013 Piano, Violin, and Guitar - Which is the easiest?

In this episode, we talk about musical instruments, and introduce them in a way that's easy for anyone to understand, even if you've never played any music before! As always, I'll be telling stories in easy-to-understand, Kuli English.

Transcript

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Kuli English Podcast. It's me, your host, Chris. So in the last episode, not this episode, but the one before, I talked about the American school system and also gave some stories about like preschool and elementary school and middle school and like, you know, stories from back then, childhood memories and stuff like that. 

And then I think I also did say that in this episode, so like today, that I was going to talk about high school and college and give some stories about those. But the truth is, I think a lot of those stories are kind of long and I think a lot of people experience a lot of different things in high school and college. So it's gonna be really hard to summarize everything into one little story, whereas I think like for elementary school, for example, it's really easy to, you know, summarize most of it and you don't really remember that much from elementary school. 

So it's really easy to just put it into one small episode. But I was thinking about what to talk about in the high school episode and I ended up coming up with a different topic that's not really about high school. So today what we're gonna talk about is kind of like music stuff. 

And the reason why I want to talk about music stuff is, well, number one, I actually, this is something about me like in my life now here in Tokyo, but I'm gonna be performing at like an open mic thing on Saturday. And it's been a long time since I've actually performed any music like in front of other people. And so I'm kind of looking forward to that. 

And the reason why I'm saying that is not because I want you to come. Like a lot of the people who listen to this probably have, like, we've probably never met. So it's okay, like, you don't have to come. 

Also it'll like cost money to go watch that thing. Anyways, so, you know, I'm performing this thing and I was thinking, well, why don't I talk about, I guess, playing instruments. And, you know, not everyone plays instruments. 

Playing instruments meaning like playing guitar or like playing the saxophone, playing the flute or something like that. So I want to go ahead and talk about my experience playing instruments in my life. And then also kind of give some, I don't know, some introduction to the people who have never played instruments. 

And I want to describe it in a way that's easy for everyone to understand. So let's go ahead and get started with that after this short little break.

Okay. 

So now I want to talk to you about the piano. So the piano is kind of like this instrument with a bunch of keys and all the keys are either black or white. And if you like press a key, then it makes a noise for you. 

And that noise, that sound, it's always the same sound. So, you know, if you press the key, it's kind of like a button. If you press the button really, really hard, it makes a loud sound, but it's the same sound. 

And then if you press the button really softly, then it makes a really quiet sound, but it's still the same sound. Like the same button always gives the same sound. And there's a lot of different buttons. 

There's like 88 of them. Well, at least for a full size piano. And there's 88. 

Sometimes you have a little bit less if the piano is smaller or if you're trying to, I don't know, buy a piano for like a kid or something, then it gets cheaper. But basically the piano, I think is a pretty good first instrument for most people. It was my first instrument and I thought it was really great because like to play a note, I guess there's not that much skill to play one note. 

Like you just press the button. You know, I press the button and I've played piano for like, I don't know, five years or something. Then it sounds the same as if you press the button and you've never played piano. 

Like you just press the button and it makes the sound. If you press it hard, it's loud. If you press it soft, it's quiet. 

But I think it's a really good friendly first instrument. And not only is it easy to play one note, but it's really easy to play two notes as well. And I promise like I'm, I have a plan and that's why I'm talking about this. 

But, uh, if you, you know, if you play one note and then you want to try it out with another note, so you want to see how it sounds together, then you can kind of, you can definitely play two notes at the same time. If you really need to, you can use both hands. Maybe you can do it with one hand, but it's, it's really no problem to play basically any two notes together at the same time. 

And this is so good for random other stuff that's not related to piano. So for example, let's say that you're like trying to figure out, uh, everyone knows like a whole new world, right? Like a whole new world is the song, like Aladdin is a whole new world. And then, um, so there's like a melody part and there's a harmony part. 

