Jazz Guitar vs Jazz Piano

[grahambop]

You could start as an infant, spend your whole life practicing and performing and still, at the end of your days you will have failed to completely master the tambourine. Nothing is easy.

[2bornot2bop]

i meant that its considerably more difficult than on the guitar. By the time you 've learned chords, scales, and arpeggios in all keys, blues and rhythm changes in all keys you 've kind of learned to play the piano.. It takes 1 minute to learn a pentatonic scale on the guitar in all keys..

Most piano students memorize the entire keyboard in 1 minute

Pianists practice SONGS in all 12 keys. In that same minute you've learned any scale, arpeggio, changes, you've learned an element that's applicable to all 12 keys. Everyone should know some piano, imho. Each instrument has something to offer, which is why there are keyboard players here acquiring some guitar skill - too

[Thumpalumpacus]

I have played piano, and to me it seems it is indeed easier than guitar in more than one way.

1. Piano is easier to read on because the notes are laid out from lowest to highest. Each individual string on guitar does this of course, but with the 6 strings all at set at different pitches it quickly becomes very complicated. Having read music notation on 5 different instruments, I can easily say guitar is by far the hardest, and not just by a little bit. Not only because the of the easier layout, but because you can play 10 notes at once without the pedal and almost limitless with, the same piece of sheet music will be harder to realize on the guitar than piano. For example, something that on piano would be considered grade 5, might end up being something like grade 8 on guitar.

2. The piano is just a better designed for a solo arrangement of music that involves harmony and a melody simultaneously played, for obvious reasons.

3. The logical layout of the piano of course makes it easier to understand scales, arpeggios & chords and the theory behind them.

Despite all this, the guitar has advantages over the piano. It's easy to carry with you. It's hands down the "coolest" instrument. It's vastly cheaper to get a good quality guitar than it is to purchase a good quality piano. When most people think of cool musicians or bands, what instrument is at the top of the list? Surely not piano, it's guitar of course. We get to use all these cool gizmos like wah-wah pedals and distortion. We can shred. Pianists can "shred" too I guess, but nobody cares, except for classical piano aficionados. To my ears, guitar just sounds better. It has more personality, and with all the tone altering tools at our disposal, we can each find the very specific guitar sound we want. I like the sound of a piano, but to me few instruments sound as cool as guitar. Part of the beauty of the guitar is doing more with less. We don't have 88 different notes (7 octaves) and 10+ note playing fingers to work with. So we learn to focus on the most essential notes.

I took piano in college, and have played it sparsely since. But I will say this: the piano cannot bend notes. To me, that's the soul of much music -- the microtones between the nominal notes. Not just the blue notes, but the South Asian and Arabian microtonals. Piano is fantastic for many things -- jazz included! -- but simply from a mechanical perspective, it has its limitations built in as well as its possibilities. This is of course true with guitar and any other instrument we might discuss.

I love the sound of the instrument, and in the hands of a skilled player it is as expressive as any other, I think.

But yeah, I never took a piano down to the beach for a little plinkin'.