Instruments I'd most like to learn, but won't

Subject: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: --bseed
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 04:33 PM

The full title of this thread was supposed to be Instruments I'd most like to learn, but probably wont, but it wouldn't all fit in the box.

a. the digeridoo. I haven't heard that much of it, but what a sound!

b. Indian tuned drums a la Tabla Rasa

c. Jamaican steel drums (although there is a Bay Area store that carries them, and all the other things listed above)

And, of course, anything I currently play: I'm doomed to mediocrity, I'm afraid, and although I keep trying, my kinesthetic memory isn't working too rapidly at my advanced age. But I still love every minute of practice as well as playing with others and playing to accompany group singing. --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Art Thieme
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 04:44 PM

SAXOPHONE so I can be the next Charlie Parker!

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Animaterra
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 04:59 PM

...*sigh*... the hammered dulcimer that I've carried around for 25 years and am about to sell. Button accordian (to accompany my kiddos when they dance)... Pipe organ... Will I ever get a fiddle???

Bseed, like you I'm doomed to mediocrity with the ones I do play- but singing's my strong point, I must admit. Somehow it's never enough! BTW, why not the digeridoo? Of all the nouveau instruments around, that seems to be doable!

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Big Mick
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 06:00 PM

Every stringed instrument, other than the ones I already play. I have decided that I must concentrate on those uillean pipes that I am building, because it will take most of the rest of my life to get competent on them. So I will never get to the Irish Bouzouki, Mandolin, Fiddle, Banjo (I can't believe I said that) and Harp.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 06:41 PM

Mandolin. Portable, great for songs and tunes, not so common.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: McMusic
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 06:42 PM

I'll put my word in here: 1- cittern and bouzouki--I've read that the strings are thick as cables, and my poor guitar player's hands had a hard enough time with medium gauge strings on the insrument I do play (torture?);

2- Irish pipes--I have neither the wind, nor the years, remaining to me.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Mo
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 06:46 PM

Piano! So many keys.... so little time! Mo

PS - don't knock mediocrity, without us there wouldn't be any "greats".

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Big Mick
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 06:46 PM

McMusic,

If it is the Uillean Irish pipes, the years may stop you, but the wind won't. They are played with a bellows under the arm, instead of blowing into a bag with your mouth.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 07:14 PM

Animaterra, spirit of the earth--probably because it's not a solo instrument, and would sound strange with the kinds of music my friends and I play. I should add the bagpipe and the piano--and the oboe, whose wonderful reedy, woody sound would sound great in a folk ensemble (why does no one play it?). --spirit

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: alison
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 07:15 PM

Hi,

Leaves your mouth free to chat **grin** my sort of instrument....

Took my uillean pipes to my folk club on Friday. I figured that was the only way I'd have the discipline to practice them. We had a great little session. Unfortunately I've got a bruise on the inside of my elbow today from working the bellows. so do pipers get calloused elbows like guitarists get tough finger tips?

Still sitting here looking at me are the sax, button concertina and guitar. I'm a bit like you Mick, never had much luck with anything with strings.

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: McMusic
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 07:17 PM

Mick-- You're absolutely right. And I'm so ashamed to call myself Irish. Don't know what I was thinking of.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Susan-Marie
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 07:37 PM

Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. At least not in the next 20 years. But when my kid's grown and I have more free time, I intend to give it a shot.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From:
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 07:38 PM

Wadayamean "nouveau"? The digeridoo is older than history!!

Murray

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Big Mick
Date: 14 Nov 98 - 10:44 PM

McMusic,

Easy lad, I figured you were just distracted when you wrote it.

One more that I want to learn, and am going to. (I know, I know). The lagerphone. Alan and Alison sent me a video of Alan playing it, I have got to have one.

Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 12:23 AM

Our club puts on a festival each June...one year we had 4 Alpenhorns! Went over very well...then late that evening, (maybe 10 pm..after the crew was sitting around unwinding), I happened to go outside for something...and ther was this **sound**...and I rushed in and dragged everyone out...one of the Alpenhorn players was between two buildings, playing "Amazing Grace"...and the sound was echoing and swelling and rolling...and I suddenly knew why guys will work so hard to master that weird instrument. It was genuinely beautiful...made me wish that there was more time in life...

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Les B
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 02:50 AM

Its a killer on the fingers, but I want to learn the stand up bass. It really holds a group together. But how to play it and sing at the same time seems tricky.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 06:17 AM

Soprano sax, but I think I've got too many letters in my name for that.

Now Art, that's a good name for a horn player?

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Bill "Oatmeal Savage" Cameron
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 03:13 PM

Sadly, pipes. Any kind of real ones.

Conversely, name a stringed instrument, and I probably have one and have given it a go at one time or another, with highly variable results. Except for a bass, but I definitely am going to get at least one.

People like me keep the string makers happy.

By the way McMusic, just about all larger mandolin family instruments, up to citterns if you're lucky, can and should be strung with regular mandolin strings--probably medium or heavy gauge. I looked at packaged "mandola strings" once, and I wouldn't touch 'em with a pruning pole. They _were_ as thick as telephone wires. But playing these things should and can be pleasurable for the hands!

