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Most annoying instrument (to your ears)?

#288
Tanner5382 said:
Overly used slap bass, to be honest.
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Laws yes! Especially in Youtube bass guitar demos and young bucks trying out basses at GC! :banghead:

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#296
gustobassman said:
We are all here because we love music and bass obviously, but is there an instrument that just makes you cringe every time you hear one? I'm not talking about just having a disdain for an instrument because you couldn't play it well; I'm talking about fingers-on-the-chalkboard or break-your-finger-changing-the radio-station annoying. For me it is the recorder. There can't be a more annoying sound than a room full of recorders just piercing my eardrums with shards of painful squeals and high C's.

What instrument when you hear it (if any), just rubs you the wrong way? :)
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in my opinion the grand Prize goes out to a
violin!! in the hands of a beginner !!
 
#297
gustobassman said:
We are all here because we love music and bass obviously, but is there an instrument that just makes you cringe every time you hear one? I'm not talking about just having a disdain for an instrument because you couldn't play it well; I'm talking about fingers-on-the-chalkboard or break-your-finger-changing-the radio-station annoying. For me it is the recorder. There can't be a more annoying sound than a room full of recorders just piercing my eardrums with shards of painful squeals and high C's.

What instrument when you hear it (if any), just rubs you the wrong way? :)
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Find the question immensely peculiar. If not downright stupid. A soprano saxophone in the hands of Kenny G can make my reactions the same as yours with the recorders, or else with sitar, but in the hands of someone else, it's immensely beatiful. Same with Pharoah Sanders. Ornette Coleman. It's the PEOPLE and the players who can make the same instrument sound beautiful or butt-f*ck ugly within a split second, not the instrument as such. At will. At command. And hands to your heart, the recorders are more often than not played by young players who hasn't got the hang of it yet. Same with your voice. You can scream and growl within a split second, and the next has the best opera voice in the world. I like instruments where you can put that into your playing as much as possible. Go from "ugly" and scary and downright unlistenable to somethin refined and beautiful within a split second.

No music intrument makes a sound of its own. Even wind pipes, chimes, it's the wind that drives them.

I know of music store people who can't stand the sound of electric guitars plugged into distortion no matter how good the guitar player is. Even if Eric Johnson or Ritchie Blackmore turned up and they started to fire away "Cliffs" or "Smoke" they would leave the store temporarily due to mental hygienic reasons.:eek:

Ok, so here's the symphonic orchestras instruments... and guess what...:;)



If that doesn't rub you the wrong way, and choose those recorders any day over that one, I don't think you have the ipse dixitism to be able to judge anything like that.
But granted, I've still yet to hear the Jimi Hendrix of the recorder. Or Kenny G.... :thumbsup:
 
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#298
If I really had to think of it. It's the - on any instrument but especially the human voice - is the exagerregated vibrato some has when singing. You'll hear it in split second if it's natural or contrived, trite. Which goes to most opera singers. Now since they have invented Autotune, I would LOVE to have a gadget that removes JUST the vibrato from their singing, so one can enjoy all of the opera from the beginning to end, even when the fat lady is singing... However, gospel, and sould singers vibrato I can stand without having beefs with it. I don't like blues guitar players with a large wide and - especially - fast vibrato on top of that. Gets on my nerves. I do hate the electronic vibrato of synthesizers or old farfisa organs. But those can be turned off with a flick of the switch.

But then again, this is still ALL up to the one who performs it. Not the "instrument" as such.

I have become more used to an acquired taste for "un-temperamental" tuning though, so I don't mind if any music sounds like this for example, I remember I just hated this in my youth, or something similar "seemingly out of tune", and still you have wide vibratos here:

 
#299
Oh, the clang tone I get when rubbing my bass strings with a cloth drenched in isopropyl alcohol is quite gruelling. That squeek can wake the dead...
But then again, I am not playing it...just cleaning it. But I prefer tinnitus to that one, any day... luckily it's just a few seconds...;)
 
#300
JimmyM said:
I used to hate banjo, but then I heard Bela Fleck.

I used to hate accordion, but then I heard Buckwheat Zydeco.

I used to hate oboes and bassoon, but then I heard The Move and King Crimson.

I used to hate bagpipes, but then I heard "It's A Long Way To The Top" by AC/DC.

So that just leaves French horn in the cringe-worthy category. And man, I can't tell you how much I hate French horn! What a wretched, horrid instrument of musical torture French horn is!
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The most tasteful use of a banjo that I've heard was John MacLaughlin's solo in "Electric dreams,Electric Sighs"

Solo is from 5:02-5:30.
 
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