Uh, and you don't really have to know what those are, but you basically know that there's like a guy singing and a girl singing and they sing different stuff. And if you want to figure out what they're singing, you know, well, you could look it up online and be like, Oh, okay. So how do you sing each part? And then you look it up and maybe like you can find the answer, but you know, sometimes the stuff isn't this kind of information isn't online, so you have to figure it out yourself.

So if you listen to it, you can kind of play along with the piano and then you can quickly figure it out. It's a lot easier on piano than any other instrument, in my opinion. Like, uh, it's, it's, it's much harder on the guitar or violin. 

If you, if you're trying to figure out some kind of melody line, in my opinion, again, so, you know, for full context, I also played piano first, that was my first instrument. Um, so maybe it might be because it was my first instrument that a lot of the basics in my mind take the shape of piano. Uh, but having said all that, I would recommend that, you know, if you want to play music, um, I think piano is a pretty good first instrument. 

Uh, and then, uh, so I, I like, you know, I, I told you my story about this panel stuff and actually, so I don't know if you've heard, well, probably you have, cause you know, this is like episode 13 or something, but the, in the very beginning of every episode of my podcast, there's like some kind of piano song kind of, uh, so that, that's all me doing that. So like, I thought about paying somebody to like make music for me, but then I figured, oh, well, don't worry. I made music a long time ago and I'll just keep using the same music. 

So, uh, that, that song is actually me recording. Like I recorded that on the electric piano at home. And then, uh, I actually ended up using some other software stuff. 

Like I used, uh, Ableton, which is the name of this one, like software that helps make music. And then I added like the other instruments and then there's like drums and then a little bit of guitar, which you don't really hear cause you don't hear the full song. But, um, that that's also me.

That's just a little fun, little fun, little fact about the podcast. Uh, so anyways, that's enough about piano. Now let's take a short little break here.

And then we're going to talk about another instrument. 

Okay. So let's go ahead and talk about our next instrument, which is the violin. 

Uh, so if you don't know what the violin is, I'm going to try to explain it to you. And this is a pretty hard instrument to explain. So sorry if it's not very good, but, uh, the violin is kind of like this, like brown instrument and it's about the size of probably like your chest. 

So your torso from, from like your waist up until your neck, it's about that tall. And, uh, the violin has four strings and this is the most important thing about the violin. There's four strings and the strings make the music. 

And you're supposed to put the violin on your left shoulder and you kind of hold it up. And then your left hand like stays there and kind of like, you know, does stuff with the strings to try to make music. And then your right hand doesn't, your right hand doesn't even directly touch the strings ever. 

Your right hand only holds a bow. And I say a bow and you know, it's actually the same spelling and pronunciation as like the bow that you shoot, like the bow and arrow that you shoot pew pew, like an archer will shoot a bow and arrow. But the bow for the violin is a different thing. 

The bow for a violin is like, it's like a really long stick and there's like horsehair on it. Uh, well it depends on like what material is there. And sometimes it's not actually horsehair. 

Sometimes it's fake. Uh, but anyways, you have like this bow and then you use that bow and you use the horsehair part and then you pull it along the violin strings on one of the four strings, sometimes two strings at once. And then if you pull it at the right speed with the right power, then it makes a beautiful violin noise. 

And so that's, that's like what a violin is. And my experience with violin is I, uh, I played violin, like starting from the fifth grade. So the fifth grade of elementary school, and I played for about five years. 

And then I quit after I went to 11th grade in high school. Cause then I, I went to a boarding school where like music isn't a big deal. But, um, so my experience with the violin has mainly been like, I just did it because, you know, it was, it was an extracurricular activity, extracurricular, meaning like it's something outside of school that you do.

Um, and then I didn't really like it, but, uh, I mean, I was told that I was pretty good at it, like in my small town in Oklahoma, like, uh, in orchestra. So the orchestra includes like, not just the violin, but like other instruments that are similar. And then, uh, you have like this chair system.

And so, uh, I'm trying to explain all this in the context of, of like a, I'm going to try to explain as if you don't know what orchestra or like, don't know what a violin is. And then, so like, if you play violin in the school orchestra, then like you have this ranking system, the ranking system basically tells you like, you know, this person is the best, second best, third best, fourth best. It's maybe not that good. 

