4 Easy Musical Instruments for Beginners
With 2021 just around the corner, why not make learning a musical instrument one of your New Year’s resolutions?
Of course, all instruments are challenging in their own ways and difficulty levels vary with the piece you choose to play. To make your job easier, here are four instruments that:
- Are relatively easy to pick up, so you can start playing simple tunes as you learn
- Are affordable (for entry-level models), which makes them unique and wonderful gifts as well
- Allow you to enjoy playing music on your own without the need of joining an ensemble
Ocarina
The ocarina (“little goose” in Italian) is an ancient wind instrument — a type of flute — that comes in varying materials, shapes and sizes. The more commonly used ocarinas will come with four, six, or ten to twelve finger holes. The complexity of the instrument increases with the number of finger holes, but it provides the diversity to play more notes and therefore more songs and in more keys. The most basic four-hole ocarina is small and light, and can be a nice ornament to carry around. Here’s how it sounds.
As a beginner, you can consider getting a ceramic ocarina in the key of C. Most ocarinas are sold with finger diagrams and notations of beginner pieces to get you started right away, but here’s a scorebook available at library@esplanade for you to check out:
潜陶之声 (Qian tao zhi sheng) by Chen Xiuyin
Get the book here.
Recorder
Recorders too, come in varying sizes that play at different pitches. The common ones are soprano, tenor, alto and bass. Both soprano and tenor are pitched in C, where the note C is produced when all finger holes are sealed. Either of these two types are suitable to be your first recorder, although the sopranos are more popular for use in schools. Here’s how it sounds.
Check out The Best Recorder Method — Yet, compiled by Albert Gamse, to get started. You can also start playing some Disney favourites by following the simple notations from this scorebook:
Songs From Frozen, Tangled and Enchanted by the Walt Disney Music Company
Get the book here.
Harmonica
The harmonica is another great starter wind instrument. Its versatility warrants its popular adoption in the classical, pop, blues, and jazz genres of music. It comes with different keys and in different types: diatonic, chromatic, tremolo and octave. Your first harmonica should be a basic 10-hole harmonica, once again in the key of C, and of the diatonic scale rather than the chromatic ones. Get one that bends notes — bending notes is an advanced technique used predominantly in blues, so it’ll be good if your instrument is ready for it. Here’s how it sounds, and you can get started with:
How to Play Harmonica: A Complete Guide for Beginners by Blake Brocksmith, Gary Dorfman and Douglas Lichterman
Get the book here.
Ukulele
The ukulele is an instrument much popularised by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It resembles the guitar, except it has four strings (tuned in G-C-E-A) and a smaller build, which makes it a more appealing and beginner-friendly instrument than the guitar. You can easily get started by strumming basic chord progressions in the C family (e.g. C, G, Am, F) to go with your singing, which can be accomplished by simply holding down one to three fingers. Another benefit of taking up this instrument is that once you’re comfortable with it, you can easily cross over to the six-string guitar.
The ukulele comes in four sizes, from smallest to largest: soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. It may be tempting to just grab the smallest, but your first ukulele should be the concert instead. It’s not too big for a child to handle and not too small for an adult to fit their fingers between the frets.
When making your first purchase, do bundle up with a capo and a tuner:
The capo is a device that clamps onto the ukulele neck to shorten the strings, therefore allowing you to play in other keys with the same “chord-shape”. It is also crucial to ensure that the ukulele bridge is able to accommodate the thicker string of the low-G. Down-tuning the 4th string to a low-G may be required as you progress on to playing melody lines in the future. Here’s how a ukulele sounds, and you can get started with:
How to Play Ukulele: A Complete Guide for Beginners by Dan Scanlan
Get the book here.
As with picking up any skill, learning how to play a musical instrument takes diligence, perseverance and practice, regardless of the difficulty level. On top of practising on your own, consider learning from a teacher, practising with others, joining interest groups and viewing performances. These are the key ways for improvement and mastery. We hope you enjoy your foray into making music!
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Text by
Chong Thong Yang
National Library Board
