What Was Your First Musical Instrument?

Subject: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:22 AM

There is a British campaign asking musicians about their first musical instruments, partly for charity, and also to get more instruments in the hands of kids. I can't remember if we have had a thread on this before, but it is still interesting. Mine was, alas, the piano, which was an upright that my mother played (she carted it around, and my earliest memory is of sitting at her feet listening to her playing Chopin, and feeling the vibrations against my back), but I only made it through the first three lessons before I gave up. I can't remember what make it was. Still.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:28 AM

A plastic ukelele that my Mother bought me when I was about 8, and the only thing I learned to play was 'Drink to me Only'. I've been drinking eversince;~)

Giok

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:34 AM

Piano here too PT. My Mom was an outstanding pianist and I remember as a child we had a baby grand (don't remember the make) which my Dad hated.......not too easily moved. When we moved to Reynoldsburg she traded it for an Everette console. I took lessons but never became much good at it. What it did do was give me a visual reference and to this day I am more inclined to walk into the living room and work something out on the piano first.

Spaw

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Terry Allan Hall
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:41 AM

Either diatonic harmonica or jaw harp...can't recall which I got 1st, as it was over 40 years ago...

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:50 AM

A plastic ukulele that my parents(or possibly Santa Claus) brought me one Christmas. It had palm trees on it, and was not very cool. The first instrument I got for myself was a guitar, shortly after hearing Lonnie's "Rock Island Line".

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: kendall
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 11:59 AM

A Gene Autry guitar when I was 16

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:03 PM

I cant remember NOT having a mouthorgan when I was a kid ! Finished up with Chromatics , then went into the R A F Apprentice school and joined the band , playing Bagpipes ! Having briefly had clarinet lessons (At Twelve) it was a natural progression to Jazz Clarinet and Sax !

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Jeri
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:13 PM

I had one of those fake xylophones as a little kid. It was rubbish. It wasn't tuned to anything specific, and even a little kid notices these things.

Piano was the first thing I ever learned how to play anything on. I wasn't terribly inspired by the music in the Thompson's books and eventually quit. I wanted to be in band in 4th or 5th grade, and the band dude looked at my 2/3 length L index finger and decided I needed to play coronet because I only needed 3 fingers on my RIGHT hand. (Moron!) I tried to be inspired, but I quit. I just couldn't identify with Al Hirt. There were lots of people I wouldn't have minded being when I grew up, but Al Hirt didn't fit in the plan. I gave up instruments until my last year in high school.

My mom bought me a dulcimer (lap, 3 strings, made by Leonard Glenn in Sugar Grove, NC *). Then I got a banjo and some pennywhistles, then a fiddle, and another banjo, a few (4) more fiddles, a third banjo (the 'keeper'), a hammered dulcimer and a guitar and another guitar...

and a 120-bass accordion, then a Cajun/French accordion, then a 96 bass accordion. Oh yeah, some time around '91, I wound up with a mandolin.

* I had to go look in the dulcimer to get the name 'Sugar Grove'. I discovered a wee mousie has done quite a bit of work in preparation for winter. The dulcimer is full of pistachios which have neither been eaten nor nibbled upon. The mouse what done it was probably one I caught and is currently working on its next incarnation, but the nuts are, once more, mine.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:16 PM

Hohner Band Harmonice when I was 11yrs old. Taught myself to play. Still play now but only to myself.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:24 PM

My Aunty bought me a plastic kids concertina when I was a small child/toddler but it lasted until she left later that day when my Dad confiscated it for the good of his health!! I later got a violin as my first 'proper' instrument and I've never looked back!

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Pauline L
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:32 PM

I had a good experience with my first instrument, a plastic xylophone, which Santa brought me when I was 5 or 6. I remember it clearly. It went from middle C to 2 Es above middle C. Each note had its own color, and it didn't sound bad. I learned to pick out tunes by ear with it, a wonderful skill, but I soon became frustrated with its small range. My classrooms at school, for several years in elementary school, had xylophones with a larger range, and I picked out a lot of tunes on them. It was great.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 12:44 PM

Let's see -- tiny fancy tinkly piano and color-coded xylaphone when I was pre-literate.

