Which instrument is harder: Violin or Piano?

[yohankwon]

3...2...1...debate

[sirpazhan]

Having played both instruments, I'd lean towards violin being the harder of the two. Just learning how to use the bow properly could take years.. But then again, this is subjective.  

[theholygideons]

of course violin, anyone can press down buttons on a keyboard... >>"

[thalbergmad]

Banjo is even harder

[Bob]

Definitely piano.  It's harder on the inside.  That steel frame.  And that's beyond the thickness of the wood casing.  Isn't it walnut wood too for the frame?

Whereas a violin... You could sit on that and crush it. Thin wood.  Nothing on the inside.

Pianos are harder than.... brass for sure, woodwinds... strings of course, like the violin.  Bass might be hardest though of the strings.  Most percussion... except for something like the glockenspiel with metal bars.  Interesting that it's a keyboard instrument again.

[ranniks]

Both are as hard.

I've played them both, but quit violin due to other commitments.

The issue with the violin is getting the left hand to work with you and to make the sounds you're creating pop out. The latter is the same with the piano though.

[kalirren]

Violin, because the sound is produced continuously.

Also because the darn thing is to small for my frame.  :-(

[senanserat]

Definitely piano.  It's harder on the inside.  That steel frame.  And that's beyond the thickness of the wood casing.  Isn't it walnut wood too for the frame?

Whereas a violin... You could sit on that and crush it. Thin wood.  Nothing on the inside.

Pianos are harder than.... brass for sure, woodwinds... strings of course, like the violin.  Bass might be hardest though of the strings.  Most percussion... except for something like the glockenspiel with metal bars.  Interesting that it's a keyboard instrument again.

Oh.You

[oxy60]

Banjo is even harder

But at least you have frets.

[Bob]

Titanium violin sounds hard.

https://www.slideshare.net/NicolasAnthony95/david-guetta-titanium-violin

[awesom_o]

Violin is the harder instrument to play from a physical perspective.

Musicality is more subjective on the piano. It is easier to play than the violin, physically speaking. But there is much more music to play on the piano, and fewer real employment opportunities for people who play.

[Bob]

Diamond?






Or crystal?

[Bob]

It's pretty much impossible to play in tune on a piano.  Have you even tried to play in tune?  On a violin you move your finger just a little bit and you're in tune.  It's that easy.

[coda_colossale]

Show me an equivalent of Prokofiev's cadenza from pc2, where you have four octave large speed runs in one hand and giant leaps in the other. And that's just pressing the notes. I'm not even talking about the vast number of music composed for piano, sentimental works which are really difficult to play well, like Rach concerti. Piano is the ultimate instrument among all.

[perprocrastinate]

I doubt any of us here can play both of these instruments on a level high enough to even assess this question accurately. But from a personal viewpoint (more like blind guess, but whatever), I'd say the violin is more difficult. It seems like excellent tone quality would be excruciatingly difficult to squeeze out of the instrument.

Show me an equivalent of Prokofiev's cadenza from pc2, where you have four octave large speed runs in one hand and giant leaps in the other. And that's just pressing the notes. I'm not even talking about the vast number of music composed for piano, sentimental works which are really difficult to play well, like Rach concerti. Piano is the ultimate instrument among all.

Bach's Chaconne in D minor?

[pjaul]

Piano has an automatic extra layer of difficulty because you can play multiple notes at one time.  Granted, monophonically textured chords don't present large difficulty, but when you begin to play 2 voices, 3 voices, ... 6 voices at a time, the immense difficulty that comes with sorting out and clearly presenting the texture can not be match by non-keyboard instruments.

[wwalrus]

Having played both at nearly the same level, I have no question in my mind that violin is harder.

Intonation is a *** pregnant dog
Bowing is a *** pregnant dog
violin is *** pregnant dog
violin is pregnant dog
is pregnant dog
pregnant dog

[awesom_o]

I doubt any of us here can play both of these instruments on a level high enough to even assess this question accurately.

My own violin playing is pretty shabby... it's true. But my cello playing is at a very high level now. Perhaps not quite as advanced as my piano-playing, but it's getting close. And my brother is a professional violinist, so I know the instrument very well by proxy.

[ranniks]

Having played both at nearly the same level, I have no question in my mind that violin is harder.

Intonation is a *** pregnant dog
Bowing is a *** pregnant dog
violin is *** pregnant dog
violin is pregnant dog
is pregnant dog
pregnant dog

You're concluding this based of your own experience.

I'm not a prodigy or whatever, but I was on the right road not so long after I started the violin. It was the same with the piano.

Violin is hard, aye, chopin's ballades are extremely difficult to play. In that sense both instruments have difficult pieces to play.

To me both are equal.

All instruments are equal to me in the sense of learning them. Of course with all instruments I mean the gentle instruments such as the piano, violin, flute and cello.

Spend time with them and they will be nice to you.

[lostinidlewonder]

Violin is initially a much more difficult to produce a pleasing sound than a piano. Play the violin badly sounds like a dying cat where playing the piano badly doesn't sound as distasteful!

I play piano professionally and dabbled with the violin. I would have to say the violin was more difficult for me to initially learn. I find the positions of the fingers on a violin much more annoying than positions found at the piano, I also find guitar tricky to play because of the awkward chord fingering positions that you just don't find in keyboard playing. You also need a better ear for key when playing violin than piano because you have to manually adjust the frequencies of your notes unlike piano which is set.

[pjaul]

There will always be a certain amount of bias present in posting this comment on a Piano board, where most of the replies will come from pianist, who are already gifted and have an affinity for the piano.

[Bob]

Piano takes two people to produce one tone.  The pianist to plunk the note.  And the piano technician/tuner to make it sound decent.  Violin... One person moves the bow.  Therefore, piano is the more difficultier.

[ranniks]

One thing that makes me want to pull my hairs out about the violin is: you can hear the bow snares go over the strings producing 2 sounds: the note you're playing, and this awful, awful sliding noise. It's the noise the bow/violin makes when the snare slides/glides over the string.

I couldn't hear it in the beginning, or maybe it didn't exist then, but you can hear it here throughout the piece too! It's like snow slowly falling down a slope/slide of playgrounds.

It's sort of the same hindrance digital pianos have. If you put the piano on mute and just play notes, you can hear the keys going down. Now let's say we have someone pressing the keys so hard that it penetrates the earphones/headphones you're using?

I was at the library and there was this older gentlemen who played in the piano room opposite to mine. The walls were probably bad, because I could hear him slamming the notes down like hammers even with my headphones on (if I did the volume up, I would crush my ears). Mind you the pianos were both mid-light yamahas.

[bachapprentice]

Violin. And you have to play every single day for hours to be any good.

[momopi]

Violin or any string-instrument, expect piano because the strings are inside. My finger gets painful whenever I press strings. Also, violin forces you to tilt the head in a weird way. Some of my friends love it though. I guess, they have an inclination for it.

[outin]

Violin. And you have to play every single day for hours to be any good.

I find it's the same thing with piano though...