2025, Family, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

First Instrument

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Our 7 year old grandson has taken a keen interest in his mother’s Ibanez acoustic guitar, and spends up to an hour at a time trying to pick out chords and play tunes on it. His dad taught him the tune “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica that he likes to pluck out.

Grandson isn’t big enough for a full size guitar, so yesterday we went to Sioux Falls and got him a three-quarter size Yamaha guitar. It fits him really well, and has just the right sized neck and fretboard. He is very excited! His parents have been in touch with a Brookings guitar teacher and are going to sign him up for lessons this week. His new sibling will arrive in August, and he will need something to keep him occupied when all the attention is on the new little one.

My first instrument after the piano was a B flat clarinet. Son had a trombone. Daughter was so excited to get her French Horn in Grade 5 that she marched around the block blasting on it. The first time she saw a violin that a friend had brought over to the house to jam with Husband, she almost wrestled him to the ground to get it away from him. She was 5. Husband set up violin lessons for her the next day. Husband had a cello, and still has one he loves to play. Daughter in law is a piano and flute player.

Grandson assures me that practicing won’t be a problem. We shall see. It is lovely, though, to have another musician in the family.

What was your first instrument? If you are an older sibling, how did you adjust to your younger siblings’ arrival. If you have older siblings, how did they react to your arrival?

36 thoughts on “First Instrument”

  1. i chose guitar. nylon string classical guitar is what i play today. i started on steel string acoustic and went to electric where rock and roll lived but went to classical early on for the warmer tone and softer feel on the finger tips. steel string guitars build up callouses that go away if you dont put in your time on an ongoing basis. i played for myself to accompany my singing and would go for long stretches without picking it up. i have a wonderful steel string acoustic as a option and i play it on occasion but i love the classical. i have electric guitars and should get the amp out to where i can practice with but that is not the case today. they collect dust. i have studied piano and sax. trumpet cello and accordion. and will get to those sometime i hope but guitar is a weekly event on my calander and a highlight of my week. im working a bass into the equation today
    my kids play a little. they all studied but it didnt follow their hearts into adulthood and part of their lives. they listen and have an appreciation but not as a vital part of their existance. i cant imagine not having music plugged in to my life and love pandora radio options that allow me to play beatles or steve goodman, bach or lyle lovett, miles davis orchestra nancy griffin, tom waits or bob dylan paul simon john prine tony bennett ella fitzgerald blossom dearie and mel torme. i started listening to john pizzarelli’s radio show a couple years ago and love listening to his stories about how his dad, bucky pizzarelli who was a great jazz guitar player in the 50’s and 60’s would have guys pop in to play. les paul,stepnan grappeli and lots of there are lots of stories about going to record with different labels and clubs. its a cool niche in life.

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  2. My first instrument was a nylon stringed classical guitar. My mom bought it for me from Sears when I was 8. We were not Catholic but Mom arranged lessons for me from the nuns at the Catholic school in Owatonna. I learned a few basic folk songs of the ‘60s and a few chords. I taught myself from there.

    I picked up flute in junior high and played through my senior year. I was second chair.

    I picked up my guitar again in the 1980s. I bought an Alvarez Yiari dreadnought. It was a big guitar with a big neck. In 1993, a friend of mine made my guitar for me. The neck is smaller around to accommodate my stubby fingers. It’s based on a parlor guitar shape for comfort in my lap. It’s the perfect guitar for me.

    That friend also made me a mandolin. In the early ‘90s, I borrowed a mandolin from a friend to teach myself how to play. During that time, my friend built my mandolin. Several years later, my friend TeeJay, Renee’s cousin, made me my second mandolin. I still play that one frequently. It’s like a dear friend. TeeJay also built me a banjolin. That instrument is hard to keep in tune. I love it but I don’t play it often.

    I’m the oldest. When my younger brother was born I told my parents to, “Take him back. I don’t want him. I want a sister.” I still want a sister, but I sure do love my “little” brother!

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      2. We got Joel a (used) drum set when he was in 7th grade. Husband built a loft bed for him, or it wouldn’t have fit in his room. He played band in middle school, but just for fun after that, and eventually traded it to someone for an electric guitar…