Cause I don't think it's that good to rate kids and like tell them, Oh, you're not as good as that kid or something like that. Uh, but then every couple of weeks you have like a, a ranking check and then like you go into some room and then the teacher like tells you, okay, play this thing. And then like the teacher tells you like, okay, you're, you're this good.

And then if you're the best, you're something called first chair. So you're the very first chair. You sit in the chair that's at the very front. 

And that means you're the best. And then if you're second chair, then you sit like next to the first chair person. And then like, you know, if you're third chair, then like it kind of continues on like that. 

But I was first chair for, you know, every time I played violin. Uh, so like people told me I'm good, but I don't actually think I'm that good. Um, and that's probably because I didn't actually like it that much. 

So, you know, I did violin for about five years, but I didn't really love it. And you know, for my story about piano, like I played piano for what, formally for three years. And then I, and then I like had my own experience where I was like, Oh, actually I really want to get better at piano. 

I really want to play this song. I really want to get better. I like piano. 

I want to make my own music, stuff like that. But then for piano, for violin, I never had that. Like I never had this period where I actually ended up liking it a lot. 

The most I ever liked it was just like, meh, it's fine. At least I get to go on a trip or something like that. Like it was kind of like a means to an end. 

Uh, I'm not going to explain what that is, but, um, but, uh, violin, I think, um, is actually, I wouldn't recommend violin as a first instrument and this sounds biased. Okay. This sounds biased because I myself didn't super love violin. 

Uh, but I think this is probably true for a lot of other people too. Like, I think most people will have a pretty tough time if violin is your very first instrument. And that's because like, uh, to just play one note on the violin, um, like there's going to be a huge difference between someone who has played for a long time versus someone who hasn't played for a long time. 

So if you've only played for, let's say two months versus someone who has played violin for like 10 years, like the quality of the sound of just one note, it's going to be a huge difference. And like, this is very normal for a lot of things. You know, of course, someone who's played violin or someone who's played piano or guitar or like done anything for more for over 10 years, of course, they're going to be way better than someone who just started, but at least for the piano, when you hit one note, it's the same note. 

Okay. Whoever hits that note, whatever you press, it's the same. And then for the violin, it's like, like one note, basically you have to spend a really, really long time playing before your one note sounds even okay. 

Like it's going to sound really bad. And that's because like when you play the violin again, so let me try to describe it. When you play the violin, you have like, you know, four strings. 

And so go ahead and pick any, any string. And then you have to put your horsehair bow and pull it along that string at the right speed with the right power. And, and then your left hand, it might have to do some stuff to that string to, to make music. 

And like just pulling the bow itself, like nobody can just get the right speed and the right power at, on the first try. Like it takes a long time and it takes a lot of experience. And not only do you have to do that well, but your left hand has to, you know, do a good job. 

You have to like press down the string. And if you want to move that your finger or your wrist or your arm, and you want to create something called vibrato where it changed a little bit. So instead of like, uh, it goes like, uh, and it kind of goes like up and down a little bit and you, you want that, but that is also hard. 

So then like, you have to spend so much effort to learn all these things before you get something that sounds kind of good. And for piano, like at least, you know, twinkle, twinkle, little star, right? So twinkle, twinkle, little star is like twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder, like you can play that on the piano pretty quickly. 

Uh, but on the violin, like if you play that, you can, you can play it, but it just, it doesn't sound that good. And, um, it's not, this is a problem because of like, it might demotivate you. So, you know, the most important thing about all this stuff is while you play this instrument, you want to have fun so that you're going to play again, like the next day. If it's boring and it sucks, and, you know, people keep telling you like your mom was like, stop that scratchy noise. That sounds terrible. Like if people keep giving you negative feedback and you yourself aren't getting fun from it, then you're going to quit. 

And then, you know, you're never going to reach that 10 year point where you start sounding really, really, really good. And so like, that's, what's really tough about violin. What I don't want is I don't want people to like try out music and then they're like, oh, this sucks. 

