What's the most difficult instrument to play?

[Ozzel 0]

I've always wondered what the most difficult instruments are to play in an orchestral setting -- particularly as it relates to the style of JW's compositions. So if there are any symphony musicians on this board, please sound off on your own personal experiences with mastering your chosen instrument, and if you feel it is one of the most difficult to play.

I myself played saxophone throughout my high school years in the band. Obviously, a band is much different from a professional symphony orchestra, so I never had the benefit of performing with world-class violinists and cellists, etc. But we had a lot of brass and percussion. From my own experience, I gathered that the (French) horn was always one of the hardest to play. Our horn players were always screwing up, more than anyone else -- but maybe that's because they all sucked!

So what are your thoughts?

[Morn 8]

The French Horn is considered the hardest instrument in the orchestra. And the Oboe the easist people say.

[UCFKevin 0]

Yeah, I would guess the french horn as well, actually.

I used to play alto sax in my younger years. Wish I still had it.

[Erik Woods 555]

The triangle....

O.K.. seriously... I've talked to French Horn players and to ditto everyone elses comments, yes, it IS the hardest instrument to play. Actually, the xylophones are pretty damn hard as well.

-Erik-

[Ozzel 0]

Anyone know WHY the french horn is the most difficult? I know brass instruments have more than one octave for each fingering, and that octaves are changed with the mouth/breath instead of the keys. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe french horns have a wider range of octaves, making it more sensitive to changes in mouth shape and different "velocities" of breath.

[ocelot 508]

Actually Morn, Oboe is considered one of the hardest instruments in the orchestra to play WELL. That and the French Horn are in the classical realm always thought of as the two hardest. Trust me, I'm an Oboe player and we are always sought after as not many of us continue with it and become good at it. Most give up after a while.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

I don't know, but you can often hear when french horn players have difficulties with a piece, they sound like they're having a really hard time to keep a clean, stable note.

The Vienna Philharmonic are said to be the only major orchestra in the world who are still using an older version of that instrument (I think it's called Vienna Horn), which is even harder to control.

Marian - remembering the LSO's great horn section from Goldsmith in London 2001.

[Lurker 5]

According to the liner notes in the new Varese recording of The Day The Earth Stood Still the theremin is a very difficult instrument to play.

Neil

[Trumpeteer 302]

I've heard here and there that French horn players have to blow more air into the valve, as the valve is one of the longest in the brass section.

It also happens to be my favorite instrument, when played correctly.

[Guest]

Ozzel said

I know brass instruments have more than one octave for each fingering, and that octaves are changed with the mouth/breath instead of the keys. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe french horns have a wider range of octaves, making it more sensitive to changes in mouth shape and different "velocities" of breath.

For most brass instruments, octaves and a couple of other intervals can be achieved in this way. My high school band instructor explained to me that with a French Horn, the entire chromatic scale can be played simply by changing your lips.

Personally, I had the most difficulty with the bassoon. Unlike other woodwinds, which have only one key controlled by the thumb, a bassoon has (if I remember correctly) seventeen different thumb keys.

Many (feeling a connection to Ocelot, a fellow oboist).

[Ren 75]

I think they all have their difficult qualities when played well.

but french horn (when played well) gives me the goosebumps. . .

GRAINGER!!!!!

[King Mark 3,631]

Williams writes a lot for the french horn.Do others avoid it in orchestrations because it might be more difficult to record the score or more rehearsals or something?

K.M.

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

I'm a trumpet player who's about to learn French Horn. I've played and enjoyed trumpet for 7 years, but listening to all the awesome horn parts in Johnny's (and others') music has really made me love their sound. I've played my school's horns on occassion and love it, so I'm really excited to begin officially learning it!

BTW, I understand firsthand why brass instrument in general are difficult since it takes a lot of lip strength and air, and horn might be even more difficult because the notes are 'closer together.' When playing a note on the horn, it doesn't take much to go to another note just above or below it, so it's hard (for a beginner, at least) to find the right notes and intervals.

Ray Barnsbury

[Ren 75]

and like flute doesn't take a sh*t load of air! :roll:

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

Ooooooh look, I'm a flute! I can cover one little combination of holes and a high note comes out just like magic!!!

Ray Barnsbury-who dares woodwinds to match his lip strengh

[Justin 2]

I would say any instrument.

Justin -Musicaly dumb.

[King Mark 3,631]

I remember they tried to teach me the flute in primary school.That's when I learned I wasn't going to be playing musical instruments.

K.M.

[Frosty 0]

Double reed instruments are difficult because the reeds themselves are so finiky that it makes them difficult to control. A reed might play beautifully one minute, and then are crap the next. Most professional double reed players make their own reeds because mass produced reeds rarely work for long.

