Violin or Piano?

September 20, 2024 10:56 AM

Which is More Difficult - Violin or Piano? (SLYT)
posted by Gyan (34 comments total)

Piano: much harder to pick up.
posted by swift at 11:02 AM on September 20 [24 favorites]

I found piano to be far more difficult than the viola which I picked up in junior high.

I can also tell you that we get laughed at a lot more and not taken seriously because apparently the treble clef is considered more serious. Though maybe this has changed or maybe I just had a bunch of assholes around me, but we were always the butt of jokes in the orchestra. *sighs*
posted by Fizz at 11:20 AM on September 20

Violin is lmore annoying to the innocent neighbours etc
posted by Green-eyed grenade at 11:24 AM on September 20 [2 favorites]

guitar because when you turn it up to 11 the whole neighborhood wants to stop you and you get to meet the local cops
posted by pyramid termite at 11:39 AM on September 20

Pianos are generally much harder to pick up due to weight alone, let alone unwieldiness.
posted by PennD at 11:43 AM on September 20 [6 favorites]

I taught myself to play piano and couldn't make anything better than a screeching noise in a violin even with a teacher, so my personal experience is violin is much harder. but my piano is not your piano.
posted by obfuscation at 11:53 AM on September 20

I played violin and piano in high school. Violin is much harder to get a good tone, and to play in tune.

One time a soloist from Russia visited our school orchestra and told us "the first ten years, you learn what to do with your left hand. The next ten years, your right. After that, if you're lucky, you begin to learn how to play well." That wasn't super encouraging to a bunch of 17 year olds.

Holding your hands and body the right way to play a piano is easier than holding the instrument and bow (and your body, etc.) correctly. With a piano you don't have to support the instrument while still remaining relaxed but in control and able to precisely shift hand positions, etc. The floor does that for you (and if it doesn't, you have bigger problems).

I always feel like this is the wrong question though. It's not playing a piano is really as simple as "pushing buttons." You still have to coordinate and anticipate a lot of movement. You have to play with sensitivity, etc.

I found it much easier to sightread on violin -- it's one clef, usually monophonic parts or double stops at most. I hadn't quite gotten comfortable with reading music on piano, it was still more of a translation and memorization thing. But I did only have one year of piano and 6 of violin.
posted by Foosnark at 12:14 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

I have never studied piano but yeah I took a year of violin lessons in 6th grade and never got beyond painful screech. my sisters still joke about it.
posted by supermedusa at 12:38 PM on September 20

"You gotta really love someone to listen to them learn to play the fiddle." -John Prine
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 12:54 PM on September 20 [6 favorites]

This one time at band camp...
posted by chavenet at 12:56 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

At one point most of my post-high school music experience was on bass, both electric and upright, and especially with bluegrass groups. Somewhere during that time I thought it might be fun to pick up the fiddle. I borrowed a friend's extra violin and messed around on it for a while; I got a decent tone - good enough for bluegrass anyway - with the bow, but I quickly found that compared to a bass the fretboard was so small that my big fat fingers couldn't move finely enough to find the in-tune notes on the fiddle. I probably could have fixed that eventually, but I didn't want to play it badly enough to attempt that steep learning curve.

Until recently all my musical experience was on single-note instruments - brass and woodwinds along with bass (not all at once, of course). As much as I liked the idea of playing piano, my notions of the difficulty of playing multiple notes at a time scared me away from it for many years. It wasn't until about 3 years ago that I faced my fears, and found that its learning curve wasn't difficult enough to make me give up.

I think the OP question is a little too apples-vs.-oranges; the challenges of playing the two instruments are too different to be able to make a meaningful comparison.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:15 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

IMO the answer has to be violin is harder. How many kids learn to play piano (or take piano lessons) without even owning one? Becoming a super expert -that might be a different question.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:51 PM on September 20

Drums because playing them at low volume is no damn fun at all and neither is wearing earplugs so you go deaf
posted by flabdablet at 1:59 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Violin is WAY harder. Both hand positions, plus bow control.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:11 PM on September 20

Agreed that this is apples-to-oranges, but also, it's way easier to get to a point where you sound halfway-decent on a piano than on a violin. Mastery is an entirely different question, of course.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:41 PM on September 20

The actual video is funny and charming as well, now that I’m at home and actually able to watch/listen.
posted by obfuscation at 2:57 PM on September 20

See also the Piano vs. Guitar (SLYT) comparison.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:07 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

There was an expert study on this, they conclude both violin and piano are the hardest of all music instruments and both types of professionals spend time practicing way more than the other instruments.
posted by polymodus at 3:18 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

obfuscation: The actual video is funny and charming

Hahaha yes, the violin's Formula 1 impression!
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 4:12 PM on September 20

it's way easier to get to a point where you sound halfway-decent on a piano than on a violin.