Bill

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 05:36 PM

Our group has had a couple of bass players, but one is too busy with the Oakland symphony and the other gigging with jazz and country groups and playing with her partner for retirement homes, so most of the time we're without that wonderful bottom. Next time I get my head out of the financial hole my year's instrument buying binge has got me in I think I'll buy an accoustic-electric guitar bass. I'd love to make it a bull fiddle, but I don't think I have time to learn a fretless instrument (I may get a fretless banjo sometime) or the money to buy a decent one. --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Mick Lowe
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 05:55 PM

I think Susan-Marie has got the right idea.. the fiddle is THE instrument I crave to play. Though being an idle sorta guy I want to wake up tomorrow and be able to play it .. half as good as Dave Swarbrick and I'd be happy.
But come on Big Mick.. the "Irish" bouziuki? Now don't get me wrong ..I'm not looking for a fight in this thread (unlike others I know).. but the Irish (God bless them) have ripped off all the good music (reels, jigs and hornpipes are all English in origin by the way) and now we're starting on instruments.. the "box" (i.e. melodian or button accordian is of English origin).. the Ulliean pipes are from Northumbria.
I love "Irish" music.. it's what I play, but what are we going to get next? The Irish digeridoo?
Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From:
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 06:55 PM

i'd like to play a mandolin i hope to buy one after i pay off my pa.seed you should look into a stand up bass but you'd know more than me

the nickster

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From:
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 06:55 PM

i'd like to play a mandolin i hope to buy one after i pay off my pa.seed you should look into a stand up bass but you'd know more than me

the nickster

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 07:37 PM

At a craft fair today I saw a quotation of which Mo's post reminded me. "If the only birds that sang in the woods were those with the very best songs, the woods would be very quiet."

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Big Mick
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 08:44 PM

OK, other Mick, just like you english chaps to pick a fight by changing history so all things have come from that dinky, rainswept joint you call a kingdom. It is the attitude that seems to get you in trouble wherever you fine chaps go. The Irish bouzouki is indeed a borrowed instrument, and a fairly recent one at that. No one claimed it wasn't. But it was modified by the Irish and the style in which my people play it is unique. Unlike the english who borrow things from others and act like it was there God given right to claim it is theirs. As to all the other things you mentioned, I believe that folks from your side of the pond are suffering from culture envy. (How's that, ladies) The Irish have never claimed we started it all, just took them and put our own style to them. And proof as to how successful we have been lies in the ongoing popularity of our culture worldwide. And by the way, most of the things that you claim are english born, were actually from much earlier cultures or borrowed from other cultures/colonies. I would dispute the gratuitous assertion that jigs and reels are "English" in origin. The Northumbrian pipes are a distinctly different type of pipe from the Uillean pipe. While finding the origin of the pipes is difficult at best, they all probably had their origins somewhere in India/Pakistan, hard as it is to believe, even before the English made it part of the Empire. As to the old squeeze box, if you fine chaps came up with it, fair play to you. It is a lovely instrument when in the hands of a good musician. Mind you, I am not necessarily agreeing with you as to its origins, I just don't have the knowledge to dispute you.

And finally, I don't believe you have started any fight, my friend. As usual, you have provided fodder for a good old Mudcat discussion. I am sure we will hear from the four corners on this one. And I thank you for it.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: takeo
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 08:50 PM

yesterday i saw a catalog of LP(laten parcussion) company. and saw many funny instruments. one of them is cow utters, i dont know how it sounds like. im specially interested in samba cuica which sounds like some animals murmur. and most interesting one is foot cowbell, any drummer can ring cowbell like they hit bass drum. funny idea! percussion is what id like to learn but wont. -takeo

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 15 Nov 98 - 11:03 PM

nickster, I did look into one once, through one f hole while shining a light through the other. There was a volleyball sized queen cockroach inside, with hundreds of normal roaches running around, in and out, bringing her garbage. she looked at me with her evil eye and whirred inside my head, "just leave me be or I promise ye, ye'll wish that ye were dead." in a minute or two, I swear to you, I was ten miles from that place, and I swore right then that never again would i touch a stand up bass.

sorry. that just came out. i couldn't stop it. My apologies also to Robert W. Service. and to the queen, for bothering her. --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 02:09 AM

So, we have Takeo in Japan talking about our Bovine western percussion, BSeed going on about cockroach queens and the double bass, and a pair of Micks arguing about "Irish Bazoukis" and "English Pipes" which may or may not have come from the latest member of the nuclear club. Oh, and don't let me forget, if Bill D. is to be believed, a buncha guys with mammoth trumpets from the Swiss Alps are playing an old Scottish hymn downtown in the business section??? Did I dream the last three decades? Or is Timothy Leary just a rising star on the multicolored horizon? Ever since I started trying to play the computer my life has gotten weirder and weirder. Still, I wish I could play the recorder.

