What's considered difficult to do for your instrument?
Eg: I know that it's difficult for violin to play a scale of thirds and I know it's difficult for wind or brass player to jump octaves repeatedly.

I'm interested in the limitations of an instrument. Also, if you know some nifty tricks in playing your instrument such as "flutter tongue" for wind players and doing the "siren" with a brass mouth piece, I would appreciate it if you could tell me in details of how you do it and how it works.

Thanks.

There are many many many many *goes on* special techniques for every instruments, and I mean it. :mellow: So you can't really list them all out, though one cool thing about special effects is that you can make up your own.

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As an oboist, I know that you can do multiphonics, key clicks, blow through pipe, blow through the reed, harmonics and oboe is especially good with microtones. I've seen people muting woodwinds (except flute, of course) with cloths and etc... Oh, and as for clarinet, you can play with a very very cool effect called the subtones. Subtones are unusually soft dynamics, and can sound very very faint (so use it with caution if you're composing for it).

Since you mentioned fluttertongue, let me advise those who are reading to be aware of that not all people or instruments can do fluttertongue effectively. Fluttertongue is mostly effective on flute and lower brass instruments.

As for brass instruments, there are many kinid of mutes that you can use. Just wiki or google it, I'm sure you'll find a lot about that. Though I'd warn the composers of this forum to not abuse this effect, cos not every brass players have the mutes you want, and furthermore, high notes with mutes are very difficult to produce.

Percussion instruments have a lot (and I mean it) of effects. You can hit the mallets/brushes on different part of the instrument, using different mallets/brushes, give the tuned mallet instruments a little vibrato by waving your hands on top of the instruments and etc... You name it.

Though, I'm more fascinated with the effects on harp. Harmonics is a very ethereal and delicate effect that sounds very silvery and beautiful. There's also Pres De La Table (playing by the bottom of the harp), and bisbligliando (sp?).

Side note: For you budding composers there, I found that harp + glockenspiel + celesta + crotales can make an especially shiny timbre, so you people might want to look into that.

All that is only a small part of different special effects of instruments. Forgive me if I made a mistake, used the wrong term or didn't mention your favourite effect. But I learned all these from my readings. I hope that helped a little, KK.

Edit: Oh, and as for your 'what's difficult' question, for oboe, don't make them play for too long, or they'll get real fussy about their embouchures. Make them play in their comfy register (so try not to do anything more than the E three ledger lines above). Also, they don't like jumps from the high registers to low register (D below staff to B flat under middle C). As an oboist for symphonic band, let me tell you what's truly difficult... ... To find a solo.

I had a bunch of stuff I was going to say and then I realized those were my limitation, rather than my instruments.

Okay here's one. For the flute, only half the air you breath out actually gets in, you know, right? So it's hard for flutes to hold really long notes, especially when the dynamic's P since P requires you breath into it more air. Harder yet is sustaining a high note (which requires you blow faster, thus losing more air) when the dynamic is P and holding it for a long time. "A long time" being: a few measures, or maybe just one if you have crappy lungs like me. Or asthma.
Since that is about 3683745.5747x more air usage, those are the three deadly ingredients for symptoms requiring the immediate attention of Cardioplumonary Resusitation. Or any one of the three, for that matter.
Nah I just suck.

If you're a pretty good pianist, you can do almost anything that is asked from you.

Maybe the only thing that is hard is anything thats more than moderately-fast paced chords. Octaves are easier to coltrol and harness it's speeds/accuracy.

On the instrument side, the piano is unable to match instruments like the violin in long sustained notes, since once you hit a note, it starts to "decay" until you re-strike it. On a similar note, this means that you can't crescendo on a single attack.

