First instrument

III · Jan 4, 2008

What was the first instrument you owned?

My family had an old upright piano at which I spent many an hour in tears, being forced to take lessons because my dad didn't get to take lessons when he was young. I don't consider that my first instrument.

For my 16th birthday my parents bought me an Aria Pro II electric guitar in glossy black and a 25 watt amp. I knew nothing about guitar except that I was already infatuated with the sound. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life making that crunching thunder I heard on Def Leppard's Pyromania.

I spent that first year with the Aria Pro II surgically attached to my hand. Never had a lesson. Never realized what a generic, cheap guitar it was. I even took that sucker apart several times and put it back together, just to see what it was all about.

As the years went by and I started buying more guitars, I gave the Aria Pro II to my brother and he lost it somewhere along the way. Those words "Aria Pro II" still send a wave of nostalgia through me.

joyce · Jan 4, 2008

My first instrument was a piano at age 10, then I started playing clarinet at around 12. Now I just beat things on the kitchen table.

Shadow_Ferret · Jan 4, 2008

My parents owned an upright piano, a Baldwin I think. I first learned how to play on that. My dad took it in the divorce and think he got rid of it. Jerk.

But the first instrument I actually owned, other than a jew's harp and kazoo, was a 1978 Ibanez Les Paul copy that I got when I was 25 and already too old to nibbly learn how to play it.

triceretops · Jan 4, 2008

Bought a set of Pearl drums when I was a teenager and promptly drove the neighbors nuts. I became good, but something wasn't quite right. My personality was more subtle. I found my Gibson E-B3 electric bass two years later and we became girlfriend/boyfriend. Them were my vibes.

I don't play anymore. I miss the stage.

Tri

BruceJ · Jan 4, 2008

Martin D70 acoustic 12-string guitar. Still pickin' 'n grinnin'

BruceJ · Jan 4, 2008

Qualification

Actually, the D70 was the first instrument I bought for myself. My dad, bless his heart, bought me a 6-string, when I was young, but it was huge and the action was at least 8 inches high. (At least it felt that way). I hated to break it to him how hard the thing was to play, but trying to buy a guitar for someone else is like trying to buy shoes for someone else. Ya gotta feel your own fit.

ChunkyC · Jan 4, 2008

First instrument I owned was a $25 electric guitar my parents bought me for my 15th birthday. You'd get better action by stringing suspension bridge cables along a telephone pole, but I loved it. It had more chrome on it than a 50s era Buick.

maestrowork · Jan 4, 2008

An acoustic guitar with nylon strings. I was 14 and learned classical guitar for two years, but I sucked and never practiced!

JoNightshade · Jan 4, 2008

When I was four years old, I was watching Sesame Street when this tubby little guy with a funny walk and a funny accent came on. Then he sat down and started playing his violin, and it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. That Christmas my parents got me a violin and sent me to a school that specialized in teaching music. I turned out to be merely a decent musician, which is not a big disappointment, but I'll always wish I could play half as well as that guy with the violin.

slcboston · Jan 4, 2008

I played the clarinet... and though I made first chair in my middle school I never got too into it. Also learned to play the harmonica... and of the two, that's the instrument I still keep handy.

johnnysannie · Jan 4, 2008

Upright piano but it belonged to my grandmother's cousin and she wanted it back so the piano had to go.

But my mother-in-law just gave our family her old piano, a very nice spinet piano and I'm trying to dredge up enough of what I once knew to start my kids off playing. One of my daughters also got her first (and very nice) acoustic guitar for Christmas - she's been using mine to learn basic chords.

KTC · Jan 4, 2008

When I was 7 I got a baby blue electric Fender Stratocaster. It was the sweetest guitar I ever owned. Shiny baby blue. Sweet.

jenngreenleaf · Jan 4, 2008

I played the flute, but not for very long . . . my sister was the real musician of the family.

Zelenka · Jan 4, 2008

I think my first instrument would be an upright piano my parents bought at some point when I was young. I don't remember when I started lessons. When I was 11 I started lessons on the violin and clarinet, but only kept up the clarinet. I still own two, but rarely play nowadays. I live in a flat, with neighbours who don't appreciate music.

I can't remember when I was given my flute, but it was years before I started to teach myself to play it. I borrowed an oboe from high school for a couple of years and was self taught in that too but I had to give it back when I left, and I can't afford one of my own yet.

I also was given a guitar for a birthday some time years ago but whereas I can usually pick up instruments fairly quickly, that one just eludes me. Some day I really must get lessons.

nessam · Jan 4, 2008

First instrument owned-Does a keyboard count? I think I saved my money for two years and got one when I was twelve. I taught myself how to play a few short things and forgot about it. Then I played the flute and got totally tired of that. It really didn't make enough sound for me to be enthused about it. So the first real instrument I owned was a trumpet. The trumpet was so much more fun to play than the flute, in my opionion. I tried to play a few reed instruments but could never get them to work right. I guess after playing a trumpet for so many years the reed instruments just never felt right.

Siddow · Jan 4, 2008

A violin, then a flute, then a guitar. I still have the guitar (well, my son does), but I never really learned to play any of them.

hubbabubbs · Jan 4, 2008

I didn't actually "own" any of my first instruments (recorder, trombone, euphonium, piano, etc). First instrument I owned was a Fender Acoustic six string, about a hundred bucks at a Pawn Shop.

Danger Jane · Jan 4, 2008

Upright piano. Second was a violin, my first love. My current violin is slightly higher quality than my first

Bartholomew · Jan 4, 2008

Recorder. <3

ETA

Actually, my first instrument was a Cello. But I hated it.

maestrowork · Jan 5, 2008

Shoot... I forgot about my recorder. It was a required course in elementary school. I hated it.

Bartholomew · Jan 5, 2008

maestrowork said:
Shoot... I forgot about my recorder. It was a required course in elementary school. I hated it.

I got good at it. Wanna hear?

ChunkyC · Jan 5, 2008

Sebby said:
When I was 7 I got a baby blue electric Fender Stratocaster. It was the sweetest guitar I ever owned. Shiny baby blue. Sweet.

At 7?! Cripes, I had to wait until I was 17 to get my Strat. It was the first top quality guitar I ever bought. About ten years later, some worthless dirt bag stole it. (I despise thieves)

KTC · Jan 5, 2008

I still have my Strat. It is actually a junior...so slightly smaller than a regular guitar. When it gets scratched it's white underneath...just a few scratches, though. I took lessons for a year before I got that Strat...I worked hard on a crappy old accustic prior to getting it. I didn't ask for much when I was a kid...just sketchpads/paints/guitars and music books. I worked in a record store and they paid me in records since I was too young to be on the payroll. Every day I worked I got to go through the record store and pick an album as payment. Very cool. I used to take out my Strat and try to play along with the music. Unfortunately my amp did not have an 11.

ChunkyC · Jan 5, 2008

Kewl paycheque for a kid!

My dad made my first amp. He used the diagram from inside a Fender Bandmaster belonging to a friend of mine, bought a Hammond transformer and scavenged all the other parts from old TVs and other junk he had lying around. It actually worked, except there was a problem in one of the two power tube circuits, it would keep cutting out and so the output would drop to half for a second, then come back. He could never find the bad soldering joint or component. Too bad, he worked really hard on it and I thought it was really neat.

{ZenZone} · Jan 7, 2008

Piano. My parents have had one in the house since before I existed. Now I feel very guilty for not playing it more often.

First instrument

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