And then they quit. So if they only do it for like a month or something, like it's probably, I don't know, maybe something went wrong with the process. Maybe they didn't have fun. 

Uh, and like, I want people to see music as like a source of joy. So like whatever you play, you want something that you enjoy so that you're motivated to play it the next day. And violin, I think is pretty tough for that. 

Of course it depends. So if you are someone who really likes the violin or you like, you really, really want to reach that, that level of being good at violin and you have a goal in your mind, then that's probably enough motivation. Like even if you don't sound good for the first month, even if your mom tells you you sound terrible, like stop playing. 

Like if you can just kind of power through that and you just, you can ignore all the, all the badness about that, then, then that's great. Like violin should be great. Uh, but at the same time, I think, uh, for most people, the average person, like fun is a huge factor of motivation. 

And for that, I think violin is, it's not going to be my recommended first instrument. So having talked about all that, um, let's go ahead and move on and, uh, let's talk about a different instrument right after this short little break.

Okay. 

So now let's go ahead and talk about our third and last instrument of the day, which is the guitar. So the guitar is also like my favorite instrument. And it's also the instrument that I've been playing for the longest amount of time. 

Uh, but let me go ahead and describe to you what a guitar is, even though you probably already know what a guitar is. Uh, and remember this episode, I'm trying to explain everything as if you don't really know much about music or if you've never played an instrument before. Uh, but a guitar is kind of like this big instrument and it's made out of wood and, um, it's about as tall as like, if you put it on the ground, it's about as tall as your chest.

And the way that you play it is you, you kind of sit down in like a chair and then you put the guitar on your right thigh. So like kind of like close to your right knee and your left hand holds the neck of the guitar and your left hand is, is, uh, its job is to finger the strings. So you want to basically use your fingers and put them in certain places so that the strings make the sounds that you want. 

And your right hand is the strumming hand, strumming hand, not ham, hand. So you have like a pick and I don't have a pick here with me, but, um, you, you basically hold this little like plastic thing and you use it to hit the strings with your right hand while your left hand is fingering the strings and then it makes noise for you and you've got six strings. So, you know, you can, you can hit all six at once or, you know, there are other ways to do it. 

You could also hit maybe just for the strings at once, or you could hit just one string out once and that's also okay. So the guitar is, um, I think it's a really good instrument for having fun and, um, because it's so fun, then I recommend it as a good first instrument because having fun is really important. And what I mean by that is like the guitar, if you start to play the guitar and let's say you have like a teacher, um, a good teacher, you don't want a bad teacher, but a good teacher. 

And I'm pretty sure for most people with no music experience within like two hours, you can be playing along to some kind of pop song. So the pop song that - I used to teach guitar in high school - and, uh, the, the, the song that I always had people play was Taylor Swift's, You Belong With Me. And that only has like basically four chords and they're really easy chords. 

So if you can play those chords and you play them at the right time, I mean, it's not going to sound great, but it definitely sounds very recognizable. And then everybody knows Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me. It's like a popular karaoke song. 

If you go to karaoke with like American people, but, um, so it's, uh, it's so recognizable that like everyone can play it. And then when you play it after two hours, you're like, holy crap, in two hours, I can do this. Imagine what would happen if I spent another two hours or I spent another 20 hours, like I could probably get pretty good. 

And like, so guitar gives you this gratification. It lets you feel satisfied pretty quickly. And, uh, I, I love that the most about guitar. 

And that's probably the reason why I played guitar the longest. So I, I played guitar. I started in like 10th grade. 

So technically I've been playing guitar for like 15 years now. I wasn't, I wasn't playing like all the time. It wasn't like every week I play at least two times. 

Like I just played it whenever I wanted because I never took like formal lessons. I just learned everything on my own, like online playing. Just basically I pick some goal of like, Oh, I want to play this song. 

Cause I think it sounds cool. And then I start playing that and then, you know, maybe I can't play it. And then I spend more time. 