Frank in the... oh H%^%L, I don't know where I am anymore.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 02:21 AM

Frank, I think the lesson of this is that the more you learn about anything, the weirder it gets. And you have my permission to play the recorder--out in the swamps you shouldn't cause anyone too much pain (what kind of beasties inhabit your swamps, anyway? long-leggity ones?). --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 09:24 AM

Oh, the usual, spiders, snakes, 'gators and men who are unfit for civil society.

Frank i.t.s.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 12:04 PM

Frank don't forget those 'Mosquitos' like B52 bombers.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Bert
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 12:53 PM

First, it not 'mediocre' it's 'primitive' then we can aspire to fame like Grandma Moses.

I'm with bseed for Jamaican Drums, would love to play fiddle but don't have the musical ability for it.
Also, for years I have wanted a hurdy gurdy. I guess I'll get arount to making one - one day!

Bert

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Mick Lowe
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 08:24 PM

Heck looks like a fight brewing anycase.. not with you Big Mick cos as you guessed most of mine was tongue in cheek.. otherwise I wouldn't be spending all my time playing "Irish" traditional music. One thing I will stand up for is their eloquence at taking a tune "no matter where from" and putting some bloody good lyrics to it. Thomas More a prime example. Though it should be said that everyone will resort to the lowest common denominator in any arguement/debate.. so whilst I'm talking to anyone outside the British Isles.. we are as one in that we taught everyone else in the world everything they want to know (okay open target time)..
But what I do take exception to is Bert and Grandma Moses... we've gotten past the rather "hazy" world of music into "art".. i.e. paintings.. and no one in their right mind could call Grandma Moses an artist.. my daughter aged 4 can paint better than she did. Primative is just the salesman hype meaning crap.
Sorry.. I'm off the soap box now...
Mick

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Dan Keding
Date: 16 Nov 98 - 10:33 PM

So many instruments, so little time. I always wanted to play the fiddle but unless a string instrument has thoses little metal bars on the neck I can't seem to figure it out. Uillean pipes too, and concertina. Most of all though piano, always wanted to play piano.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 01:44 AM

Mick, take it easy on Grandma Moses. She was a primitive, unschooled, with little ability as a draftsman, and hadn't the vaguest sense of perspective, but she had a wonderful, innate feeling for color and design and a way of capturing her world, which, while not photorealistic in the least, was quite charming. --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Ritchie
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 08:20 AM

The synthesiser. Yes I can see it now thousands of people staring up at me on a gigantic stage...coloured lights beaming flashing swirling into the dark night air, lazer beams lighting up the sky.......failing that a ukelelee, because I think there is going to be a massive George Formby revival 'The Chinese Laundry Blues' Oh Mr Wu...

love and happiness

Ritchie

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Hank
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 10:01 AM

The saw blade. I've heard once or twice someone take a hand saw, bend it, and make music. I can bend the blade and make a tone, but MUSIC? I could probably learn to make music, but even if I was the best saw blade player in the world, there isn't much a need, since it isn't a versital interment.

Pipe organ is another on my list, but there is some chance of that. If I can find the money I'm planing to build a house with on. (NOT an electric organ, a real pipe organ with real 8 foot pipes. Maybe even some 16 foot pipes. And the some seceret passages so that I can complete the ghost story.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Bert
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 01:08 PM

Mick,

She can probably play guitar better than I do as well.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Skeandhu
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 07:43 PM

Personally, the clarsach calls! But I haven't a snowballs hope in hell! Or if I could play slide like Jerry Douglas. Now that's to die for.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: harpgirl
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 07:59 PM

Frank,
Ya jes cain't git away furm gators in Flarada! One crawled outa a culvert down at one end a ma street an anither outta the swamp pond down at t'udder end a ma street! (I'd like to play the BIG harp!) harp

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: gargoyle
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 09:02 PM

Scapel

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: gargoyle
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 09:06 PM

Make that a spell-check for:

SCALPEL!!!

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: BSeed
Date: 17 Nov 98 - 09:24 PM

Gargoyle, YOU make mistakes? Oh, my. --seed

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Sir
Date: 18 Nov 98 - 08:36 AM

I know once you got the hang of it it probably isn't that tough but have you ever seen all the left hand buttons on a 120 bass accordian? My wife, who plays one, has a good laugh at me when I try.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: The one and only Dai
Date: 19 Nov 98 - 04:08 AM

Liam's Brother - mandolin not common? The come-all-ye I regularly attend has at least four, and nearly all the guitarists I know have one which comes out for massed mandolin maelstroms under the influence of good ale.

As for me, I have long resisted getting a Hobgoblin crumhorn, bombard or sackbut, for reasons you may speculate on.

Subject: RE: Instruments I'd most like to learn, but wont
From: Paula Chavez
Date: 19 Nov 98 - 01:04 PM

I have a fondness for interesting percussion instruments. One in particular caught my eye a few years ago when I saw Jennie Avila and Amy Torchia perform in Shepardstown, W. Va. I believe it's called a "kokirikko," and it sort of resembles - for lack of a better description - an arced wooden spinal cord that you flex and snap.

Not only does it produce a wonderful sound, it seems like a great way to work out hostilities. :8^)

-Paula