What is the hardest instrument to play?

fields5069

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the pink oboe.

EricTheWeary

Reading the comments about scale lengths it may be that it's easier to play in tune than a violin or cello but I'm a big admirer of double bass players. Seems hugely physical and very rough on the hands when plucked.  

Sporky

Double bass uses flat wound strings, does it not? So easier on the hands than an electric bass.

EricTheWeary

You see double bass players with tremendously calloused fingers,  although maybe that's just jazz bassists playing a lot. 
Always looks hard work. 

Sporky said:

Double bass uses flat wound strings, does it not? So easier on the hands than an electric bass.

digitalscream

It really depends who you ask. When I was a teenager, one of my mates was a pretty amazing sax player and I was always jealous of the sounds he could get from that thing - he regarded the electric guitar as the hardest instrument to play ("infinitely harder than the sax"), though, because of the sheer number of options in terms of notes, how they're played, what you can do with every note once you've hit it, chords etc.

For me, it's the piano - that much coordination between left and right hand (but performing essentially the same action) is totally alien to me.

Of course, I haven't tried a harp. Those things look bastard-hard to deal with, but I don't have a frame of reference there.

merlin

fields5069 said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the pink oboe.

Coming from the perspective of a pro clarinetist, I would disagree about the double reeds and would say that any colour oboe is reasonable easy to play. However, a much harder instrument (as it were, see what I did there) is the skin flute. 

Winny_Pooh

Sporky said:

Double bass uses flat wound strings, does it not? So easier on the hands than an electric bass.

It's so much physically harder to play. Many DB players have to deal with hand and arm strain. It takes longer to work up to the level of stamina needed for a full jazz gig. In my current unpracticed state I could do a 20 min jam/gig vs near 2 hrs on electric bass. 

Winny_Pooh

Re this discussion I think we have two camps of difficulty: 
Tonal production: Oboe, French Horn, violin.

Bastardly complex when taken to its extremes:
Piano

EricTheWeary

Based on listening to school recitals anything in the ( non fretted) string family is the hardest to get an in tune choon out of. There is a harp group locally and they get up and running suprisingly quickly ( quality of teacher, poshness/ pushiness of parents who want their kids to learn the harp may be factors). At a basic level keyboards/ piano one of the easiest because, I think, there is no need to form the note in any way or have an ear - you can learn to play a simple tune in a mechanical way. I understand that at a more advanced level the piano might take over in terms of hardness but if you wanted to learn an instrument from scratch ( not the original question here, I know)it might take days or weeks to get a decent noise out of a clarinet or in an intonated note out of a violin but you could be playing a recognisable melody on a keyboard by the end of your first lesson. 

stickyfiddle

digitalscream said:

It really depends who you ask. When I was a teenager, one of my mates was a pretty amazing sax player and I was always jealous of the sounds he could get from that thing - he regarded the electric guitar as the hardest instrument to play ("infinitely harder than the sax"), though, because of the sheer number of options in terms of notes, how they're played, what you can do with every note once you've hit it, chords etc.

For me, it's the piano - that much coordination between left and right hand (but performing essentially the same action) is totally alien to me.

Of course, I haven't tried a harp. Those things look bastard-hard to deal with, but I don't have a frame of reference there.

I played sax right through high school and I completely disagree with him. The guitar takes relatively little time to get moderately good, and the fact that most notes can be played in multiple places gives it greater flexibility, making it easier, not harder.

vasselmeyer

Hammered dulcimer

axisus

TheBigDipper said:

Hardest for me (never having been a drummer or a pianist) is my pitiful efforts at learning to play a Chapman Stick. Playing independent parts with your left and right hands - now that's hard! 

Yes, not necessarily the hardest, but bloody hard! I've wrestled with a Chapman stick for years. I thought that my piano skills would help but they didn't really. It's incredibly hard to get that kind of hand interdependence going when you have a limited view of the fretboard as well. 

fretmeister

Sporky said:

Cello is certainly an order of magnitude harder than guitar, but you don't have to put an awful lot of thought into your breathing which is why I thought trombone might trump it on overall difficulty.

I reckon violin is probably harder than cello because you've got the awful shrill noise of a violin to put up with, which I reckon is more of an ordeal than the wider left-hand stretches of the cello.

The cello and in turn the double bass get harder in 1 respect - stretches - and easier in another - intonation. In that the longer scale means a larger "sounds in tune" target for the left hand.

Violin doesn't have many mental stretches, but the intonation is very sensitive.

That being said, single or 2 note instruments are often easier than say a piano from an early academic point of view, when 10 notes could be played at once. A better grasp of harmony is needed.

Physically though - I remember my 1 attempt to walk with a sousaphone.... 

fretmeister

What about risk of death?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-37223597

Sporky

EricTheWeary said:

 if you wanted to learn an instrument from scratch ( not the original question here, I know)it might take days or weeks to get a decent noise out of a clarinet or in an intonated note out of a violin but you could be playing a recognisable melody on a keyboard by the end of your first lesson. 

Actually, I think that's pretty much what I meant (if not what I said).

By competent, I think I mean "good enough to be paid to do it for an audience". So coffee-bar/restaurant piano, wedding reception string quartet, brass band in a park sort of lark.

I do not mean to stifle wider discussion by this.

Roland

I've always thought that the theremin must be amongst the most difficult to play. It's not physically difficult, but temperamental and inconsistent.

Flanging_Fred

I think the Uilleann pipes and sitar are supposed to be hard (especially at the same time!)

I seem to remember soneone saying the harp was really difficult.  But that might have been just commenting on taking it on the tube...

I used to play trombone, it's not that hard. I found that the violin and the cornet were both more difficult.

Ravenous

I've heard the shakuhachi (Japanese flute) is tricky... lots of head positions and blow angles to get the full range of pitches and timbres from it. It's like a recorder with a much more primitive mouthpiece and harder to learn.

UnclePsychosis

Of the "standard" orchestral instruments its almost certainly the Oboe or Bassoon. 

I played in a lot of orchestral groups when I was younger and competent Oboists and Bassoonists were very hard to find. And it wasn't because they just don't exist---there were quite a lot of players, just not that many good ones.  

axisus

vasselmeyer said:

Hammered dulcimer

The pissed lute and the Rat-arsed harpsichord can also be difficult to handle.