Took accordion lessons (in Milwaukee -- the folk music of my youth are polkas!) when I was 5, but my mother was a frustrated pianist without a piano, so every time I wanted to practice, she'd grab the accordion away from me and play.

Then, when I was in third grade (age 8) and was eligible for the school band, my dad let it be known he would really like his daughter (me) to play clarinet. (He'd played clarinet and sax with dance bands in north-central Wisconsin during the '40s.) So he bought me a decent Noblet clarinet and gave me his Selmer mouthpiece and I took clarinet lessons and ended up in the band (up through prize-winning junior high school band). Guess what? Every time I got the horn out to practice, my dad would grab it away from me and play. Sigh.

I think I would have preferred flute or French horn. (Yeah, French horn; the reasons escape me now.)

About 1963 (age 14) I wanted a guitar. Now, up until this point, my parents had always procured the best instrument possible to learn on, knowing that it's easier to learn and sound good on a decent instrument rather than a piece of junk. Well. For a guitar they gave me a $17 Treasure Island special. I think the strings were about an inch above the neck. I learned anyway. Saved up some money and bought a better guitar. (40 bucks in 1964 or 5 I think.) Didn't take lessons for another couple years, but then I used my instructor's Les Paul.

I think I married my first husband in 1970 (besides the reason that I was in love with his father) because I coveted his Gibson. Shortly after we married we purchased (to his parents' chagrin) a Gibson Dove (c. 1969) and a T-series MG (1954 MG-TF -- which made an entirely different kind of music). Oh, the reason we knew the marriage wouldn't last is, not only did we never get rid of duplicate books from our separate collections, but we had entirely different repertoires. (He said I married him to get out of Milwaukee and then dumped him after a mere 10 years.)

Oh, almost took up the banjo, but my then-husband accused me of having an affair with my teacher and threw him out of the house. I hadn't been, but afterwards, figuring if I was going to be punished for something, I might as well be guilty. But, alas, I never learned the banjo.

Linn

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: mooman
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:12 PM

My father's mandolin when I was about 9 or 10. Then I bought a cheap guitar with my pocket money when I was 11. Then a better guitar and a banjo when I was about 13.

Then GAS set in and the rest is poverty...

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: MaineDog
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:21 PM

I remember having a xylophone, and a ukelele. I used to watch Arthur Godfrey's tv show on how to play the uke. My mom also gave me a very basic intro to the piano, all of this when I was young. I had no lessons, though until much later.
MD

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:29 PM

Linn that's about the funniest thing I've read this year, now I know what made Milwaukee famous :~)
Giok

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:44 PM

A Rattle?

:D

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 01:56 PM

When I was around 10, I used to visit an elderly neighbour and help him look after his sheep and and he and his wife used to pay me in mouthfuls of sugar beet pulp, cookies and piano lessons.

I guess they they told my family, because one day an old upright showed up in our house and I was sent off for formal lessons, something which I realize now was a pretty major economic event.

Most practice sessions at home ended with me in tears because every time I veered off from what was prescibed and fiddled around (something which I've never overcome), my father would tack on another half hour of practice as punishment. It didn't take long for me to dream of sheep again.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:04 PM

Piano. Which was a curse as well as a blessing. I remember spending many hours noodling around on the piano with my sisters and cousins when I was young. That was probably a good experience for me in the long run. But I have been told that I also climbed up on the piano and fell off of it on my head quite a few times when I was a toddler. That was a bad thing for me in the long run, and is responsible for a ruptured disk I now have in my neck, and goodness knows what else.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: tarheel
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:14 PM

call it an instrument or not,but i used it for great rythmn!!!
when i was 5 years old and would sit by the radio to hear a LIVE broadcast by Charlie Monroe,they would play that ole up-tempo song called,"step it up and go!"
i would grab my mom's wash board and a couple of her thimbles and sit there by the radio and play the washbopard along with that
instrumental song!
i loved every minute of it,but paid the price when my mom came home and found her sewing thimbles all beat up or worn out!
the washboard seem to last forever!