And then eventually, hopefully I learned how to play it, but it's always been like a fun instrument for me. Whereas like, I think piano and violin, it was always very structured. So like I took some lessons or like there were some, there was some competition that I had to go to and you have to perform at that competition.

And then maybe you get like a ranking and then, you know, you don't want, you don't want the shame of getting like a bad ranking. You want the honor and glory of getting a high ranking or something like that. But guitar was never really about like, you know, comparing or like for competitions or anything like that.

It was just like for fun. And I think, um, like fun is a huge, huge like factor and all the, there's a bug. 

Ha! You're dead, sucker!

Okay. 

Sorry. I had to go kill a mosquito and I always spend a lot of effort killing mosquitoes cause I hate it when they bite me. Uh, but anyways, uh, we're talking about, uh, fun being a big part of learning stuff. 

And so for guitar in particular, like, uh, you know, if you, if you have a lot of fun playing it, then what's going to happen is you're going to play it more because it's fun. And if you play guitar and it's not fun, like, are you going to play it more? Like maybe if you like force yourself to practice, but, it comes from like some energy cost. You're like, oh man, I gotta, I gotta do this or else I'm not going to get better. 

Or like, oh, I bought a guitar, so I need to make sure that I practice to make the money worth it or something like that. But if it's just fun, you don't need an excuse. Like you would just be like, okay, well let me go play cause it's fun. 

And, uh, it's actually the same for languages as well. So for languages, like, you know, the best is if you spend a lot of effort, like, you know, from a textbook and you're like studying words, remembering words, practicing, speaking, taking lessons and stuff like that. But you know, I don't know how fun that is. 

And if you actually have a lot of fun with language stuff, then you're probably going to continue doing those things. Like fun stuff is very sustainable. Uh, you can keep doing it. 

Sometimes fun stuff is not good for you. Right? So like eating potato chips, that's really fun, but it's not really good for you. But language stuff, you can kind of, you can imagine there are some fun things you can do with languages that are actually good for you. 

So maybe, you know, just talking to people in that language and like trying to use that language. Um, so I'm imagining that for most people who are listening to this podcast, they're already at a level in English where they can probably say most things that they want to. If you have a feeling like I want to eat potato chips, you probably can do a pretty good job of saying I want to eat potato chips. 

And then, uh, then the more fun stuff comes when you're like talking to someone and you have some thoughts in your mind and you're trying to convey those thoughts like, Oh, I like eating potato chips, but I don't like it when it's soggy. I like it when it's really crispy. And once it was really soggy and it was a bad experience, like stuff like that. 

If you can practice saying that kind of stuff, I think that's pretty fun. Um, but you can imagine, um, if it's fun, you keep doing it and you want to spend a lot of time doing it because then that's how you get better at it. I mean, you don't have to get better at it, but if you spend a lot of time doing it, then you'll get really good at it. 

So what I recommend the most for language stuff is you need to have fun with it and you want to do it in a way that's sustainable. So if you're studying something like, uh, you should be thinking to yourself, like, is this something that is causing me so much pain? And like, is it costing me so much energy that I'm definitely going to quit in a year or two? And a lot of the times when people like start studying, they go too hard and then they burn out. So, I mean, I kind of felt that a little bit with Japanese too. 

Like if you study too much, you will burn out. Um, and, and so, you know, you gotta take breaks and stuff. You got to make sure that whatever you're doing, it aligns with your goals and you kind of understand that what I'm doing now is something that I could continually do for a long time. 

And if you keep it up for a long time, then you'll get really good at it. So anyways, um, maybe that's a good point to go ahead and wrap up for this podcast. Uh, did I talk about how like the music that is in all the breaks and stuff, including the music that's playing now, it's all original music. 

So the guitar breaks and stuff like that. It's also me. Uh, but anyways, so thanks so much for listening to Kuli English Podcast. 

And, uh, if you liked this episode or you want to support the podcast, then definitely feel free to share this episode. Uh, I want the podcast to reach as many people as it can, so that people can get practice listening to English and stuff. So with that, thank you so much. 

And we'll see you next time on Kuli English Podcast.