What instruments are a must to have?

I've been thinking about instruments alot lately, what would be epic to have in a collection.

A piano ofcourse, we can all agree on that. A guitar perhaps, atm I only borrow my brothers because I cant afford one. When Rybak started to do his work on the tv I fell in love with the violin, and i'm ordering one pretty soon, but havent decided what to choose, electric or acoustic. And the fact that I want my little sister to be able to play the violin I guess I need to learn it myself. The positive side is that it's kinda a single note instrument. Should be easier to memorize songs then.

Andrew made me get my eyes on an 12 hole ocarina, so hopefully it will be ordered together with the violin. Only 60 usd, might just order it tomorrow ^_^. Two instruments I'm not in the prossess of buying yet, is the ukulele and panflute. Pan flutes are kinda cheap tho, so maybe I can get one under the xmas tree or something. I bet a saxophone would be fun too, i can only imagine how fun it would be to do some blues improvs. But a sax costs a tad too much. A french horn would be fun too.

What my ultimate collection would be then is:
Piano ( you can never go wrong with that )
Guitar ( a chill instrument )
Violin ( works great together with the piano )
Ocarina ( not really a need, but it's cheap and lightweight )
Pan flute ( i love the sound of it )
Ukulele ( hawaii'ish )
Sax ( cool attitude'ish )
French Horn ( horn sounds so war'ish )

I cant wait to get my fingers on the violin tho, and the good thing is that I live on the country side atm, so I dont need to worry about how bad it sounds
I'm making a violin tab for this atm, I didnt know it sounded that good until I heard it on the violin:

VictorCS, you'll be a one man band.

A good MIDI keyboard, Cubase (or some other sequencer) and some VSTs is all you need

A nice VST is Omnisphere. This is the beginning of a piece I'm currently learning with the "Double Tracked Guitars 30 ips" sound and the "Adagio Transparent Strings Warm" in the background, both from Omnisphere, but I played it with my keyboard, only. I have no idea how to play a guitar.

http://www.frank-buss.de/tmp/memories-beginning.mp3

For a good collection you'll need some percussion instrument, which of course is available as a VST, too. Maybe something for my next song project when I can get some time to learn the rest of the song

http://www.frank-buss.de/tmp/axelf.mp3

Probably
- Some good used Baby Grand (a real piano!), in a nice room.
- A Kawai MP-8 + some recent Mac + NI Kontakt / EWQL Play and some Libs (like EWQL RA, Silk, Gypsy, Symphonic Choirs, AudioBro LA Scoring Strings), a good Sound System for the Kawai in a nice room.

That's about the expensive instruments I'd get, maybe a Waterharp would be great and some drums just for the fun of rhythm.
Maybe add some Midicontroller stuff (like from Akai) for a few Bucks, a few knobs to turn. Should Fit at the place you use the Kawai MP-8.

Besides that the piano has a "strange" keyboard layout: notice how not every semi-tone step is either white-black or black-white but between E<->F and B<->C its a semi tone... its something that "predefines" your music, probably in the means of C-Major scale (or was it Natural/Harmonic A-Minor?), because you tend to play white keys rather than black ones... Besides that, the piano is both: a great instrument on it self and a great general interface (currently via MIDI) - I just love it

p.s.: if I had much space and money, I'd keep my moms very old upright piano (Klavier), its "slightly" out of tune and sounds so... old I love it too.

This is what I could in <40 hours, without any prior knowledge, with Kontakt Player + EWQL Orchestra Starter Edition: http://www.last.fm/music/Ionas/_/Circle and some DAW software (notice: 100% steady tempo, 100% steady velocities, no dynamics, sorry for the abrupt start and end regarding the cellos, and yes a single set of oboe players probably can't hold a tone that long, just image that there are multiple players switching - I didn't play this in via a Master Keyboard, its only clicked together on a midi piano roll without knowing any kind of music theory;)

I just figured I already had one instrument at home, I just need the bow, that arrives when the violin arrives. I had a little money set back when my computer got fried last week. Yes, it was burning for a tiny moment.

The lighting broke my network card the the day before, the day after when I turns it on I walks out of the room, it probably says poof, and after I while, when I get back, my room is full of unbreathable smoke. And 20% of the motherboard was black ^_^

AMD Phenom II 1055T, 4GB DDR3 and a motherboard ordered, yes, it costed me more than a violin

Anyway, the new instrument I discovered ( someone punch simon in the face ):

The saw reminds me to the Theremin:





I guess it is as difficult to play as a saw, because you have to be very precise without some sorts of markers.

Exactly what I was thinking too, quite like the theremin, but less costy, a saw is as cheap as it gets, the only thing that will cost a bit is a bow. I've been lookng at the net, searching for home made theremins and stuff, but you need a little knowledge about electricity and stuff, so I havent bothered, because I find it quite boring. And I've never really liked math and numbers. Learning something you dont like is hard.

I'm so looking forward to try out the Midsomer Murders theme on a saw tho. Got my computer up and running today, and yesterday while I was still watching videos on youtube on the laptop I accidentially came across the kalimba, a small instrument played kinda like a piano, as cheap as the ocarina. It seems like a great improvising/jamming instrument.

