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[pies]

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[Siberian Husky]

you sir, are very fickle...you know...your life..yes yours..the one your living..you can make choices for it..you dont need to pay it off or anything to own it..its your life..to do whatever you want with..i love you..guitar is fun i play bass 

[ranakor]

I tried hard to learn how to play piano without a teacher but I'm getting nowhere.  Since I suck at piano, do I still have any hope at being decent with a guitar?  I'm thinking of giving up on piano and switching over.  Although I much prefer the sound of a piano over any guitar, it's simply not worth the frustration.

if you simply want fast result & only to do simply chord & voice stuff then maybe but else no there was a thread on this forum & everyone seemed to agree in the end that for the very basic & start the piano was the easiest instrument to start learning so switching over won't be "easier" the good solution being : get a teacher

[mound]

I tried hard to learn how to play piano without a teacher .... it's simply not worth the frustration.

That is your problem. You are frustrated because learning piano is too vast a subject to simply learn on your own. Some folks can get away with it to a certain extent, in the short term, but most cannot. I think you would find that with a teacher, your frustrations would dissappear. You'd have a guide, taking you through the steps in the right order, and you would progress considerably faster than you would on your own.  The same would apply regardless the instrument you choose. Yes, you could pick up an electric guitar and start ripping off chords, but if you like the sound of piano over that, you'll likely get bored, again, w/o a teacher.

siberian husky had a good point (I think  )  - the choice is yours. If you want to learn piano, the only thing stopping you is YOU. Not your frustration. Your frustrations are a side-effect of your not having taken the right steps to learn properly. To fix that, you need to make the choice to get the proper guidance. Once you've done that, you need to then make the choice to put in the hard work to follow that guide. It really is as simple as that. Changing instruments is a cop-out that ignores the real problem.

-Paul

[mazurka]

I tried hard to learn how to play piano without a teacher but I'm getting nowhere.  Since I suck at piano, do I still have any hope at being decent with a guitar?  I'm thinking of giving up on piano and switching over.  Although I much prefer the sound of a piano over any guitar, it's simply not worth the frustration.

Learn both?
I play guitar and piano. I've played guitar for 4 years and just starting on piano.
When you are not good in something, you must practice. "Falling and standing" as they say in Dutch. Learn simple things first -> counting, sipmle songs and so.

A teacher really helps, he/she can help you in progressing.

I suggest try small things over and over again. Do not try to play the whole thing when you see it. Try like 4 beats for 20 minutes. The next day do the next 4 beats. 

Also, thinking you are "bad" doesn't get you any further.

[Daevren]

Guitar is harder. At least, if you want to play music of some difficulty.

But, a good guitar is cheaper.


If you can't learn yourself piano I don't see how you can learn yourself guitar.

[mazurka]

Code: [Select]

Guitar is harder. At least, if you want to play music of some difficulty.

I don't see why guitar is harder. It all comes down to practice. I find piano harder atm, but maybe when I'm as good at piano as on guitar guitar is harder?

[mathieu]

I have played guitar (both classical and electric) for 18 years I played  piano for 2 years then had  a break of 8 years to concentrate on developing my guitar skills not beacause I disliked playing the piano but because of a"Jack of all trades, master of none" mentality .
I have only picked up the piano again in the last 3 months and feel regret for not including piano in my life for that time, I really feel that I have lost time .

If you to switch to the guitar, just remember - alot of people play the guitar badly and this has given the guitar a bad reputation as a easy instrument.

mathieu

 

[wufnu]

I wouldn't do either without a teacher.

Myself, I started playing with my dads guitar (and I mean plucking strings randomly) at about 16.  Luckily I had the internet, alot of free time, no friends, and alot of Determination (capitalized on purpose) and by the time I was 19 I was teaching at a music store.  Thing is, there is no way I would do it again without proper instruction.  Kinda makes me sick to think how good I could be if I'd taken lessons instead of going about it the hard way.  I don't even want to attempt to guesstimate how many thousands of hours I put in to teaching myself to play the guitar. 

I would say that as yet you don't know the meaning of frustration. 

Learning the guitar without a teacher, at least learning to play well, will be as hard or harder than the piano so you're really not going from a hard thing to an easy thing, they're about the same I'd guess.  Neither really should be attempted alone   A very excellent self-taught guitarist is the exception, most are mediocre with some that have alot of talent that make them "very good" when they could have been a master.  Consider it an upgrade of raw skill.

[jbmajor]

I started both roughly at the same time; guitar a few months before piano.  I can say that you will be able to play more at first on the piano, especially if you read music (it took me longer to be able to play a three-chord progression in a Tom Petty song on guitar than it took to learn an authentically transcribed Billy Joel song on piano). 

But, if you're talking about playing wanting to work your way up to the very advanced stuff, piano would more than likely end up taking longer, a lot longer.  Once you learn the fundamentals of guitar, most of the work is behind you. 

Mentally, piano is more challenging to actually play since you have to learn counterpoint with each hand independent of the other. 
Physically, guitar is more challenging, at least initally, requiring conditioning of your fingers just to make a decent tone.  The fretboard is also a more mentally challenging medium to learn than a keyboard, which is as logical as it gets. 

There was a good thread somewhere on these boards that debated which instrument is most difficult (yeah there are a lot of them but this one made significantly more sense), and one of the better points made, in a nutshell, was that the piano's real difficulty begins where the vast majority of other instruments' musical capabilities end.
-i.e. try playing a Chopin ballad on any instrument other than piano (or organ, which has the most complexity, using both hands and both feet) and you'll find there will be a lot of notes missing. 

Switching from piano to guitar will take work, but the difficulty will ultimately be determined in how far you are willing to take it.  Neither is easy, and each holds their own set of challenges.  It also depends on what is difficult about the piano to you to know if guitar will be harder or easier.  If you end up saying the guitar is too difficult and then go back to piano again or try yet another instrument, then well, you either need a teacher to provide some direction for you or you just have to want to learn one badly enough.  Or both.  I'd say if you like the sound of the piano the most, do your best to try to learn it.  Find a teacher if you have to.  You'll be glad you stuck with it. 

[sweet91]

i like guitar too!!!

[nightmarecinema]

It's a lot easier to sound good fast on piano than on guitar, though it will take you a decent amount of time to sound decent on either. It takes years, even with intense practicing, to get to a technical level where you sound like a solid player, and even longer to really know your stuff. I think that the difficulty to get to a level of excellence on guitar has been understated, although getting to a virtuostic level on piano is by no means easy either.

Either way, it's going to take a lot of work to sound good, and even though I'm a guitarist first and pianist second, I think a great pianist playing a Chopin ballade is more impressive than a great guitarist playing some Jeff Loomis solo (although that would be pretty badass), and I think that piano is a nicer sounding instrument - I'd say stick with it, and maybe pick up a guitar on the side to work at here and there.