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:27 PM

Oh, yeah... I think our piano was a Wurlitzer.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Gorgeous Gary
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:39 PM

I took up flute in fifth grade and played in my elementary school band through the rest of sixth grade. Then took private lessons for a couple of my jr. high years (having switched to a private school that didn't **have** band) until the rigors of freshman year and homework put an end to much of anything **other** than studying. That, and once I left the elementary school band I wasn't really getting an opportunity to perform anywhere, just practicing for lessons so my interest was flagging too.

Oddly enough, I still have that flute and all the books...but I'm having too much fun singing and strumming now!

-- Gary

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:45 PM

Harmonica first and some time later, a "Tonette", a small recorder. I don't remember why everyone in school seemed to have a Tonette.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 02:57 PM

The first instrument I purchased for myself, when I was in my early 20's, was a '63 or '64 Epiphone Texan with a decidedly skinny neck.

Incongruous as it may seem, I ended up taking classical guitar lessons on it, from an equally incongruous delightful old man, because for some reason or other, I wanted to learn how to play Malenguena. I eventually sold it to a friend in order to buy Christmas presents. I think it was a wise decision.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Once Famous
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 03:20 PM

My first musical instrument was a Kay guitar bought for me at age 12 in 1962.

If you closed your eyes, you could not tell the difference between it's neck and the Louisville Slugger I used for Little League.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 05:23 PM

This is great!   I am going to start another thread on "Your First Music Teacher" as a companion, yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 05:41 PM

Although I started Guitar lessons at 6, I know for a fact before that we had a a strange little electric organ which we played with a lot when we were snowed in during some big blizzards.

I still have the sheet music and books for the organ in my childhood guitar case. It was the kind with about three or four octaves and the chord buttons. Like a big stand-alone accordian.

Our Favorite songs to play were:
Prisoner's song
Coming Through The Rye which we translated the words "body" as "bunny"
My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean
Loch Lomond
Turkey in the Straw
The Alley cat (it WAS the 60's)
The house of The Rising sun
Frankie and Johnnie
Stagger Lee
Green Grass of Home
Battle of New Orleans
Tammy's in Love (again, the 60's)
Patches
Release me
Streets of Laredo

All fabulous titles for children under the age of ten, no?

I used to make my mother sing me The Prisoner's Song as a Lullabye!

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Mooh
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 05:52 PM

Voice, piano, and whatever I didn't get yelled at for making noise on. Wanted drums, but the old man said they were too loud, too big and too expensive..."Your sister's got a guitar you know." Been picking ever since.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 05:59 PM

Comb with toilet paper is the earliest I remember playing.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 06:05 PM

I was in Sister John Bosco's Harmonica Band at St. Rita School in Racine, Wisconsin. Didn't get much past "O Susanna."
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: GUEST, Mikefule
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 07:01 PM

As a schoolkid, I had the compulsory recorder.
The first instrument I chose to play was the diatonic harmonica.
Since then, I've tried the chromatic harmonica (chromonica and Koch, 1 and 2 row melodeon, trumpet/cornet, piano, drums and guitar. Still it's the diatonic harmonica that I enjoy making sounds on.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: MojoBanjo
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 07:02 PM

First was a piano. With it came the teacher from hell, no batteries necessary. Lasted a few months but decided I wanted to play guitar. I had eyes on a bass (which was both cheap and imported, meaning in the 60s it was probably $30 or something) just because I *had* to get something. My Dad, who cared nothing about music, asked, "Well, can you play a bass by yourself?" I admitted, "Nope." He took me and we rented a guitar from Brooks Mays. I've been playing for the past 40 years. It would taken nearly 35 to return to the piano (perhaps I wanted to make sure the teacher was dead).

Brian

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 07:38 PM

My "maiden" aunt bought me a ukelele. It was a nice one but a uke none-the-less. She knew I wanted a guitar but figured a uke was more "my size"!!