I know this sounds fighty and challenging, which I honestly don't mean it to be, so I beg you to take this in the spirit of gentle inquiry when I ask: how have you determined this?
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:06 PM on September 20

/glares in superiority from the cello section

You people. Sigh.
posted by zap rowsdower at 9:58 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

(I also play piano. And guitar and pipe organ and electric bass and harmonica and trombone. Honestly growing up playing all of them, piano is superior because as a kid you can just walk by, sit down, and bang out a few tunes, unlike dealing with all of the varying tuning nonsense.)
posted by zap rowsdower at 10:05 PM on September 20

Agreed that this is apples-to-oranges

Oh, that one is easy. Oranges are way harder. Apples don't need peeling.
posted by flabdablet at 1:25 AM on September 21

Piano is clearly harder, because I can play a violin but I can’t play a piano.
posted by plonkee at 2:09 AM on September 21

Oboe walks in …. “Here, hold my beer.”
posted by pearlybob at 2:43 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

Getting good music out of an oboe by sucking beer through it is hard, no question.
posted by flabdablet at 3:57 AM on September 21

Pianist here, ex-horn player. On the French horn, you never know for sure if you're going to nail the high notes. Not really a problem on the keyboard. Not exactly an issue on the violin, either. So the existential dread points go to the hornist.
posted by kozad at 5:19 AM on September 21

Piano is all laid out in front of you, in order even!

Getting good music out of an oboe by sucking beer through it is hard, no question

Bassoon is much easier, built-in straw.
posted by goo at 5:47 AM on September 21 [3 favorites]

Here's Bill Bailey explaining what the bassoon actually does within an orchestral context. But we need to strip even more of the supporting instruments away to hear the pure bassoon timbre that goo alludes to (sample includes demonstrations of both upper and lower registers).

Do not try this at home. Piloting a hot air bassoon without proper accreditation is illegal and dangerous, especially indoors.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 AM on September 21

The piano allows a player to do many more things at once, and as such permits much more complexity of music one person can produce, but the act of playing a piano, of hitting the right keys at the right times with good dynamics while working the pedals, is made up of much simpler parts than the act of bowing a violin to produce good tone and dynamics. A violin can only play two notes at once, sort of three in a triple stop, while you can in theory play as many notes on a piano as you have fingers. But man, there is a whole world in bowing beyond just what notes you are playing. So I would say playing the violin is more difficult, but also that for any given skill level a piano is in some technical sense able to play more difficult music.
posted by lhputtgrass at 1:25 PM on September 21

High notes are harder to make listenable sounds and basic intonation. I've tried everything: violin is the hardest instrument of all, trumpet second hardest. Cello and trombone are easier to start with. Tenor sax is easier than clarinet.

Most fun instrument: Timpani (Kettle-drums). I played woodwinds in HS, but I got to sub on timpani and it was a blast.
posted by ovvl at 3:47 PM on September 22

I disagree about the trumpet. There's only 3 valves, it's just a matter of memorizing the fingering patterns. I'll admit the altissimo range is a bit more difficult, but not astonishingly so. I've found altissimo on tenor sax harder than on trumpet.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:47 PM on September 22

So maybe violin and piano are equally difficult to play....not sure if we found the answer.


But how about piano and trumpet simultaneously?

Or how about two saxophones simultaneously?

Still too easy? How about guitar, drums, and singing?
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:51 PM on September 23

I know zero instruments, but Mark Wood has cute videos on violins. It appears Mark Wood first found electric violins could be worn using an appropriate harness, seemingly for the purposes of creating this beast, but neck free violins turn out medically important, and you see some other strap flavors now too.

Also some people remix cats
posted by jeffburdges at 3:29 PM on September 24