On the performer side, large chords will limit many pianists. Intervals larger than 10ths are rare, and the people able to play them even rarer. And, of course, the faster the song, the shorter the intervals you can reach without losing control over the piece.
At the opposite extreme are single repeated notes and trills. Playing the same note rapidly is limited partly by the key's ability to "rebound" and partly by the performer's ability to minimize his time actually pressing the key. Trills pushed onto the 3rd, 4th, and 5th fingers (a 3-4 trill especially) are extremely awkward and cap at much lower speeds than, say, a 1-3 trill. (You'd only do a 3-5, etc. trill if you needed your thumb and index finger to play other notes.)

Tricks around these limitations:
You can get a repeated chord effect without actually playing all the chords, which comes in handy if a piece has an ungodly amount of octaves (q.v. Schubert's Erlkonig).
Repeated notes become easier if you play 4-3-2-1 or 3-2-1 or something similar as opposed to using the same finger over and over.
Avoid the 3-4 trill at all costs. The 3-5 and 4-5 trills can be practiced, but if you can't get them fast enough, you can always look for alternate fingerings (or the sostenuto pedal) to free up some more fingers.
Which reminds me, the sostenuto pedal is an awesome accessory. It's only available on American pianos, and it's only applicable to very specific segments of pieces, but it makes life easier when you have to hold a bass note through a long passage that's required to be articulate. (If you don't have a sostenuto pedal and it's physically impossible to hold the note, you can use the damper pedal and half-clear it often; since bass note strings are heavier, they will continue to ring longer than treble notes if you only use half-clears.)

the only "nifty trick" as you put it that i can think of for piano is in modern pieces where the pianist reaches inside and holds the strings/runs their fingers over them to get effects that would normally need a good technique to achieve without it. for an example of where they hold the strings, see the end of the "devils staircase" in the music video thread.

on the flute- there are dozens of things; flutter tonguing can either be done by vibrating your tongue as if you are rolling your "r"s or by doing the thing you do in your throat when gurgling water. both produce a different effect.

there's also harmonics, where you play a note and overblow so it sounds a 5th/8ve/10th/13th/28ves higher. again it sounds different to if you played the same note with the proper fingering.

on open holed flutes you can do lots of tricks; playing 2 notes at once, quarter tones, glissandi. dont have one myself though so cant explain how.

on open holed flutes you can do lots of tricks; playing 2 notes at once, quarter tones, glissandi. dont have one myself though so cant explain how.

Quarter tones (microtones, as I like to call it :P) is achieved by rolling embouchure or (more commonly) different fingerings. As for multiphonics (playing two notes at once), you need to some how let your instrument vibrate 'two ways', and you can usually achieve that by having some weird fingerings and/or blowing in a different manner than you'd usually play. Oh, and as a side note, not all instruments can do multiphonics cos every single instrument is different from one another.

Okay here's one. For the flute, only half the air you breath out actually gets in, you know, right?

if you think that's bad, try playing flute in marching band. you have the air problem, plus the wind around you is blowing your airstream all over the place....

And piano? Damn it, I hate it when your hands start to get sweaty...

Isn't there something that makes your hands sweaty other than the temperature?

I thought I heard something about that.

Isn't there something that makes your hands sweaty other than the temperature?

I thought I heard something about that.

Mostly when you're nervous...'cause sweating is actually controlled by nerves. You can't always notice it, but nerves are always active. I was told that when I had sweaty hands at a time that I had to play something for a crowd...and I wasn't scared or anything, so I found it strange to have sweaty hands.

And about the limits of instruments...
I think the only limit that the piano has...is the amount of fingers the pianist has.

And the fact that upright pianos "work against gravity"... :(

well, in a way, it does.

Clarinet- Tonguing without noise (not difficult, but is sometimes hard to avoid, even my director (has a cl. major) struggles with it sometimes).

I have a few tips for the violin. First off, while doing vibrato on a violin, a lot of people learning vibrato have a habit of moving their fingers left and right, instead of up and down their fingerboard. I think it's due to them wanting to create a faster vibrato sound. Try to practice doing half-steps with one finger, and gradually gettng faster.

Also, for shifting into higher positions, try to avoid keeping your thumb anchored on the fingerboard. You can get a lot higher that way.