That sort of thing was always happening in my family. They had their own form of logic when it came to selecting gifts. I learned to smile appreciatively, especially around Christmas, and make all the right sounds, no matter what I really thought.

CB

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:13 PM

Obviously, Martin Gibson's first (and most loved) instrument was his fundamental orifice!

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Padre
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:14 PM

In fourth grade, the dreaded 'Flutophone' - like a really cheap plastic recorder. I can still NOT play 'Lightly Row'

at age 12, a bugle - I was Troop Bugler for Troop 5, BSA

In college, a Stella tenor guitar

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:27 PM

Coyote Breath, a similar family to my husband's by the sound of it. For Christmas when he was little, he got a pair of cowboy boots from his grandmother, who had been given a pattern of his foot to take with her on a trip to Mexico.

She decided when she got down there, that he was too young to have a feet that big, so she had a pair made a size or two smaller. He wore them to bed on Christmas day night, but he never managed to get them fully on his feet or walk in them.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Peace
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 04:42 AM

Voice.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 05:45 AM

I used to steal my sisters' recorder. Ended up keeping it as she decided she hated it (not surprised, she couldn't carry a tune if it had handles) and I took it up. I was most upset that I left school before I got to learn the treble or tenor properly, so I just picked up Manitas' trebble and played it. After that, I sort of progressed to the garlkleine, the sopranino and the bass. At the last count there were 23 recorders of varying size, pitch and material in the house..... 10 of them are descants!

LTS

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 09:35 AM

I guess I tried (and almost succeeded) in forgetting about the dreaded black plastic Flutophone of my early school days. Ugh! And the stuff they forced us to play on it! Enough to put me off recorders for another 15 years or so. Ah well.

But right after I hit the "Submit Message" button, I realized I should have put down that my first instrument -- and the one I "play" most of all -- is my voice.

Our family sang -- in the car, around the table, at church (Lutheran -- big on Bach) and (in the '60s, at least) around the piano with either my mother or baby sister playing.

I sang in the junior choir from age 8 until high school. Next door neighbor Judy Miller and I sang "solos" (how can two girls sing solos together?!?) because we were the most show-offish, I think. (And people could actually HEAR us.) Not just in church, but at funerals, etc. (Could miss an afternoon of school to sing at a funeral.)

We just sang. The whole family sang. Not just my parents and siblings, but my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. Midwestern Germans on dairy farms. But I and my immediate family lived in the west 'burbs of Milwaukee.

Linn

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: GUEST,windy miller
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 10:19 AM

my arse..

even now.. its still the 1st instrument I play
every morning soon as I awake..
not a very melodicly flexable instrument..
but perfect for dynamic sub bass
and rich fruity drone notes.

From years of practice, I've mastered control of vibrato
and staccato technique.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 10:26 AM

I thought this thread would be about archeology - so as it was in the New Scientist this weekI will post it anyway.

FWIW
Chinese whistles made of crane bones. 5 notes in scale 8000 years ago and by about 2400 years ago they had a 7 note scale and differing bone sizes where tuned to the same pitch.

Subject: RE: What Was Your First Musical Instrument?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 10:58 AM

Speaking of archaeology (maybe this should be a new thread?), this was in the news last week --

Here

Ice-Age Ivory Flute Found in German Cave

Fri Dec 10, 2004 1:02 PM ET
Science - Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 35,000-year-old flute made from a woolly mammoth's ivory tusk has been unearthed in a German cave by archaeologists, the University of Tuebingen said on Friday.

The flute, one of the oldest musical instruments discovered, was pieced together from 31 fragments found in a cave in the Swabian mountains in southwestern Germany, the university said.

The mountains have yielded rich pickings in recent years, including ivory figurines, ornaments and other musical instruments. Archaeologists believe humans camped in the area in winter and spring. Mammoths, now extinct, were large elephant-like creatures with hairy coats and long, upcurved tusks. They lived during the Pleistocene period from 2 million to 11,000 years ago.

The university said it planned to put the instrument on display in a museum in Stuttgart.