i know to play all wood wind instruments. in this range i`ll choose clarinet is the hardest. what guys think???

I play flute and piano and I think piano is harder, but that`s because I`m better at piano than flute.

truthfully.. there is no hardest instrument to play.. everything is super hard when u want to go pro.. but perhaps for some they feel certain instruments are easier or harder than others.. this might be because our physical body and our brains are more suited to a certain type of instrument.. have fun with ur instrument guys!!

I don`t actually think any instrument is the "hardest" but rather the most difficult to master. Sure, it may be hard at the start but that`s only because you just started the thing! Heck when I started sax I couldn`t even blow into the thing and now i`m trying to master circular breathing!!!

The only thing that I can say is that hardest thing for me is: Piano and guitar, because i`m really unco-ordinated and I practically have to memeroise the music to play it because I just can`t move both hands properly without lots of practice, but this is of course to each individual instrument player.

The hardest instuament to play is The Great Highland Bagpipe

Of course people hardly mention guitar, since they think playing guitar is easy since a lot of fools on tv only strum chords. Although to master the guitar i think is much harder than piano for example. This is because guitarist have to master many methods of right hand picking. After that the have to master accuracy with the right and left hand. left hand speed, and many other techniques. On the other hand the piano is there for u to just hit keys. Therfore, guitar wins!

Out of all the instruments I play, I would say the piano. On drum set, you play multiple drums at the same time, but with piano, you have the addition of notes, dynamics, articulations, pedal markings, grace notes, trills, and/or mordents, etc., at the same time. I have never really mastered reading piano music, and I don`t think I ever will...

You have grace notes and trills and articulations with almost any instrument. It does not make the INSTRUMENT harder, it makes learning the technique harder.

No one here has mentioned the viola; it is indisputably harder to play than the violin. Asks violinists who switch to it, and they`ll agree with my statement. Actually, strings are very hard to play well ( they`re not hard to begin with though ).
As for difficulty of mastering instruments, I`d put them in the folowing categories:


Very hard:

French horn
Oboe
Violin
Viola
Organ
Piano
Classical singing

Moderatly Hard:

`Cello
Bass
Bassoon
Trumpet
Trombone
Tuba
Harpsichord
Clarinet

Not too hard:

Flute
Harp
Percussion
Classical plucked strings ( Guitar, Lute ect. )
Saxophone
Percussion
Timpani

***

No instruments are easy to play well!

YES! I love you, you`ve totally put everything in the right order.

Go you.

But anyway, playing the `hardest` instrument is hard for everyone. For example if you played saxophone (a not so hard instrument) and then switched to a similar instrument eg. clarinet, it would be really easy, because you`re just transitioning from one woodwind instrument to the other.

but on the other hand ... a clarinetist trying to switch to oboe is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes people just plain *can`t* seem to play other instruments.
But by far the flute is definitely not the hardest thing to play. The oboe`s harder than it any day.

I say no to trumpet being the hardest, I would personally put it in the middle category of hard - easy,
I agree: Piano, Oboe, Tuba, Organ, Classical Singing, Violin and Viola are in the hardest category (no particular order) - Don`t know about French Horn??????

Then Clarinet, Cello, Double Bass, Tuba, Trombone, Trumpet, Bassoon are in middle category

Then I think the viloist guy who posted the latest order, had the last section pretty right.

VConsidering nothings easy, nothi ghard, thats not the point, music is the point, and every thing is challenging and gets more challenging to most, something one might put inthe niddle bracket may be put in the first bracket when it reaches later developed stages

^ sorry, but unless u can play all those instruments, how could u possibly rate degree of difficulty? of course everyones gonna say the one they play is most difficult. it`s human nature, we`re all vain. (noting where u put viola.)

Godzilla Violist,

I agree with Dave`s point. How could you legitimately rate all those instruments without being able to play them all (which I seriously doubt)?

I do agree that the sax was easy to learn. However, you were right that no instrument is easy to play well. After I started taking sax lessons, I entered a whole new world of musicianship.

Sometimes I envy trumpet players, though. Setting up the instrument involves only putting the mouthpiece in. With the sax, you have to wash out and dry the mouthpiece, grease the neck, put the mouthpiece on the neck, put the ligature on the mouthpiece, put the reed in (and make sure it is perfectly positioned), tighten the ligature, check the reed`s position again, put the mouthpiece cap on, put the whole thing on the body of the sax, put the neckstrap on and tighten it, and then finally you are ready to play.

Cleaning the sax is no cakewalk either. You have to disassemble everything first (read previous paragraph backwards), swab out the mouthpiece, neck AND body (often multiple times for the body), and then wipe the fingerprints off the lacquer of the neck and body. All a trumpet player has to do is take the valves and tuning slides out and put everything in warm water!!

Grrr....

The sax may one of the easier instruments to play, but setting it up takes a lot of practice. Some would say it takes more talent to take care of the instrument than to play it...

the oboe