Readers reply: Which musical instrument is the easiest to learn?

Which musical instrument is the easiest to learn? Wanda, London

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Readers reply

I’m a musician and music teacher and I’ve celebrated turning 50 this year by learning 10 musical instruments and taking grade 5 in each (five down, five to go): treble recorder, tenor sax, bassoon, guitar, trombone, organ, harpsichord, voice double bass and percussion (snare drum, xylophone and timpani).

Of these, saxophone is comfortably the easiest. If you’ve played the recorder (or penny whistle), then the finger patterns will be broadly familiar and the embouchure (the way you shape your mouth) is quite intuitive. Plus, you get to feel incredibly cool. Hardest was the bassoon. Not for the faint-hearted, as it’s physically and intellectually demanding. The double bass is easily the most fun and also versatile; you can play in orchestral and jazz groups. d0gsbody

The piano is probably not the easiest instrument to learn, but it has a huge advantage over all others – that the scale (starting at C) is immediately displayed via the white keys. The pattern of black and white keys, when first playing C major scale, illustrates the pattern of tones that make the major scale, which anyone will recognise as do-re-mi etc. I play the piano, so I am biased, but I believe that a foundation on the piano makes learning other instruments – guitar, woodwind, violin – much easier. Jill_M

The ukulele is quite popular in schools these days. Even badly played, it’s less “screechy” than the recorder, which was the school instrument in my day. I don’t know about learning from scratch, but in recovery from a head injury that meant I lost the use of an arm for a few years, the uke was a way back to playing the guitar, which was my original instrument. I would suggest the tenor ukulele in preference to the smaller concert size, as it gives a little more space for fingers.

The ukulele is a very forgiving instrument, in terms of finger pressure and chord position – the F and D minor chords are only one finger different, so beginners’ mistakes don’t sound too awful. It’s a different matter to get really good on the uke, although some are virtuosos – check out James Hill playing Billie Jean. He also has a series of how-to videos that are quite the feat of coordination. greendreamer

Learning any musical instrument is a cinch; getting remotely listenable results is an entirely different matter (I speak from bitter personal experience). EddieChorepost

Kazoo. Bless me! MrCassandra

Guitar, no hesitation. You can be playing some chords in a few minutes, which means you’re most of the way to playing a song. There are loads of sites with the chords for every song you can imagine and you don’t need to learn to read music, as there’s tablature: six lines that represent the strings and a number that tells you at which fret to hold down the string. It’s much simpler than standard notation. Bonga_Selecta

The bass guitar. I’m my experience as a university lecture and 25 years as a session musician I’ve seen people who have never played an instrument play a song after 10 mins tuition on the bass. PaulKeysQuinn

The late Le Pétomane would have had valuable, perhaps even emphatic, advice on this subject. easilyconfused

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The easiest one to learn is the one you really want to be able to play. You’ll not get to any decent level of proficiency unless you’re motivated, no matter how talented you are or how easy the instrument is. Unless you love it, there’ll always be something else you’d rather be doing. It is hard work. But, if you love it, your brain will light up. It’s the most joyful thing in the world when you finally nail something and you hear yourself. Absolute joy. That joy is what will carry you. There is no technical difference that matters. You just need to love it. EloBurger

Probably the xylophone. If you have one where the sharps and flats can be removed, you can set it to any key and all the notes are the “right” ones. Compare that with, say sharing a confined space with a six-year-old and a violin (yes, I was that child) … HemingfieldTwit

The human voice. It’s also the cheapest. I sing in an almost all-female choir, which has no auditions and the songs are learned by ear. We have a lot of fun and if you’re slightly off-key, no one notices – although they certainly notice if you come in too early! elfwyn

I have an M4 – essentially, a type of stick dulcimer. Like its larger cousin the mountain dulcimer, it is fretted diatonically, rather than chromatically, so you can (mostly) strum away without worrying about hitting any dissonant notes. The trade off is that you are restricted to one key. Sam_Jenks

I am learning clawhammer banjo (more mellow than bluegrass banjo) and you can very quickly play tunes, with the drone string giving character and making complex chords unnecessary. Despite banjo jokes, it can be a beautiful instrument and it’s very peaceful to play. Listen to Rhiannon Giddens or Adam Hurt if you are interested in finding out more about the sound. Have a look online at the Brainjo method, whereby a neuroscientist has devised a method to systematically learn this instrument based on how the brain learns. The tablature is also very simple, so there is no need to learn to read music. Claireiam

I’m not especially musical, but the tenor sax has the keys in the same place as the recorder in its lower range (B-A-G-F-E-D), has a key to get you the upper register and sounds way cooler than a recorder as a novice player. You also mainly play the keys with your fingers in order – hard to explain, but not notes all over like on a keyboard or different tempos with each hand. A two-finger note is played with the top two fingers of the left hand, a three-finger note with the top-three left-hand fingers. A five-finger note is played with all the left-hand fingers and the top right. A seven-finger note is played with all the left fingers and three of the top right. There are some exceptions, but the basics are basic.

I honestly thought I was the coolest kid ever when I learned to play the Pink Panther theme. Like much of Henry Mancini’s stuff, it sounds fine if you can play it in tune and in time, but as your skills advance, you can make it sound increasingly great with more swing, nuance, espression. Same with the sax solo in Baker Street – the notes aren’t that hard, but you can make it sound increasingly epic as you improve. The main drawback is that the instrument is not cheap, but there are pawn shops. Sometimes, you can rent them from music stores. The classical repertoire is almost non-existent, but you’re more than covered by jazz, pop and big band arrangements. Trixr

Handheld percussion: maracas, tambourine, güira, castanets, cowbell, djembe … IMeMine

Comb and paper. WolfFlow

Instrument: an object or device for producing musical sounds (OED). The easiest is a sequencer app on a laptop or a phone. You can learn to make a good sound within half an hour. We teach classes of kids music on them. Without them, modern genres of music such as hip-hop and dance couldn’t have been invented. I was told by a saxophonist that a sequencer is “not a real instrument”; he was blissfully ignorant of how recently sniffy people used to say exactly the same about his instrument. randomusername222

Air guitar. Next question. Marshallofcharlton