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  4. i am the oldest and my brother 2 years younger kind if found his own way in this life. my mom tells the story that at age 3 she went to her mother and told her she was concerned about pauls not speaking yet and her mother said that paul didnt need to speak because he would point and grunt and between my mother and me wed figure out what he wanted. so my mom went home and the next day when paul was pointing and grunting in his high chair at breakfast she asked him to use his words and ask for what he wanted. id like the yellow box of cereal from on top of the refrigerator was his response and after that he spoke.
    i got my first guitar in 6th grade paul got one too. he was in 4th. i played cool rock songs from the radio and he figured out house of the rising sun and classical gas and other music that hed figure out the challange to. i played to sing, today he is a great pedal steel guitar player and plays banjo guitar and dobro with serious bluegrass players.
    my kids all studied oldest who also sang played guitar piano and sax, daughter played pisno and drums followed by son who was a cello trumpet guy, daughters who played pisno together with one choosing oboe and voice snd musical theater as her calling and the other choosing trumpet and guitar as her complimentary instruments. grandson ari is the pianist and i just gave him a cello to pursue his interest there but his brother is autistic and has a rough way of dealing with life so the cello has to be out of view or it will get broken and pounded on so well see how that goes. that brother is denver and piano snd drums seem to be his interest. well see where he goes with it. luca is 2 and is open to any and all suggestions cuitar piano and drums are what is sitting out at my house for him to try
    2 more coming up from other kids house and it will be interesting to see if he gives them much if a musical path to follow. rory and lilli will be raised very differently from the 3 boys at my daughters house with different family dynamics rory and lilli are twins and different as night and day.
    back in my day of youth the whole world was all about kids. neighborhood was full of them. every where. you found your own group of friends. my brother and sisters had their own friends and
    and their own interests. more brothers and sisters? fine . put them over there. station wagons made it easy. girls in the back seat boys in the way back. i had two sisters each two years back like stair steps and i dont think either pursued music. one did horses the other ended up listening to lots of music but never played. the sisters kind of hang together with a couple vacations a year together. i talk ti my brother at birthday time. he calls me and i call him and see him rarely.
    family dynamics are an interesting study. we all do it so differently and the combination of couples personas make for interesting takes on the way to do it.
    enjoy it renee. grandparenting is a kick and its easy to see where your kids arent getting it right but theyre trying it their own way. you can tell them but theyll have to figure it out

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  5. First instrument was probably a toy drum set when I was about 4, It was so cheap I think I broke the drumheads after about a week. I remember a ukulele a few years later. Then I got into grade school band and my folks rented a cornet for me. I also talked them into buying me an electric guitar and amp from Sears when I was about 10 or 12. I agree with tim that those steel strings are brutal on one’s fingertips, so you need to practice regularly to build up callouses. I didn’t. But played on my mom’s acoustic 6-string for a while too. After that it was french horn in 8th grade, trumpet added back in HS for jazz ensemble, and that launched my shortlived musical career (couldn’t play well enough to earn a living, but got an education degree and taught band for 6 years.

    Bought a nice acoustic guitar and an electic keyboard in my adulthood but never spent enough time practicing enough to get good. Although I did take guitar lessons for a year or so. Didn’t help. I’m not great at “two handed instruments.” Go figure, because I’m a decent drummer (4 limbs in use at the same time). But I don’t play much on my set in the basement anymore since I got my hearing aids.

    Siblings? Neutral on both my older sister and younger brother. They were just there. Sister picked on my incessantly when we were kids. I’m sure I gave it back to her at times too. Brother is 4 years younger, so we had a different circle of friends. He still seems to be from another generation for a variety of reason. But we all get along although we’re not close.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. First instrument and the one I love is piano. As a youngster I wanted to grow up to be a classical pianist but genetics threw in a big monkey wrench – small hands and short fingers. I can barely reach an octave so much of the classical repertoire is out of my reach (no pun intended). Vocal ensemble/choir accompaniment is my strength. I can sight read pretty well, play all the vocal parts together as the singers are learning their parts, and “fudge” the accompaniment to fit my fingers.

    I played B flat clarinet from 5th through 12th grade – sitting 1st chair as a freshman (junior high) and senior (high school). As first chair my senior year I also got to play the E flat clarinet a couple of times.

    My folks bought me a bass ukulele when I was in junior high school (narrower fret board for my small hands) but I lost interest in that after about a year.

    One sister is two years older – don’t remember what she thought of me. My other sister is 4 years younger and was 5 grades behind me in school. I don’t remember her as a baby and barely remember her as a toddler. Though we had some memorable fights as kids, we are close and get along very well.

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  8. I started piano lessons when I was five. And coming-of-age in the late 60s, early 70s I also had a guitar and a recorder. My folks sent me for classical guitar lessons for a few months, but I really only wanted to play Joan Baez and Cat Stevens and other folk tunes so we quit the lessons. The guitar and the recorder didn’t last past my college years. I studied piano all the way through high school but sadly don’t play much at all these days.

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  9. I’m the oldest. When my middle sister came along, she was born with that valve that didn’t close. In those days you didn’t do open heart surgery on newborns so she had to wait until she was 18 months old to have the surgery and she was considered extremely fragile. My first memory is actually of being at the hospital when she was having that surgery. I don’t remember ever having feelings of frustration or jealousy over the attention that she needed, but we aren’t very similar and we’ve never been too close. Baby sister came along when I was almost gone from high school. Went off to college soon after that and never really came back so we aren’t actually all that close either.

