are one thing. Hands and feet work in different manners. This complicates the matter.

I suppose it depends on how many fingers you have.

Well I play a few instruments, here they are from beginning to now.

Tenor Saxophone (First Instrument) was very easy to learn and to play the music (mostly due to having to only take off one finger to go up a note) but harder to get a good tone

Bugle: After four years of sax, very hard to make a noise. I'm still having troubles with the 'same fingering for more than one note' thing and how to play the note you want.

Bassoon: I could play all the notes in one day, aside from three lowest notes, but the reading and playing proved much harder, especially with the complex fingering.

Piano: Pretty easy after practice with other instruments, but having troubles with having to move my hands so much, instead of fixed position like on the first three instruments.

So basically, each instrument has it's hard thing about it (sax=tone, bugle=loosening lips to play different notes, bassoon=hard to read music and play complex fingerings, piano=moving hands)

i think bassoon and oboe are the hardest to learn, but of course, if you don't practise, you won't learn an instrument..

I bet the Sitar has already been mentioned.

Just in case though. :P

I play violin piano and oboe, mainly. But the person who gave me my oboe let me try her English horn............

now THAT was hard

I would have figured it easier - larger reed to deal with.

Sarangi is probably harder than sitar, to whoever mentioned that.

I would have figured it easier - larger reed to deal with.

Heavier instrument.

No offense, but you are ten, your size would likely complicate matters. Bassoon would probably be almost impossible for you to play comfortably.

I think the question should be "hardest to play at a professional level".

I would go with violin (with the other strings a close second), and piano.

The violin presents an unbelievable number of complexities, starting with producing a single, in-tune note, and going on to bowing, vibrato, double/triple stops, shifting (2nd, 3rd, 4th--8th position!). The repoirtoire require amazing speed and technique.

A competent pianist (or organist, for that matter...)at the top level must have a command of music theory and possess an amazing stamina and technique. The rep. for piano is insanely difficult.

I've played the flute. It is NOWHERE near as close to being as tough as the violin or piano. While I've never played the bassoon, I can say that it is a real luxury with woodwinds to be able to press a series of keys and get a reasonable approximation of a note.

You have to consider the literature as well. No double stops or 10 note chords, three or four independent melodic lines etc... for woodwinds.

No contest...

You have to consider the literature as well. No double stops or 10 note chords, three or four independent melodic lines etc... for woodwinds.

What literature? Telemann? Ferneyhough? There's almost no instrument for which no insanely hard to play literature exists. And sure, playing more than one note at once is entirely common in contemporary woodwind literature.

"At a professional level" doesn't say much in itself. First of all, there are many different "professions" in playing an instrument, that range from teaching school children, to playing in a classical orchestra, to playing in a Rock band, to focusing on Avant-Guarde music, etc., all of which have their own demands. And even within those there's a huge range between the lower end of what may be considered "professional" and being a "world-class" musician.

Gardener--out of curiousity, are you a lawyer?

Professional= professional classical rep. performer (orchestra, soloist, chamber ensemble,etc...)

As far as the music literature goes, well, never mind. I'm not getting sucked in to THIS one...

Yeah, I'm sticking with it, violin and piano are tougher than flute and bassoon. No disrespect to either, I love them both.

It is no small comfort to know that I am not alone in this view. It is also one of the few things I tell myself to prevent me from shattering my violin aginst some hard, stationary object...

Gardener--out of curiousity, are you a lawyer?

Professional= professional classical rep. performer (orchestra, soloist, chamber ensemble,etc...)

Glad we cleared that up. And no, I'm not a lawyer.

P.S.: I actually agree that there are instruments on which it is easier to appear a "decent musician" than on others. Any brass player can pick up an alphorn and play a few notes and people will go "Ooohh, how do you DO that?!", whereas a rather skilled and trained violinist may still be disregarded because people immediately compare her or him to all the famous virtuosos they have heard. And sure, there are instruments that may allow you to get a job as an orchestra musician with less time and effort than some other instruments (which often has to do with the amount of competition there is out there). But the point is, if your standards for yourself are high enough, then all this doesn't matter, and the more "professional" your attitude is, the less such differences will be relevant and the harder -every- instrument gets. But sure, if your only goal is to earn your money as a "professionally performing musician" with an instrument, that task may be a lot easier and require less practice time on many instruments than if you pick the piano or the violin. But hopefully not every musician is satisfied that easily.

"Hardest to play" is an interesting question. One big question would be: How do you define competent? Take the violin for example (just because I play it). Are you competent when you can play every note exactly in tune? When you master the hundreds of miscellaneous bow techniques? When you can play ridiculous grace-note cadenzas without breaking a sweat? The virtuoso level for any instrument depends on the difficulty of the literature written for it (Godowsky-Chopin piano etudes...heck yeah...), so that's not really a good indicator.

Each instrument has unique challenges. It's far easier for a newbie to get a melody out of a piano rather than a violin. This means that the focus begins on the pattern of notes rather than the individual notes themselves. On the violin, it's the opposite. Playing in tune is so difficult at first that the focus is initially on the individual notes rather than the pattern as a whole.

I would definitely agree with the notion that each instrument has its own relative difficulties. As a French Horn player, I would definitely say that the clustered partials is the hardest part. However, it isn't all it's hyped up to be difficulty-wise, and after a while it becomes less of a serious issue except on huge leaps and extreme registers.

In most orchestral music, though, a virtuoso horn player isn't even required. String and piano players get significantly more relatively difficult parts on a daily basis. Once you get into extremely technical pieces or pieces with extreme range (look up Anton Reicha's Horn Trios), the competency of the player comes into play more.

So essentially, I would agree that everything is relative, and in some cases, those who play the "easy instruments" have to be better than their counterparts, since the compositions include much more difficult passages.

I'm thinking about the poor viola-- It is probably as hard to learn as the violin--same bowing, shifting, intonation, vibrato issues. You will be forced to master quick passages and reach a high level of skill.

Then...

You manage to break into a major orchestra, and spend 30 years playing middle voice accompanying parts consiting of repetitive 8th and quarter notes... Every now and again, a sympthetic, perhaps viola -admiring composers drops a riff or two, but then its back to the wasteland...

Sucks.