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How can you teach yourself an instrument in this modern age if you're poor and a full grown adult but also want to get actually good enough to be a musician someday? Are you just doomed of you didn't start as a child

There’s no better time to learn an instrument than now. Look on YouTube first, there are normally amazing tutorials to get you started. From there find a book to buy/download/torrent and try to follow it the best you can. You are going to want to record yourself so that you can get a good outside view of how you sound, or even better find someone else who plays to critique you. The most important parts, though, are consistency and not giving up when you are soykaf. Good luck

Buy a cheap instrument and look it up online. It's much easier now than in the past.

You can find instruments for pretty cheap at pawn shops, though as for the quality I'm not too sure. The keyboard I bought only ran me about $60 (though I had to grab a stand and sustain pedal separately), and it was in pretty solid condition save for being dirty. Then again I might have just gotten lucky. In any case, if you're going to buy from a pawn then just make sure they let you test it. >Are you just doomed of you didn't start as a child I wouldn't say so. I know media loves to glorify the everloving hell out of people who started playing/composing/writing/coding/drawing/etc. when they were children or teenagers, to the point where it makes a lot of us think that if you don't start young you'll never get anywhere. But it doesn't mean it's impossible for adults to get somewhere. It's just harder due to having less free time and other luxuries that these people had when they were young.

>>3176 Ryo Fukui taught himself piano at 22, and he was awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrr3dp7zRQY

Can I tune a violin or viola like a guitar/double bass (in 4ths) instead of traditional 5ths

>>3191 Why the hell couldn't you? Though I'm not sure what your reason is either.

>>3191 Though somewhat uncommon, there are alternative forms of tuning, one thing that comes to mind is arabic tuning (i.e. tuning the instrument based on a traditional cultural sound) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9i2PHZRZA the concept is also known as "oriental scales" and is what gives turkish and some persian music a unique sound. This video describes some of the differences in tone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCVFkircZUg

>Are you just doomed of you didn't start as a child Off the top of my head, Alan Holdsworth started playing guitar when he was 17 and he was one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Tim Berne started playing saxophone in his 20s and he's a jazz monster. You can do it.

>>3191 Yes. What is your motivation for tuning your violin in fourths? I think it is an interesting idea.

>>3171 Some instruments are easier than others, but I think generally the consensus is yes. One exception (to the consensus), though, is the violin. There are a lot of people in the "you can't play violin greatly if you didn't learn it as a kid" camp, although I know some people personally who picked up violin/fiddle in their late teens and still play well. The best cheap way is probably to torrent some lesson DVDs and focus on those. If you can afford it, get some IRL lessons. They're usually not very expensive >>3176 One thing to note with buying a first instrument from any store, but especially pawn shops, is it's a good idea to bring a friend who is experienced with whatever instrument you're interested in along. I can't tell you how many people I know have gone into pawn shops, bought the cheapest guitar they could, then struggled way more than necessary to play it because it was low quality or poorly set up. There are great deals in pawn shops, I've bought a couple $50 guitars that played great after a bit of set up, but there are just as many instruments that are subtly damaged or set up improperly

>>3195 As a guitarist, I think I my fretboard only allows me to play with pythagorean tuning (12 tone even temperament). I used to know a musician who glued extra frets onto his guitar so he could play with microtones. Is it easier to experiment with such things on a fretless instrument like the violin?

>>3214 Correction: 12 tone equal temperament and pythagorean tuning are different things.

>>3171 Hey op, I think after the human voice, the piano is the easiest instrument to learn. It may be tricky to bring your keyboard to parties but there's not as much technique involved with getting the piano to produce clear tones; it's very easy to learn where the notes are because the sharps/flats are black and the naturals are white. The naturals which are a half step apart (B, C and E, F) have different shapes from the rest of the natural keys and that also makes navigation easier. Plus, you have like, six octaves to play with. To compare with my instrument of choice, the guitar: if you put six pianos on top of eachother, offset each one by a fourth, sliced off both ends leaving the 19 keys in the middle, and turned the whole thing sideways, you'd basically have a guitar. I think the design is very clever, but i think the design is also the main reason why I had such a hard time learning scales and how to build and/or invert chords to work with the melodies I want to create. I've been practicing for 4 years and am only just now beginning to develop a feel for the guitar neck. Speaking of chords, I still can't play the cover of hallelujah I composed on the guitar because its just a bunch of bar chords and I still havent built up the grip strength and technique I need to play bar chords for five minutes. I can play it on the piano no problem, though. And a guitar only plays in like, 2-and-a-half octaves.

>>3217 >To compare with my instrument of choice, the guitar: if you put six pianos on top of eachother, offset each one by a fourth, sliced off both ends leaving the 19 keys in the middle, and turned the whole thing sideways, you'd basically have a guitar. I think the design is very clever, but i think the design is also the main reason why I had such a hard time learning scales and how to build and/or invert chords to work with the melodies I want to create. Here's a tip. Don't look at the fretboard horizontally and don't learn the scales, learn the notes on the fretboard and intervals and look for vertical symmetry. Since the design was created for a 5 string instrument (the low E was added hundreds of years later) it might help to think of the guitar as having 5 strings +1 instead of 6 strings, the major third between G and B makes much more sense if you ignore the low E.

>>3219 Thank you for the tip and the charts, 3219. They have really improved my understanding of the guitar.

try a ukelele. it's cheap, fun, easy to play, and tuned like the first four strings of a guitar. george harrison had a ton of them. it's easy to keep handy so you can plunk around on it any time, write tunes, entertain friends, scare cats, whatever.

>>3171 It is absolutely possible, but adults have less patience with themselves concerning sounding like soykaf in the beginning. Like others said, look up YouTube tutorials and you can teach yourself. I learned trumpet as a child and guitar as an adult, and the only big part that a teacher is very helpful for is music theory and reading sheet music. Beyond that is just basic technique and lots of practice. Lots and lots and lots of consistent practice. It's almost impossible to practice too much.

>>3191 they do it all the time in old time/bluegrass music. There's no law saying you have to play in standard tuning.

>>3214 I play double bass. You can make any sound but the hard part is playing in tune because you rely entirely on muscle memory and your ear to hit the right notes.

>>3176 >>Are you just doomed of you didn't start as a child >I wouldn't say so. this is the correct response. Children are really ineffective at learning, adults can do it way better. It's just that adults have no time because of their job, family and whatever, while children can spend most of the day doing whatever they want. If you can find the time to practice any skill you can get good at it way faster than any children, just look at language acquisition or so, they spend like years to get the basics down while any adult would be fluent already. So as an adult it really comes down to time management. If you manage to put in the hours you'll get good no matter what, and way faster.

Also, especially if you want to learn an instrument, check out this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY