Youngest Boys And Girls Prefer Different Instruments

"Girls become more flexible as they get older, but boys mostly pick masculine instruments. They just cannot pick a feminine instrument. It is so hard for them that it just astounds me," she said.

One could just as well argue that girls cannot make up their minds, while boys know what they like. But this researcher could never say anything positive about boys.

I wish I could get money to prove that dogs eat dog food and cats eat cat food...I mean, who gives these idiots the funds to prove the obvious?

One of my brothers played the trombone in middle and high school. The other is on scholarship to Florida State, where he is a music major...he playes the saxophone (as well as the trumpet and the guitar)! My late father also played the guitar and drums in his teenage/early adult years. My 4-year-old daughter loves playing her toy flute! I guess the misogynists are keeping her from playing the drums.

What a surprise! ;)

When I was growing up, I had actually tried the piano and, for a year, the trumpet, before I picked up a guitar. I had an idea about trying the violin until one of my relatives - I'm not making this up - told me nice Jewish boys just don't play the violin. (Obviously, this relative had never heard of Jascha Heifetz or Isaac Stern.) I saw a passel of girls playing flute or violin, though I did notice more boys picking up the flute once Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues made it hip for the rockers for awhile. (I liked Jethro Tull's first few albums (especially Benefit); they began to lose me with stuff like Thick As A Brick and Passion Play; I liked the Moodies' Days of Future Passed and On The T Threshold of a Dream.)

I knew one girl in particular who liked to walk out to the jetties on the beach and practise her flute out there, it reminded me of the story I love about saxophonist Sonny Rollins - that he'd quit gigging for a time in the late 1950s/early 1960s to rethink his approach to jazz, and fell into the habit of walking out to the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge in the wee small hours and practice his sax out there. "It's quiet, it's peaceful, it's beautiful out there," he said of it. "You can blow as loud or as soft as you want, it sings back to you." (For the record, I rarely go a week without a full listening to his Live At The Village Vanguard Complete set, one of the best of his sax-bass-drums alignment performances, and damn but that man could play the blues, too!)

Speaking of Isaac Stern, if ever you get the chance, give a listen to his teaming with Itzhak Perlman performing Bach's Double Concerto for two violins and orchestra (Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic are the orchestra). They do it as if they'd been playing it together from the crib.

Hmmm...........think we should tell Jean-Pierre Rampal he picked the wrong instrument???

If we do, we will also have to tell these gentlemen:

Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull)
Rahsaan Roland Kirk (played the flute rather well, among the several other instruments he played; he was Ian Anderson's significant influence - in fact, Anderson worked up an arrangement of Kirk's "Serenade For A Cuckoo" for Jethro Tull's debut album, This Was)
Ray Thomas (the Moody Blues)
Frank Wess (saxophonist with the Count Basie orchestra who doubled on flute and rather neatly)
Peter Gabriel (the original Genesis)
Herbie Mann
Johnny Almond (with John Mayall and Mark-Almond)
Andy Kulberg (the Blues Project - the bassist doubled on flute and, in fact, composed what may have been that memorable group's best-remembered number, the charming instrumental "Flute Thing" - he also may have been the first blues/rock musician to electrify his flute, drilling a hole and inserting a pickup, for a concert version called "Electric Flute Thing")
Eddie Harris (the jazzman who probably inspired Kulberg to try electrifying his flute)
Paul Butterfield (he rarely if ever recorded himself playing the instrument, but his first instrument - before he made himself into a harmonicameister - was the flute)

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