The French Horn in extremely difficult because the overtones are so close together that tuning them becomes musch more technical. All horn players play with their hands in the bell to help tuning as well as help control the tone color. You can playt any scale with an open fingering on a French Horn, but because of the over-tones the valves help in tuning of a particular note. Modern day FHs are actually two horns in one. There is Bb side of the horn, and there is also an F side of the horn. When trained as an FH player, you are taught to use both sides as one horn, therefore deciding which side to play isn't an issue. Classical horns used crooks, or replacable tubing, to play. That is why in classical scores you have FH parts in every key imaginable. When the player sees a piece and what horn to use, all he does is replace certain tubing in his horn and plays the appropriate part. There were no valves. All valves did was make more convenient to switch crooks.

[Beowulf 4]

For all musical instruments, I would say that the piano is the hardest to play and master.

For instruments in an orchestra, I would have to say the French Horn and oboe take the prize (combine the fact that the double-reeded oboe, in general, is a hard instrument to play properly with the fact that all woodwinds in an orchestra have incredibly fast-moving passages and runs makes me place it in this category).

As for John Williams pieces in particular, the award goes to French Horns once again. For proof, all one has to do is be in an ensemble that plays JW's overture to "The Cowboys" or simply listen to the piece. It becomes increasingly clear that JW, much like Richard Strauss before him, likes to take full advantage of the lush sounds of the French Horn, and in addition to this, has no problems with pushing French Horn Players to their absolute limits with near technical impossibilities.

BTW...this is kinda off topic, but this reminds me of an old and widely-known joke...here it is for those of you whom may not have heard it yet:

"How do you get 4 French Horns to play in Tune?"

"Shoot 3 of them"

I know, an oldie, but funny nonetheless.

[Guest]

All orchestral instruments are difficult to master, for different reasons.

The Horn requires a lot of brute strength and stamina. You have to be really primed to play it well.

The violin, on the other hand, is very difficult in that it requires exact intonation, especially in the high range, and takes many, many years of practice to achieve a professional level.

Percussion is also extremely demanding as they have to master so many instruments, and they are exposed to huge amounts of sonic bombardment at close range, which is very fatiguing.

[Justin 2]

How about instruments that are easy to play?

Justin -Who has a recorder he used to play around with.

[Rogue_Leader 2]

According to the liner notes in the new Varese recording of The Day The Earth Stood Still the theremin is a very difficult instrument to play.

Neil

That is more like the wierdest instrument.

[Uni 306]

For all musical instruments, I would say that the piano is the hardest to play and master.

Not necessarily. Actually, there's another old and accurate saying (not quite so tongue-in-cheek...!) that avers that the guitar is the easiest to pick up but the hardest to master, while the piano is the hardest to pick up but the easiest to master. Having learned to play both, I can say this is (for the most part) true. You can pick up a guitar and, without any lesson, be strumming chords and playing songs within a few minutes time. But at a certain point the learning curve plateaus. Playing chords is very different than finger picking and playing specific notes at the correct rhythm--something that must be learned and polished before there can be any talk of mastery, and that's where the climb to proficiency gets steep.

With piano, it takes a lot of time and effort in the early stages to learn even the most basic fundamentals--all the scales, proper fingering and technique, even the right posture--but once the basics are in place, the momentum tends to pick up, and with commitment and consistent practice, one can almost "slide" into a fairly deft mastery of the instrument.

So, in a sense, what you said was true: the piano's pretty tough to pick up and play (pretty tough just to pick one up, when you get right down to it ), but it's not quite so hard to master as some might think.

- Uni

[Ozzel 0]

I'm surprised there's been little mention of violins and all orchestral stringed instruments in general. I say this because I play guitar and bass and don't know what I'd do without my frets. Oh lordy, please don't take my frets away! It must take years of practice to be able to hit the right position on the finger board without the benefit of frets to guide you. Like having to develop a whole new instinct.

[Yoda Longbottom 0]

So my very favorite instrument, French Horn, really seems one of the toughest to play? I wouldn't have guessed so. Anyway, I always thought harp was not easy to play, as well as English Horns. My friend, a member of local symphony ensemble, plays English Horn and he told me many times that especially in Novak's and Dvorak's compositions English Horn parts are pretty demanding.

I would believe that cellos are very difficult to play since I never understood how come the players always aim their fingers at the very right place of the bridge on strings to make it sound the way it's intended to. And I can't understand how it is made possible when strings are playing and no one may ever notice the change of direction of the fiddlestick once the player reaches the upper/lower edge of it. Do you understand me? I mean the sound of strings never sounds "interrupted" even when the part is played slowly and violist has to change the direction of his violin bow carefully and slowly.

