Who plays an instrument and what are you learning/playing?

[Whispers]

I know there's already a "Who plays something?" thread.??In fact I necroed it back in October of 2007 after it was inactive for ten months!??xD

Anywho, I want to know who here plays an instrument and what are they currently doing with that instrument???Learning your chords, scales, coils???Practicing a certain technique???Trying to get down that one song you love or your teacher is making you learn???Writing your own music???Maybe you're getting ready to melt faces at the club.??I wanna know!

What are you learning, practicing, playing, or writing???What is your favorite thing to play???What make and model of instrument is it?

I play the guitar, violin, and piano.??I can also play the bass like any other guitarist, but I don't own one.??xp

My acoustic guitar (Dean Contour - Onyx) is in pawn with my PC, but when it comes out I'd like to learn this.??I mainly use it for well, acoustic and classical pieces.??=p
My favorite song to play on it is Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven".

On my electric (Dean Dime-o-Flame) I play everything I do on the acoustic plus metal.??My favorite song to play on it is Beethoven's "Fur Elise" (the super-low action makes it so much easier than the acoustic).??I'm currently learning "Thunderhorse" by Dethklok.
I have the first full minute down except for the crazy sweep part.??I can't sweep.????I also have the riff between the two chunk-riffs at 1:00 and 1:25.??I need to learn those two chunk riffs, but the rhythm is insane.??I just need to practice it like the sweeping.??I'd love to be able to sweep.??
btw - "Sweeping" refers to a "sweep arpeggio" in which one strums a chord but only plays each note on each string individually.??As one can imagine this takes a great amount of dexterity, left-hand speed, and left/right-hand coordination.??

My other guitar is a Squier Stratocaster in black but it is currently retired.??I've had it since I was 14 and it's now covered in black duct tape and a few fret wires have deep cuts in them from when I used to smoke pot and thought it'd be cool to play it like a dulcimer... >_>

I play through a Roland Micro-CUBE.??I did have a nice setup, but it got stolen out of a friend's garage.??1986 Marshall Master Lead Combo, Boss Metal Core distortion pedal, Dunlop Crybaby Classic wah pedal, and a Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb pedal.??All stolen.??

I also have a violin.??It is brandless and I know nothing on it save for The seven Suzuki "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" variations (not a fan of the Suzuki method...) and "Jack's Lament" from The Nightmare Before Christmas which I taught myself!??

I have a keyboard but I don't know anything official on it.??I mainly write my own stuff on it which I then throw into FL Studio.??I then turn a bunch of them into beats which I give to my rapper friend, LOK.
btw, he does horrorcore rap, so watch out for explicit content.?? I'm not even sure if it's a good idea to post that link here on HeRO!??

That's about it for me!??How about everyone else???=D

[Muzix]

I do, I do~

I play flute, and have so for 15+ years (I wanted violin, but they didn't have it when I started, and my parents wouldn't let me have drums. xD)

I like both learning new stuff from sheet music, but when I'm at home, I'll usually plug in my headphones and play what I hear. I've learned stuff from Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, Basshunter, and various animes just by listening intently to them. Sometimes it takes awhile to get the right key down, but once I've learned it, I've learned it.
I was known for playing the Theme of Alexandria from Final Fantasy IX and circus related tunes during marching band practice down time. xD

Eventually learned a good majority of Sephiroth's Theme from FF7 and The Castle from Final Fantasy VIII

After playing it for the final concert my senior year in high school, I finally have the Quidditch World Cup song beginning down, which is from start to where it grows darker.

Yes, I learn stuff from big movie soundtracks by ear too. Lord of the Rings (Concerning Hobbits), Pirates of the Caribbean (Two Hornpipes), Disney flicks, Star Trek, Iron Man, what have you.

I'm just a geek, don't mind me.

I also am a beginner on bassoon. Damn thing is heavy and comes up to my chin when stood upright. xD

[Chained Chaos]

Well, it's a hobby. One of those things that I'm pretty sure I could end up being good at, but I have thus far only messed around with.

I play both acoustic and electric guitar, with some random percussion, flute, and recorder thrown in the mix. My acoustic is a Hohner HW220, which might not be too expensive but it gets the job done. Currently I have a few songs in the works, as I also sing and am working on a few acoustic covers. Chiefly among these is a cover of KateTheGreat19's cover of "Melodies of Life," from FFIX. I like it better than the original. Other than that, I mostly just play random scales, snippets from other songs, Chrono Cross music, or variations of Final Fantasy's "Prelude". I can't play quite as fluidly as this guy yet, but I'm getting there.

