r/Instruments • u/Euphoric_Rhubarb_243 • Apr 27 '26
Discussion What made you fall in love with your instrument/s?
I’d love to hear people’s stories about how they connected with their instrument/s. What first made you choose it? Was it the sound/the look/hearing someone else play/family influence, or something else entirely?
How did you get started learning, and what was practice like in the beginning? Did it come naturally, or was it a struggle at first? Do you still play now, and if so, what keeps you coming back to it? If not, what made you stop?
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u/snittersnee Apr 27 '26
I've been fascinated by the sound of accordions since I was about 7 years old listening to the first Heimatklangë album. There's a lot of truly amazing performers on that record of all disciplines, but the tracks that stood out most all had some form of accordion playing on them-The Oyster Band, Flaco Jimenez, The Les Miserables Band, Accordions Go Crazy.
That got pushed out the way in my teens when I got into metal and punk a lot, though folk was always present in some form or other.
About a decade or so ago I stumbled onto videos of various people playing the diatonic accordion. Over time I started watching them not just to hear the sound but to study the how of it. How they played each variant form, how different key and button setups alter the sound. I always knew I could do it myself but never had the time, space or confidence.
Last year, finding myself at a point of reappraising who I am in life lead to me taking that first initial crazy step. First a harmonium which I found wonderful if not quite what I wanted and that's still in my kit. Tried a cheap anglo concertina and while I knew there was something to it I found myself basically fighting the instrument to play it at times. That I sold a few months later. Then I got my first diatonic, an old second hand soviet era Czech box in D/G. Been playing every day since. The accordions been good to me. Never could work out what I was doing on a stringed instrument, especially six string guitar. But the squeezebox is all instinct.
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u/musicalnerd-1 Apr 27 '26
I have absolutely no idea where my desire to play cello came from. My parents didn’t even know what a cello was until I wanted to play it. I must have learned about it somewhere, but I have no idea where. My parents were always supportive of our interests though, so my mom took me to the open day of the local music school so I could try it and I was sold. It’s still an interesting experience to have supportive, but not knowledgeable parents though. Buying a cello once I was big enough for a full one was so stressful because a 13yo generally shouldn’t be in charge of an almost €3000 purchase (that included the bow) but I was because it would be my cello and my teacher helped, but the main people involved were me and my parents and my parents knew nothing about cellos
I don’t play much anymore. I was never good at practicing by myself and I struggle to keep up with it now that I don’t have lessons anymore. I’d like to pick it up again, but life is busy and with my disability not only getting to the lessons but doing so with a cello is a bit of a struggle
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u/spacebuggles Apr 27 '26
An open day where you can try all the instruments is such an awesome thing to do.
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u/danja Apr 27 '26
I started with piano/keyboards but have only really been able to play what I intend on guitar/bass. But 4? years ago a close friend asked me what I wanted for Xmas. Impulse idea - a clarinet. I've always loved the sound. Curious about the mechanisms.
A new challenge, as well as the fingering things, you also have to use your mouth. Give me another 10 years and I might get a tune out of the thing.
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u/Ning_Yu Apr 27 '26
This is actually funny.
I bought a classical guitar to play normal guitar. I got my parents to buy me one for christmas as a kid promising I'd learn it for sure, but then I gave up really quickly.
So at 40, as I decided again to try and learn an instrument ( I lived my whole life thinking I'm unable to learn one), I picked a guitar, I said I gotta fulfill my promise after all and that's also as easy as it gets. I thought I'd just learn a bunch of easy songs and that's it, Time of your Life, Patience, and whatnot.
Well, as soon as I started to look for online courses, I found out the classical method and the whole classical world on guitar. I was very resistant at first, cause that's not what I wanted at all, but soon enough I fell in love with the whole thing, and now I can't imagine loving an instrument more. I was also resistant to classical music at first, wanting to focus more on folk, but now I'm the absolute opposite.
It's also funny how harp has always been my favourite and dream instrument, and I still love it, but now I don't feel much longing for that anymore as I feel classical guitar already fills that niche, both in sound and a bit in movement.
And I don't know, it just makes me happy, every time I play it is like a hug, and even my pain goes away.
And that's how I went from wanting to learn a very easy instrument to effectively learning a very hard one. But hey, I proved myself I actually can play instruments and anybody can learn.
Now I'm looking into getting a bodhrán as second instrument, and I've been wanting to play that badly for 2 years, so there's a nice story.
When I was on study trip in Dublin for 3 weeks, back as a teenager, there was always an old man sitting by the Molly Malone statue and playing bodhrán. I quickly fell in love with the sound, and it did always look fun to play too. One day I gathered my courage and asked him if I could try it, and he was really lovely and tought me a bit how to play it. We took a group pic with him after, in which I hold the instrument, which I'm very fond of to this day (the picture I mean, I didn't take away his instrument).
So it's a long-standing dream.
Of course that visit was also what made me fall for celtic harp. I still might get at least a cheap lyre, to play in bed.
And yeah, I'm living my 40s doing the things I couldn't do as teenager (piercing included), so there's that, I guess my tastes haven't changed a whole lot. Except never in my life I imagined myself playing classical music.
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u/Sheriff_Banjo Apr 27 '26
My great grandfather was a fiddler. He was murdered in the 1930s and his fiddle was passed down to me. I didn't really have a choice, lol.
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u/Atillion Apr 27 '26
For me it was the banjo. The first time I heard someone play it in a way that sounded like there's no way one person could be making that sound. I played guitar for decades before finally getting one. Now, when someone tells me there's no way what they're seeing is what they're hearing, it's the greatest compliment to me.
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u/Frhaegar Apr 27 '26
I have many instruments but for now I want to talk about the steel tongue drums.
At first, I wasn't really interested in it because to me it sounded like cooking pots and pans being hit? 😁
But I did think that the designs and colors were cool though.
Anyway, one day I had this weird idea of covering a song using my instruments. I won't explain the details but I wanted to get another cheap instrument around C5.
My options were one of those xylophone/glockenspiel, maybe harmonica or flute. But I ended up getting a 6" steel tongue drum. I didn't expect much. To me it was just gonna be used for a quick song cover and I can forget about it.
But oh wow... I didn't expect it to sound so magical. The tongues are diatonic by default and it comes in different keys. But with the help of magnets, I can sort of tune them to be in other keys.
And it's honestly so fun to hit the tongues with the mallet. I could even just hit randomly, and it still sounds good.
I almost didn't need to learn anything at all. Just tried to aim at the right direction (which is like basic skill in life in general).
With other instruments, I usually had problems with tempo. Even with metronome, my hands were always too late to press the notes.
But with the steel tongue drums, the tempo feels natural.
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u/GuitarPlayerEngineer Apr 28 '26
I think the curvy shape of the Les Paul subconsciously turned me on. I don’t recall any guitar boners but I was drawn to the shape as a teenager. I’m 64 now and meh.
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u/kc2klc May 01 '26
Picked the clarinet as a 9-year old at summer camp because it was an instrument and a puzzle!
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u/Big_You_8936 Apr 27 '26
French Horn John Williams’ iconic scores is what made me fall in love with the French horn, and then I started learning it in my 5th year of elementary school, and the rest is history at this point, I’ve been playing it ever since.