Can anyone tell me which instrument covers the wider range of tones (octaves)? Piano or cello? Or any other. I think it is cello and it is not triangle, but is it true?

Roman.-)

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

The instrument with the greatest octave range is the organ, I believe it spans 12 octaves. And I think the Blaster Beam is weirder than the theremin.

Guitar and piano? I've always thought piano is pretty easy, as far as the very basics go. Learning to play a simple C major melody really isn't any problem at all. On the other hand, I've been trying for weeks now to learn the guitar (infrequently and with just a book, no teacher), and I still can't do much more than three not very well sounding chords.

Marian - who also has a blues harp, but hasn't yet figured that out either.

[Morn 8]

According to the liner notes in the new Varese recording of The Day The Earth Stood Still the theremin is a very difficult instrument to play.

Neil

Well, they actually play it by moving their hands around a metal bar to change an electrical field. No wonder it's hard.

[EvanED 1]

I'm surprised there's been little mention of violins and all orchestral stringed instruments in general. I say this because I play guitar and bass and don't know what I'd do without my frets. Oh lordy, please don't take my frets away! It must take years of practice to be able to hit the right position on the finger board without the benefit of frets to guide you. Like having to develop a whole new instinct.

It's not as hard as it may seem actually, and it gives you much more freedom. It's kinda like the trombone; it takes a while to get to the point where you can play in tune, but once you can, you can do stuff like glissandos and stuff that you can't really do effectively on a guitar, at least as far as I know. (You can bend notes up a little bit, but I'm talking a glissando over the range of several notes.)

[Elmo Lewis 6]

I'm no expert in music, but I would say -- the baton.

Did you ever think about how hard it must be to put all those instruments together, memorise the score and the notes of each instrument, to know it must sound, to keep up the tempo, to realise immediately what problems the orchestra is having and solve them as you go?

I know I'd go crazy if I had to do that. The orchestra would sound just awful. And then I'd sell my recordings as "modern music art" and bash those who don't like it as traditionalists.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

As long as you manage to somewhat keep the rhythm, I think the more experienced orchestras should do fine. It wouldn't be a great interpretation, but it probably wouldn't sound too wrong either. During the last New Year's Concert, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt sometimes hardly did anything for shorter moments, and like every year he turned around and conducted the audience's clapping during the final march - but the orchestra kept playing without any problems.

Now, I imagine getting a great performance out of an orchestra is on an entirely different skill level, particularly if it's a work they're not familiar with.

Marian - who'd like to be a conductor, but has no idea about anything.

[Frosty 0]

The instrument with the greatest octave range is the organ, I believe it spans 12 octaves.

To an extent I'll agree with this. But instruments of that size and magnatude are few and far between, and it also can't be considered a "practical" instrument because of its size and relatively uneasy manner. They can be designed to have a huge range, but only to a certain extent.

Although this might surprise some people, the two instruments with the widest range (besides keyboard instruments) are...the French Horn and Tuba. Because there is so much tubing involved with each, it makes the overtones very close together and makes the range very wide. You look at a lot of classical score, the FHs were used as bass instruments. The tuba, although a younger instrument, has a phenominal range. Here is an example: In Star Wars (original soundtrack), in the cue called "The Little People" where the Jawas take R2, there is an a part starting at approx. 1:39 where what sounds like a French Horn has the melody. But it is not a French Horn, it is a Tuba. The part starts on a G in the TREBLE clef (second line). Because the mouthpice and tubing are so big, it allows for extreme ranges.

Frosty

[Ren 75]

i had to go work out at a gym to be ready to play my senior recital...piano takes tons of strength.

[Ozzel 0]

In order to keep this topic fresh, let's also sound off on your favorite instrument you listen for in JW's scores, as well as continue the discussion on the most difficult.

As for me, I love how JW writes for brass, but I most love listening to the timpani and double bass in his music, and how they work together to create this awesome, booming rhythm. Maybe it's cause I love switching between drums and bass guitar in my church band...

So, what are your thoughts?

[Guest]

The accordian.

John's Polka music is among the most complex, and yet enjoyable music to both play and listen too.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

John Williams is a master of timpani writing.

Marian - who likes the timpani.

In Dreams (Elliot Goldenthal)

[Ren 75]

french horn

[Trumpeteer 302]

French horn, definitely. I was listening to the "Star Wars" (aka A New Hope, aka Episode IV) main titles on the way to work this morning and I always get chills when the French horns play the main theme. So stirring.

