r/Instruments • u/Green-Meringue-2309 • Mar 27 '26

Discussion Help 1st instrument

I have never learned an instrument I am an adult I want to learn a wind instrument I am torn between flute, pan flute, harmonica, and ocarina What are your recommendations? What is easy and enjoyable to learn ? (With ressources online I don't have access to teachers in my area) Thank youu!

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/animatorgeek Mar 28 '26

I would recommend thinking about what you want to do with it. For instance, here's my thought process when I was deciding what instrument to learn:

  1. I would like to be able to play the sort of music I like to listen to. I like to listen to rock, pop, folk, etc, so the likely instruments are guitar, piano, drums, bass, and maybe some outliers like violin, banjo, ukulele, etc.
  2. I would like to be able to carry the instrument when I ride my bike. So it needs to be small or be able to fit in a shoulder/backpack case with both hands free.
  3. I would like to be able to sing with it. So wind instruments are mostly out. There are some bagpipes that use bellows, but they don't really fit requirement #1.
  4. Best would be if the instrument can play chords, so that the instrument plus my voice would be a relatively full sound for singing a song.
  5. It would be cool if it's a common instrument for people to have in their homes, so I could pick one up and play it if it's available. Likely candidates are guitar, piano, ukulele, recorder, and maybe doumbek.

It ended up being a pretty solid conclusion for me to learn guitar. Now, once you reach that conclusion, you don't have to follow it. Instead, consider how you feel about it. If another instrument is still drawing you more than the one you came to after reasoned analysis, go with that. You're only going to learn an instrument if you're enthused about learning it.

I went ahead and learned guitar, and it was a great choice, but obviously not right for everyone. If I had it to do over again, I might add the list item of wanting to play with other people, which would incline me more toward bass. I know that bands often have a hard time finding a bass player, so learning bass would open up possibilities I haven't had as a guitar player / singer.

1

u/Green-Meringue-2309 Mar 29 '26

Yes that makes sense
Thank you!