Musical Instrument Choice by Difficulty and Employability

Many choose a musical instrument based on what sound they like most, but perhaps we shouldn’t use that as our main reason for choosing a musical instrument.  Below I’ve categorized instruments and talk about their choice in regards to difficulty learning them and employability for those seeking careers in music.

Flute, Clarinet and Saxophone:

            These instruments are fairly easy to learn, though hard to play well.  Fingering requires dexterity on all of these instruments, but if you learn one of the three, the other two will come pretty easily; the fingerings are similar on all three.  There is always demand for these instruments, but there are so many players that there is lots of competition for work.  Fortunately, there are many venues and genres for these instruments: theatre, classical, jazz, pop, rock, world music and more.

Oboe and Bassoon:

            These instruments are challenging to learn.  Their fingering systems are much more complicated and it is difficult to get the quintessential beautiful double reed sound that everyone loves.  However, if you can overcome those challenges, these instruments are in extremely high demand and you’ll always find places to play.  However, you’ll be limited mostly to classical music.

Trumpet, Trombone, Euphonium, Tuba:

            These instruments have relatively simple fingerings/slide positions.   However, they require great lip flexibility to make moving between partials clean and beautiful.  Trumpet and Trombone have similar employability level to flute and clarinet, and are used more in jazz ensembles.  The euphonium and tuba are more limited and you may have to do some work carving out your own niche as a player here.

French Horn:

            The horn is difficult to learn, but if you have good relative pitch or sight-singing ability, your job is much easier.  The horn is relatively employable and often in high demand for good players, but at the advanced level there is a decent amount of competition and the instrument is largely limited to classical music.

Violin, Viola, Cello and String Bass:

            These instruments require a great deal of finger, elbow, and arm strength and flexibility, but you don’t have to do a darned thing with your mouth or breath.  It is easy to play these instruments, but very challenging to master them.  They are highly employable, though the string bass may have the same issues as tuba and euphonium, and all but violin are largely limited to classical music.

Percussion:

            This instrument requires no breath control but does require an exquisite sense of beat and rhythm and requires more technique to play correctly than many other instruments.  Notation is generally easier to read with the exception of mallet percussion.  Percussion is in high demand, however, and nearly every genre of music uses percussion in some degree.