Nitebob
Is it true that it is easier to play keyboard/piano than guitar?
Squonk
I wouldn't think so, perhaps easier to master than guitar.
Bob-Dubery
Nitebob wrote:
Is it true that it is easier to play keyboard/piano than guitar?
I don't think so. I think you can bang out a song in a rudimentary fashion more easily on guitar than just about anything.
To play either at high level.... different challenges, you can't really compare the two.
Nitebob
Squonk wrote:
I wouldn't think so, perhaps easier to master than guitar.
Sorry Squonk, that's what I meant, not easier to play, but easier to learn to play.
Keira-WitherKay
well the piano is a more logically laid out instrument ...it starts with the low notes on left and logically goes up in pitch to include about 8 octaves so it has a considerably larger range than a guitar , and the same note in the same octave 'never" repeats itself like it does on guitar which makes reading music easier , and one can create music using 2 hands which means one can play on opposite ends of the piano and create a larger /fuller sound ....and lastly one uses all ten fingers to play so 10 notes can be played simultaneously ..... which is near imposible on guitar
however on the negative side piano's are big and heavy and one seldom can chuck one in the boot for a camping trip ........ "real piano's " need great care and tuning by proffessionals and can't be moved around once tuned ...
so guitars are easier to carry /tune ............ and also it's easier to get to play guitar well enough to block a few chords and sing along ...
and of course a guitar in the right hands can do almost as much as a piano can and one can play bass lines/chord/melody /improv on it but it's easier on piano
but yes it's a matter of what instrument you like personally ...........
personally i wish i had learnt to play classical piano when i was 7 /8 as even if you only study as far as grade 12 you will be well grounded for any other instrument , thats why at music school even if you study upright bass you learn all your theory ect on piano ........ it's the basis of most formal music education
and on a music biz note ..if you are a good classical/jazz pianist you will never be out of work as a pro muso, as every 5 star hotel in the world hires a few pianists at each venue ....... sun city alone employs 5 solo pianists but 1 solo guitarist and it's the same for hotels world wide....... pianists ( i mean sight reading proffessionals) are in high demand ........
so pro's and cons for both ............
Warren
The acoustic guitar is so popular because you can buy one cheap, it's portable and learning a handful of chords is enough to play (and perhaps sing) hundreds of your favourite popular songs.
Learning the same basic chords on a piano is not inherently more difficult, in my opinion, and with a similar amount of practice you can be playing those same songs and singing along much like you would on a guitar. In fact, moving those simple chord shapes around on a piano is arguably easier than on guitar, where you would need to employ different fingerings for different fretboard positions.
However, to actually "master" either instrument requires years of practice / study. I think it's very difficult to compare the two.
One interesting thing in the realm of classical guitar and piano, is that you can more easily directly compare different players. Although there are obviously nuances, classical guitar tones and piano tones are fairly well recognized or "understood" (probably the wrong word). The music being played has often been composed years ago, with the most famous pieces being very well recognised even among the general public.
So, what distinguishes these players is not their amps or effects or stage antics, but simply how well they play particular pieces, or for the very best players, how they can subtly imply their own personality and musicality and sense of beauty when playing a classical piece.
That said, much of becoming an accomplished classical player involves sight-reading of music notation and a familiarity with classical standards, as well as a firm grasp of long-established techniques which are more-or-less required to play advanced classical pieces. This needs a somewhat different kind of dedication from the student musician to, say, learning a few open chords for a Creedence number. Classical training follows a largely linear learning curve, meaning that you can't just move onto the later stuff without mastering the earlier steps.
On the other hand, certain purely classically trained pianists or guitarists who are otherwise fantastic players are often not equipped to jam up an improvised blues or jazz number, simply because they haven't approached music from that sort of perspective.
Nitebob
We'll that's the thing, Piano's have a much fuller sound. I used to have a home studio, used backtrax and recorded some demo's doing my own backing vocals. I know some people that play keyboard, but it's just easier (and more of a sense of accomplishment if you do it yourself) and if it makes playing guitar easier, it's a bonus.
Svengali
This is a bit of a can of worms...
At varsity (studying music) we had some heated debates among just us classical instrumentalists. Especially among violinists, pianists and organists. These atracted the most students and general perception is that the violin is one helluva difficult instrument. Personally I play piano, violin anfd guitar in that order of proficiency. Pianists always used to spend more time practicing than any other students did. From my own experience when we die ensembles it took me much longer to learn my part than it took the violinist and cellist when we did a trio for example. We used to tease them for only having to read single note lines (with the odd chord or passage in double stops). Piano scores sometimes look like massive ant massacres in its profusion of notes and beams.
Organ players would hammer on how they have to tap dance around the pedals while still having to operate on various sets of manuals and operating the register stops.
My personal trump card would be to refer to the piano repertoire dating from circa 1750 to 1950 which is probably bigger than all the repertoire of other classical instruments combined for the same period and which can be termed the age of virtuosity. First the great romantics, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and later Rachmaninov as well as those from the national schools of Russia, Spain et al and then the impressionists and early modernists continually outdid each other in coming up with ever more difficult (the term transcendental had already been applied by Liszt) works.
I believe that mastering the greatest works in the classical repertoire is as difficult as anything.
Having said that - in my experience one aquires the tools to manage doing this out of nescecity and they become so much a part of you that it ends up being a matter of course the same as would be the case for any other instruments. Maybe the skills required is just a little more breath-taking on the piano but in the end pianistst will just be correspondingly better skilled and it would take a pianists no more of an effort to learn something than it would a guitarist.
As a pianist I can name some of the most difficult works for piano. That would be Balakirev's Islamey, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and Stravinsky's Suite from Petruska. Can guitarists name their commonly perceived most difficult three, I wonder... Of course these are somewhat debatable but there is a level of concensus.
This is just my perspective from a classical viewpoit and only relates to people that have mastered their instrument to some degree.
Having taught all three instruments - I find that the dexterity to play something simple on a piano takes much longer to develop than on violin and guitar. Progress on the piano, guitar and violin is painfully slow at very young ages, but older kids (13 years and up) manage to learn quicker on guitar than on piano.
What Keira suggest about key orientation on piano being easier than fretboard orientation on guitar is definately true as far as the understanding of the theory behind it is concerned.
Then again, I was always grateful at the fact that piano had been my first choice from the beginning once I had to start learning more advanced bowing techniques on the violin - these caused me no end of frustration.
It is interesting to note that simmilar action is required only by the left hand on the guitar to what both hands does on the piano and it is one of pianists' main challenges to get their left hand to be as agile as thir right. Left-handed parts are usually more difficultly written than the right-handed parts in piano music.
I cant't really give a perspective in favour of one instrument being more difficult than the other - I reckon only someone who can be considered a great player on both would be able to do that. These are only some observations.
Oh, and what really gets me is the utterly mundane, infantile parts performed on piano to accompany their songs by most pop (think 'The Rose') and rock artists. Even people like Elton John and Billy Joel plays fairly easy piano. Piano in terms of a pop instrument just won't equal guitar as far as the difficulty of the writing goes. Ever.
For someone who doesn't have a good ear for intonation, violin will aways be an impossible task, so how does one compare?