I've just gotten crazy about instruments I guess. I dont know why, but a nice little collection of instruments cant hurt. I guess I'll spend alot of time with my violin when it arrives, I just hope my sister will learn it aswell. I guess she'll need a teacher, and she's still only 3. But I bet she'll kick some as at age 7-8 if she starts practicing next year. How fun wouldnt it be to play the Handel-Halvorsen's Passacaglia duett ^_^



My older sister has a horse, so I guess we wont need to pay for horse hair, and I can buy a cheap bow practicing changing the hair

Nice duet! But looks complicated. Maybe start with something simpler, like Ghostbusters

That girl is playing with the violin i'm getting i think, a Leonard, and trust me, that ghost busters song is quite hard I believe, it has a couple of fast changes ( it always look easier than it is ). The upside with the violin is that it's probably easy to memorize since it's a melody instrument, sure you can play two strings at once, but mostly only one. The downside is that it's fretless, it'll be good ear training tho. I wonder if Andrew will show us what he has learned so far on his violin.

I guess I will start with a few very slow songs like Terra's theme I posted above, and this, the FF6 Town theme ( flute part ):


I do alot of Final Fantasy, but one cant deny that those games has so much beautiful music, and I believe Uematsu will be remembered a long time as a great composer. I should probably do a couple of love songs like these from Titanic and Lion King. Girls probably like those?

I ordered my violin not too long ago, but the company had some trouble with the supply, so they wont ship it before next week, they actually was so kind to offer me a Stagg violin instead for a discount too. But I feel I like the look of the Leonardo better. It's not like the Stagg doesnt look fancy, but I kinda love the way that violin "sori1004jy" plays. And been looking around for prices, and it seems the Leonardo always is expensiver than the Stagg except at the place where I bought it, who knows, better quality ^_^

That girl playing the ghostbusters theme actually have a yamaha I think. The Leonardo I bought is a replica, since I dont have the money and dont really know how far i'll take the violin I couldnt spend more than 500 usd + a separate shoulder rest, new strings and harpicks that i'm gonna order. If it's a cheap instrument, it's usually just the assesories that follows with the instrument that has very crappy quality. My brothers guitar is ok to play on, and it hasnt broken yet, but all the stuff that was sold togheter with it was pretty crap, amp, wires, effect pedal, strings etc.

I do believe I will continue, so i'm planning on getting a more expensive violin in the future when my economi will support it. I'm looking forward to the day i'll be able to do this one, always loved the intro of BioShock:

Nice, hope you enjoy the violin. They're a lovely instrument so I wish you luck in learning it. We actually have a violin in the house ourselves, though it barely used and out of tune at the minute, real shame.

Also Ben Chan is great, I watch him now and again.

WALL OFF TEXT:

It's 3:16 ( like that verse from the bible I guess ), so I'm not gonna bother correcting any wrong spellings

I got the violin here the other day, since I cant compare it's quality and playability with a more expensive one, I cant really tell how "bad" it is. It's ok to play on, make noise and quite ok. The materials consist of main body in some sort of wood, the black shape around it is made of plastic, I expected it to be made out of light metal. ( I guess that's what's on the expensive 1200+ usd Yamaha I was looking at ). Since I wasnt sure, and didnt have to much money to waist I had to go cheap, the good thing, I didnt waste too much money, 500 bucks. The bow and the violin seem to be in good quality ( apart from the plastic that makes it feel cheap ^_^ ), the violin case ( very cheap, and blue, why not black? ), headphones ( those that break after a day, and have tinymonoradio sound ), shoulder rest ( awfull ) and rosin ( i dont relly know if it's good or bad ) isnt something you'll show off tho. Not that I dont need the case. When I buy a more comfortable shoulder rest I will grab new rosin and strings. Hopefully it'll make it feel like a better instrument. I was surprised about the loudness, this is an electric, and without an amp I was sure it was going to be quite "silent", but no. The inbuilt amp need batteries to work. The violin is very lightweight too.

I was sure playing fretless would cause alot of problems, like not finding the correct notes, and make learing new songs difficult etc. Compared to a guitar or piano where you know where each note is. But it's quite "easy", sure, my playing is a bit out of tune, I dont always hit the right spot. Mister Ben Chan said in one of his videos that one would use a few years before getting this correct ( hitting the right notes ), so I guess i'll just have to live with a semi tone/whole tone of here and there until I get it perfect. The bow is the hardest part to learn. Getting it to play without making sqeaky noises, play one of the strings instead of two ( i'm not skilled for chords yet ^_^ ) and moveing it steady are stuff that I need to practice alot. At night when I cant play with the bow, because it's way too loud, I usually use a guitar pick or just my fingers. Playing it like a guitar. That way I can practice a song any time of the day. It's not really to much work translateing guitar position to violin underthechin position fingering, because it stays quite the same even tho the hand is a little bit different positioned. That way I can practice something late in violininlap position and have it all memorized for violinunderchin position for daytime practicing.

Practicing pieces right out of my head is quite fun too, yesterday I suddenly started hearing this old norwegian song in my head, and I was able to play it almost on the fly. I guess my relative pitch is quite good, should be since I've done alot of transcribing. I struggle with chords ( transcribing the melody is very easy ), but since violin is mostly a melodic instrument it's so easy, you only need the melody. Pokemon theme came out too from nowhere. I can only play almost onthefly with pick/fingers because when I set the bow in motion it overloads my capacity. ATM i'm trying to practice the FF6 Town theme and Mhaura ( flutepart ) piece from FFXI, getting the pitch right and bow strokes "clean", fairly easy and slow pieces and just spot on my skill level I guess, and i love these two pieces:


Violin is so worth a try, go buy one you too.