My electric is an ESP EC-200QM series, black finish. I haven't touched this thing in a while. Not out of any sort of malice, really, but instead out of a budding interest in classical guitar that has since taken over my interest in playing metal-ish stuff -- for now. I can play some simpler metal riffs, like Iced Earth's "Frankenstein," but I don't practice nearly as much as I should.

I think that about covers it for me. One of these days I'll get around to becoming more proficient, but for now it's just good fun to fill the hours. :3

[Whispers]

Those are all pretty songs (save for the Iced Earth song, of course.??"Yeah, dude... That was... Umm... Pretty" xD) and I love "Concerning Hobbits"!??It's my third favorite from LOTR after "Gollum's Song" and "Pippin's Song".??

Muzix, Would you happen to play or have interest in Japanese shakuhachi pieces???Note those are three different links (Japanese, shakuhachi, and pieces) with the last being a very good one before he tries to jazz it up.??

Chained Chaos, some classical pieces are actually easier on an electric.??xp
And, hopefully you're practicing slowly to get the fluidity down.??Practicing at tempo only reinforces mistakes and you'll never play smoothly.??

[Chained Chaos]

It's a temptation that I have to fight sometimes. I hear the tempo, and my fingers naturally try to match it. In most cases I force myself to slow it down until I have the patterns figured out, though. I wasn't aware of the electric/classical thing, but I'll look into it. Any examples?

Oh, and thanks to you I had to go listen to The Dethalbum again, haha. Been a while since I've done that.

[Whispers]

Dethalbum II comes out next month.??

The "Fur Elise" is my prime example.??It's not difficult to play on an acoustic, but the light strings and low action of an electric make playing it at tempo ludicrously easy.??In the pictures thread I mentioned I started a YouTube account to create guitar lessons.??The "Fur Elise" was the first lesson I started recording, but it never got finished.??Well... It did, but I don't like it.??It's boring.??Follows the same pattern as everyone else on YouTube.??Guy in front of a camera sitting there and talking.??BORING.??D:
I wanna try giving lessons outside or perhaps in the vein of Good Eats and make an episode of it.??Alton Brown is a genius in the instructables department.??

Buy or download a metronome!??I have a Wittner 813m but--as you can see--it's hellishly expensive (though not their most expensive, surprisingly).??You can get free metronome software off of the internet, but I don't have my laptop hooked up to a speaker system so my amp easily overpowers it.??The same can be said for the small quartz metronomes.??I've wanted to try the MetroGnome as it fits in your ear and is rather inexpensive (especially when compared to the Wittner - LoL), but I'm happy with my Wittner.??It's loud (sometimes too loud when I practice at night xp) and the swinging pendulum offers visual reinforcement of the tempo.??

[Chained Chaos]

Instant cool points for you, good sir. Alton Brown is a king among men.

I'll certainly look into Fur Elise. I know the song, but have never ventured so far as to look up tabs or try it by ear. Could certainly use a metronome, though. Timing seems to be my main weak point; I can follow timing by ear, but when I'm playing I have something of a hard time keeping it steady consistently. I usually just play by instinct, which sounds like I'm manually keeping time, but apparently, from what I hear, that can lead to issues down the road, so I need to practice that.

Post about it here when you start your lessons, eh? I'd watch. :D

[Whispers]

Yeah, believing you're on time is common.??The thing is that although you want and you try to be on time your hands don't follow.??Sometimes your hands will be ready for the next note so they'll attack.??Other times it takes longer to reach to next note and you arrive a little too late not really being aware you are late.??Difficult rhythms also play a key factor.
Also, you should ask yourself which tempo you are following - the one you set or the ones your hands are following.??It is all too easy to minutely change your tempo to what your hands are doing when your aim is to do the exact opposite - to change your hands to the tempo you set.
Metronomes are completely unbiased.??No matter what happens with your hands the metronome won't compensate.??It just keeps ticking away.??

I could upload the failed "Fur Elise" vid for you.??It's not completed, and it's boring but meh.??

[Whispers]

Double post, but not really as this one pertains to the topic of this thread!

I received a call from Guitar Center today.??They told me to run over there and speak to the manager about a gift card they had waiting for me.??When I got there I was given a $20 gift card and when I asked why I was told it is because I was a "preferred" customer (I guess that means I gave them so much of my money that they want more of it - I bought an $856 guitar about a year ago =p) but I hadn't shopped there in a while.??If they'd known it's because I haven't had a job in forever I wonder if anything would have changed.??xD

Anywho - I used the gift card to buy the Dethklok Dethalbum tab book and now I'm learning the entire Dethalbum!??Woo!

Hooray for face-melting freebies!??

[Chained Chaos]

Oh, sweet. Free money is always nice. And what a brutal way to spend it, too. ;D