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"A guitar, perhaps?"

The nineteenth birthday is steadily approaching...

*shudders at the thought of aging*

...and I haven't got a clue what I want. However, I've expressed some interest lately in wanting to maybe take up an instrument, perhaps guitar. I'm assuming you're never too old to learn to play, but I get images of me quitting through frustration at being potentially awful at it. I suppose I'm just wondering whether it's worth me requesting one for my birthday, or am I thinking too rashly because I haven't thought of anything for anybody to get me, with it being just ten days away?

~wags finger~

Now now Celest; if you want to provoke me into anything, keep it to another thread.

After all, you're the lovely "butter wouldn't melt" piece of delight; how can you justify destroying a thread for the sake of your ever expanding ego? Why...that would make you as bad as you like to accuse me of being.

Create your own thread for your attempts at boosting your sense of self worth please. Shouldn't prove too difficult; you created another human life just to make yourself feel worthwhile, so...

Mouldy Cheese wrote:
> Mandolin came today Rasta. Might need to get an electric tuner, can't
> seem to get it right. And you need a pick to play mandolin, and I
> havn't got any of those (prefer not to for guitar).

Already have an electric tuner - tone dumbness meant that tuning it when I first started playing was an incredibly frustrating experience, got a lot better since then though (still pretty poor), can ever sing in tune with a few things now :-D.

How much it cost? And how're you learning? I wanna play the Mandolin part in St. Robinson... :-D

__________

I knew as soon as a I saw Celestine had replied to this thread it'd a be a post along those lines.

Light wrote:
> Padraic wrote:
> Celestine wrote:
> As far as the age factor, I wouldn't worry until you're maybe
> Light's
> age and still posting in here. Hehehe. Ohh lordehh..
>
> I thought you were older
>
> Ahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaa! You've just skyrocketed in my
> estimation.
>
>
> Anyhoo...bass guitar is good. Even a 'tard such as myself
> could master the bass.

Ahahhahaaahahahahahahahaaa!!! Psh.

All instruments are difficult. Depend what you're trying to play, doesn't it?

The whole mad laddering stuff with your fingers to pick it looks awfully hard when you watch someone like John Paul Jones or John Entwistle playing.

People just assume it's easy because the only times most people think "Oh, bass" is when it's really slow and loud.

Given a few years and a lot of practise, yes. Bass is nowhere near as easy as people always assume. It isn't all poncey root note stuff.

Padraic wrote:
> Celestine wrote:
> As far as the age factor, I wouldn't worry until you're maybe
> Light's
> age and still posting in here. Hehehe. Ohh lordehh..
>
> I thought you were older

Ahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaa! You've just skyrocketed in my estimation.


Anyhoo...bass guitar is good. Even a musical 'tard such as myself could master the bass.

Padraic wrote:
> No, he just finds it laughable that you think pressing a bunch of
> keys at different times is more difficult than playing guitar. Which
> it is. Very!

No, you're wrong as well. In future, please don't try to answer for me when you have no idea what my thoughts on the subject are.

Dr Duck The Stampede wrote:
> Aww, does someone play guitar and feel a little insecure?
>
> Obviously there's scope for a hell of a lot of skill, the more you
> practice, as with most skills. But to get to a reasonable standard
> where you can play most things, relative to piano/keyboard, it's
> easy.
>
> There's really no need to feel inferior about it.

No, I just find the "this instrument is easier to play than that instrument" argument tiresome and ridiculous. If someone plays Blink 182 on guitar it's obviously going to be easier than playing Rachmaninov on piano, but at the same time if someone plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on piano it's going to be a fair bit easier than playing Paul Gilbert songs on guitar.

Following from this, the skills required to play either instrument are completely different so someone who's amazing on piano could be rubbish at guitar because they don't have the same capacity to learn its own individual techniques.

And as for your generalising "reasonable standard" comment... what does that actually mean? What you consider reasonable might be completely different to what someone else does. I do play guitar, but as I don't play piano I can't comment on how easy/hard it is in comparison. Likewise, unless you're both a master pianist and guitarist you have no means of comparison.

"Most things" being easy doesn't mean that the instrument itself is easy, it means that the number of people with the skill or patience to master it is small. You seem to be comparing classical piano to modern guitar rock, which is a pointless and ridiculous exercise. It's like me saying piano is easy and guitar is hard, then pointing to Chris Martin and Thom Yorke as pianists and Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen as guitarists...

....stupid.

Dr Duck The Stampede wrote:
> Keyboards are a useful and versatile insturment, though take years to
> master.

Ah, but a midi keyboard plugged into a computer is easier because you can dabble, record everything and keep what you like. Also you're not restricted sound-wise because any sample you can put on the computer you can play on the keyboard.

That said there is midi software for guitars too and I've used that a bit although making a guitar sound like a piano is just plain weird. :D