Easy Instruments for the Beginner

Playing an instrument has been shown to elevate mood, provide a catalyst for catharsis, and stimulate healthy brain activity.

Anyone can play an instrument. Playing well varies with the individual, but anyone and everyone can play something. Listed below are a few ideas for easy beginner instruments.

The fingering is somewhat like a recorder, but with the lowest hole left off. It has a very gentle sound, cheerful, mellow, with a hint of playfulness. It is a traditional instrument, used in a lot of Celtic music. Anyone can pick up this instrument easily and begin to play a simple melody.

Similar to the Irish tin whistle but more versatile, the recorder has a surprising range facilitated by the hole on the underside being only half covered to make available a higher octave of notes. It has a very sweet sound. Two or more recorders players using both melody and harmony can combine to make a very beautiful concert.

It can easily be learned by any beginner, as you only have to memorize one note at a time, reading only the treble clef. Some are adept at playing it by ear as well.

Obviously a keyboard has the capacity for complexity, which scares some folks away. But many keyboards today have helps included which make them much easier to learn. If you have trouble reading two sets of notes at once (from both the bass clef and the treble clef), you can still play with a little knowledge of chords and arpeggios. When you have not yet learned these, some keyboards do it for you. All you have to do is choose the G on the keyboard, and it will launch into one of many preset variations of the G chord or its siblings, G7 or G minor. If this sounds complicated, it really isn't. Just remember that G is a happy sounding chord, the minor version is G with a sad twist, and the seventh version is G with a little bit of a questioning sound to its voice.

Enough of this! I said it was easy and it is. Until you feel like playing with chords, most keyboards have preset songs and lessons built in to help you have more fun with your music. If nothing else, you can play a simple melody with one hand using only one note at a time. Begin gently. Don't press yourself to learn it any faster than you feel like doing it. Pretty soon you will start remembering sounds, remembering where you found those tones, and remembering more than one song without thinking about it.

All your chords will turn out right when you play the harmonica! All you have to do is blow on it to hear a pleasant harmony of reedy voices. The main thing to learn with harmonica is when to blow on it and when to draw breaths through it. It is not difficult to learn, and you will soon be making simple scales and songs the same day you pick it up!