And there's lots of other times when he just nails the emotion on French horns.

And his percussion writing is also fantastic. I wouldn't limit it to just timpani. Xylophones, snare drums, they all sound great under JW's direction.

[Ren 75]

french horn always do it for me, if played well. now you know one of my weaknesses boys.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

Is there anyone here who doesn't count the french horn among his/her favourites?

Marian - who does.

[ocelot 508]

Wait, I didn't know we were doing favorites... Cellos and French Horns. Although when writing for orchestra, there is none I favor over the other. I love to write for all and it totally depends on the piece. I never go out there to write for a particular instrument. It's whatever I hear in my head as I am composing it. Also the combination of certian instruments is incredible.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

Ahh, cellos and french horns - the essence of every Bruckner symphony.

Marian -

[Uni 306]

Because so much depends on the emotions conveyed by a specific piece, I'm having a hard time settling on just one instrument to enthrone as my favorite. However, I will say this: one of the things that makes John so endearing is his ability to constantly make use of every instrument in his orchestra. I mean, you get a lot of composers who adore one section or the other, and milk it ad nauseum (John Barry's strings, anyone?). John always seems to find a way to give even the more obscure instruments center stage from time to time. His compositions for the harp are one example; there's an instrument that's too often neglected by other composers, but John not only uses it, he demonstrates his usual mastery through it--and not just for some throwaway piece, either, but as the centerpiece of major themes and secondary motifs.

There are plenty of other examples, but you get my point (I hope). That's why a "favorite" instrument is tough to decide on; he uses so many, so well, that I don't feel right slighting any of them.

- Uni

[Ren 75]

AASAAHHHH CELLOS!!! they are brilliant too. if i could do it over again i'd major in cello.

[jsawruk 0]

I think that instruments of continuous pitch (violin, viola, cello, bass, voice, trombone, slide whistle, etc) are more difficult to play than instruments of discrete pitch (trumpet, horn, clarinet, flute, tuba, oboe, cor anglais, timpani, etc) or no pitch (snare drum, cymbals, etc) because of the intonation problems inherent in their pitch production.

This being said, I think that the violin is overall the most difficult instrument, with oboe (because of support) and snare drum (because of technique) following close behind, with the cello as well.

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

My faves to listen to are Horns and Strings, followed closely by trumpet. Oboe is actually very pretty when played well, such as in the openings of the love themes from Superman and AOTC, but when played like they are in my band . . . .ugh, watch out.

Ray Barnsbury

[King Mark 3,631]

love the Harp too.Not Solo harp that much like Fluffy's Harp or Lanes of Limrick,but whem Williams uses it in the middle of big orchestral passage or even action music(like Uni says).

K.M.

[Morn 8]

Favourite isntruments

Brass = horn

Woodwind = bassoon, piccolo

String = violin

Percussion = snare

[mahler3 478]

Ahh, cellos and french horns - the essence of every Bruckner symphony.    

Marian -  

Yes indeed, a beautiful combination!

I have always felt that 'Among The Clouds' from 'Always' features one of the most difficult and complicated Horn solos. The cd version is slightly extended than the edited film version, which is a shame as it cuts out a wonderful top C mastered brilliantly by James Thatcher. Ask a Horn player about any Mahler Symphony and they will often break out in a sweat! Mainly due to the complicated writing. The Horn section is doubled and sometimes tripled in most cases. Nothing like the sound of 12 French Horns in unison!

I would love to have witnessed Hitchcock's face upon the discovery of 16 French Horns blasting out the main title to 'Torn Curtain' by Herrmann!

Speaking of which, I know Zimmer is not highly regarded by all of us, but i do have to compliment him upon his superb Horn arrangement for the 'Red Sea' and 'Finale' from 'The Prince Of Egypt'. Hearing 16 Horns in glorious 5.1 surround during the parting of the Red Sea was an ingenious bit of scoring.

We can't forget 'Independence Day' as being a major Horn driven score, with some fantastic Nick Dodd arranging, and Jim Thatcher etc. playing!

Some of the greatest French Horn players working today other than Jim Thatcher deserve credit, so here goes:

Hugh Seenan (his solos with Thatcher on 'Deep Impact' are simply stunning)

Jeff Bryant

John Bimson

Dick Watkins

David Pyatt

Derek Taylor

Michael Thompson

Then there are the great and oft unsung players of yesterday:

Jim Burditt

John Burden

Andrew MacGavin

Jim Buck Jnr.

There are of course many more, but these are the names that immediately spring to mind.

-Tim (annoyed that he will be missing Goldsmith with the LSO!)