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  10. A small xylophone was probably my first instrument, unless you count a makeshift comb covered with a sheet of wax paper as an instrument. In first grade, most of my friends started taking music lessons on soprano recorders. All the girls, except me, seemed to have one of those, but no, I had to learn how to play the piano.

    Over the years I’ve owned and played an assortment of small hand drums, and other percussive instruments. I’ve had tin whistles, an ocarina, a number of harmonicas, a ukulele, a violin, a balalaika, a guitar, and an autoharp. It would be fair to say that I played some of these instruments with considerably more aplomb than skill and talent.

    My ability to “like” individual comments has been rescinded, again.

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  11. I took piano lessons from age 7 till maybe 17, got good enough to accompany in Sunday school settings (but not for the church choir thankfully…). It has come in handy at times.

    Played cello in junior high – soph. year of high school – got interested in it for a while when in San Francisco (and saw this fantastic young woman on the cello), but it didn’t last.

    My folks gave me an inexpensive acoustic guitar when I was 17; my best friend already knew chords so she taught me some basics – since I play by ear, once I knew the main chords, I could play most of the songs I wanted to by just chording.

    I’m the older, and I was very excited for my sister to arrive 4 years later – except we had to give away Blackie, the only dog we ever had. We fought some as kids, but we both lived in the Bay Area at the same time, got to know each other as adults – are best friends now, but maybe because our time together is limited. I always look forward to seeing her, and it’s so good to have one other person who knows who you are from ‘way back.

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  12. He’s a lucky boy, Renee – to be able to get this little guitar right when he’s interested. The teachable moment…

    Somewhat OT: My mom finished her BA Degree while I was in grade school, in Music Education. I remember she took a class in Instrumental Music Conducting, and she had to learn to play several instruments a little. She took drum and flute one semester, and she would practice drumming on the ironing board. : )

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  13. Good Afternoon, Baboons,

    What fun comments today–so far I don’t know what happened to the day. It has zipped right by.

    My first instrument was piano. I had about 4-5 years of lessons, which taught me to read music, but I was not very good. I just could not get my hands to work together. Playing the organ and adding feet, is just unimaginable to me when the hands won’t even coordinate. I started B flat clarinet at age 10 years, at which I excelled. I was first and second chair in High School and achieved a chair at All State for two years–I was an alternate the year before that. (The school music teacher thought that since I was good, my sister would be, too. He started her on oboe. She never got past sounding like a duck on that although she played for many years). I went to my first two years of college on a music scholarship and our neighbor, the college music department chair expected me to be a music major. I did not want to spend my years teaching 5th graders how to play the clarinet and did not become a music teacher, thank goodness.

    I am the oldest of three kids. When my sister was born and I arrived home from staying at my aunt’s house during the first week of her life, I dumped her out of the baby basket onto the floor. She started talking and singing early (7-8 months), and would wake up and sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to awaken the family at 5am. That got really old. We shared a bedroom until I was in high school. We fought like crazy and I found her very irritating because she was very self-righteous, often telling me I was going to “H-E-double toothpicks” for whatever I was or was not doing. We get along fairly well as adults. She was my mother’s primary caregiver late in mom’s life, and that nearly wrecked my sister because mom was so demanding and difficult.

    My brother was born needing a blood transfusion due to the RH factor. My parents were so fearful of what that would bring to his life that I just remember anxiety. My sister and I were again away at my aunt’s house while he came into the world and was then hospitalized for awhile. He was an easier baby than my sister, and I was responsible for some of his care (changing diapers) but he was easier to like than my sister. We see each other several times per year. I love his daughters who are just lovely people.

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  14. Hi. I got a drum set from the neighbors, or pieces of a drum set. Somewhere there’s a picture of the snare drum set on a Red Wing Crock. I think it had base drum and one symbol that was a sharpened stick stuck in the handle of the crock.
    And then I got a guitar and took a guitar lesson lessons one summer.
    And then I took out the trumpet in fifth grade and played that all through high school.
    Mom wanted a piano and instead got one of those small Baldwin organs and I had a pretty good year and I could make up a lot of things on both the trumpet and the organ.
    I’ve got a five string banjo, I bought a ukulele. Took private lessons on the banjo for a while, I’ve just gotten out of the habit. Too much other life gets in the way.
    Never did get far with the ukulele.

    Can I meet you as younger than my older brother. Plus the youngest. I know I irritated my brother when he was probably high school age and I was annoying little brother age.

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  19. My older sister bought a guitar when I when a teenager, and handed it down to me. She also bought a mail order kit for a mountain dulcimer, and put it together She decided whe wasn’t cut out to be a musician, and the dulcimer came to me, too.

    I played a little in my teen years, and it was probably helpful to have it as a hobby. I had ample time to figure out that I had a love of music but no talent for it

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