Which genre is harder to play
 

Which genera is harder to play? Weather you be a drummer of guitarist what do you find the most difficult?

Me personally i find jazz to be the hardest, especially if your a guitarist..or basset..drummer for that matter. The reason why is because you are going to have to be able to improvise...

all depends on the person.

i started doing nothing but straight improv about 10 years ago. improvising is ALL i do now (guitar, bass, and very rarely drums) but i don't think anyone would really call my music 'jazz'. improvisation is also a big part of any style, especially stuff like bluegrass. classical and pop are probably the only ones that wouldn't have many elements of improvisation - it's oddly sad to consider this.

as far as the basics go, they're all about the same. if you can sing and dance to it then you should be able to play it with a little practice.

Genera? I don't know, Mariachi I guess? Samba?

I'm sorry to be the douche in the thread but this is just bugging me. The word is "genre". "Genera" means something else.

Spelling corrected

:love:

See I just thought it was Spanish for "genre" which explains my answer.

LOL. I think it's actually "genero" in Spanish.

You could've split up "Rock" in Prog, Punk etc.

Well i am lazy and didn't feel like typing out every single sub "genre" of rock..besides the are all basically the same when it all comes down to it....(all music is)

If all music is basically the same what's the point of asking which genre is hardest to play?

I reckon jazz is the hardest too, we gotta know our scales, have good technics, have a good ear, a good sense of harmony, be able to improvise on the spot, improvise alongside other musicians, ... and still manage to stay cool on stage :bowdown:

I'd say classical. From what I've learnt, it's much more technical than any other contemporary music I've ever attempted to play. I play piano though, so I suppose the answer could vary between instruments and people...

Who voted blues...

my guess would be someone who understands the difference between playing the notes and playing the music.

I'd have to say jazz, with blues and classical in second place.

on guitar: Bluegrass and gypsy swing

I think this is a completely subjective question but in my opinion I think classical is by far the hardest to play. Playing classical music requires so much more than just having the notes and technique and such.

Classical is a style, not a genre.(so are many of the genres listed for that matter) It encompasses a range of music that range from excruciatingly difficult to mind-numbingly easy.

Jazz has to be the hardest to play. It is extremely easy to make jazz sound terrible. Good jazz is an extremely intricate ordeal.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by classical. If you are talking Beethoven and Bach and all them, then that would probably be a close second.

The same can be said for any genre of music then. Any genre of music encompasses a range of stuff that can range from difficult to easy. So this question in un-answerable.

.....I think when it comes down to your specific list the delineation between prog and punk is very very important.

The list is definetly flawed but I chose classical because I was assuming it encompassed everything considered "classical" music. There is no way there is any thing "harder" to play than composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Bach, Rachmaninoff. They require not only extreme techinique, but also deep understanding of music, and an understanding of oneself as a performer.

Yes, well stated.

true jazz musicians can rival and even surpass classical music in melody and technicality.

There's a lot more to take into consideration than just melody and technicality.

^ agreed. i think the hardest genre to play would be the one that runs counter to your natural playing style the most.

for me it's country, any time i try it, it comes out funky. like honky tonk raggae.

I'm a rock drummer and have been since I started playing when I was like 10. In my opinion jazz is the most difficult because by the scores I have read, its playing rock but backwards. I mean, instead of snare on 2 and 4, its on 1 and 3, with a lot of improv. I'm sure if someone first learned drums from jazz it would be easy, but to switch from one to the other takes some time.

I said jazz mostly because of improv, but it is also the most fun.

Jazz hands down if you're an instrumentalist, but I've often quipped that the voice is the hardest instrument to train.

Classical music has the capacity to be more difficult than anything else.

It's even difficult to sing jazz.

Jazz breaks many rules of music.

And one must know the rules to be able to break them.

I agree in that this is a hard question to answer and probably varies from person to person and piece to piece.

I would lean towards Jazz if I had to choose because I personally have a problem with improvisation. Probably lack of imagination.. But on the other hand, I know plenty of people who are just 'naturals' at it, with perfect pitch and everything else. It more than likely depends on how technical the piece is and how adept the player is.

On a side note, in band I noticed that while most people were fine with fast paced staccato marches, they struggled with phrasing in chorales. Hmm...

For Drums Jazz, for bass, i dont care about bass, for guitar its country.

Unless you think about improv for any genre.

i have to say this whole idea that 'improvising' makes a style more challenging seems foolish to me.

if you don't know how to improvise then it seems to me that you haven't learned much of anything about what playing music is. playing an instrument and regurgitating songs is just that, mimicry. music requires a personal touch, an ability to reach inside and let something that is uniquely yours come out.

I'm not saying improvising is difficult at all.

I know how to improvise on all of the instruments I play.

I actually don't know why I brought up improv...

>.>

Fail. =P

actually it took me 5 years to be able to start improvising. all i could do was repeat tabs. i could slightly alter the phrasing on some lines and play with emphasis but it was still a memory trick.

then again i also didn't really play with anyone else in that time (yay rural canada!). playing with other people definitely helps develop the ability to improv, it was like a breaking a wall when it finally clicked for me, for other people it's how it's always been.

once you get it you can start applying it to any style.

Well I have always found jazz to be the hardest. Not only because of the incredibly difficult time signatures, but because so many musicians decide to use the most obscure and pretentious chords that can almost always be done in a simpler and easier way.

Thanks to the quest for new and exciting music! It's true the jazz chords are just built on the simpler chords, but that makes the music so much more colourful, and even then it's easy to get tired of standard jazz progressions eventually when there aren't new ideas to add on. :laughing:

Out of that list.....Jazz.