I've been pondering recently as to how much of any given performance is musical mastery and how much is a really great instrument. Obviously a poor player will not maximise the capability of a great instrument, but could a really, really great player do anything with a poor instrument? If we managed to find a classic 1990s Skylark violin for Joshua Bell, what would it sound like?

The problem we always come across with the unenlightened, of course, is that they will always pull out the old favourite "A bad workman always blames his tools". But if the workman has a blunt chisel then his tools are at fault (or at least we could say that his toolcare is at fault in not maintaining his chisel, but that's splitting hairs). When I feel I have outgrown my viola, which although it's a lovely advanced student instrument it doesn't begin to protrude into the pro instrument bracket, I always ponder on how much difference it could make to have a better instrument. I don't like to go and try them out because then I would just be even more cross about not being able to have one, but when I was considering a violin upgrade the instrument made shed loads of difference to my playing.

A bad workman does blame his tools, but there's no getting away from the fact that nobody wheels out a Casio home organ on the stage to perform Greig's piano concerto, it's all Steinways and Bechmanns and [knowledgable persons insert other names of famous pianos here].

Where is the balance here?

I don't know how to answer your question "Where is the balance here?", but I'm going to describe my experiences with both the instruments that I play(ed) - horn and piano.

The first horn that I bought was a decent student instrument, it was easy to play in some ways - easy to make a sound, easy to control dynamics. But after 3 years of serious horn study, it just wasn't holding up in certain necessary ways. The main thing I noticed about it was that when trying to play loudly, the tone was very "blatty". I don't know what the acoustic or mechanical properties of the instrument were that made it this way, but there we have it.

I tried an Alexander professional instrument and it didn't have this "blatty" quality to it - I was able to take that horn on trial and try the same things on the new and old instrument. This horn, which I eventually bought, was significantly more difficult to play. It required more effort, so much effort that my teacher said there is no way she would buy that horn because it was too hard work but if I felt I could handle it, I sounded great on it so go ahead. Incidentally, this horn would have been a terrible instrument to start learning on, so it doesn't follow that a student needs to start on the most expensive instrument available.

This instrument cost twice as much as my original student instrument, but I couldn't go any further on the student instrument. Maybe someone else could have, I don't know.

In a certain respect brass players are lucky in that a really really top of the line instrument comes nowhere close to the price of the equivalent stringed instrument. Tens of thousands of pounds, maybe at a stretch one hundred thousand, but nowhere near millions.

My other instrument is the piano. I currently have a Kawai digital that I am quite pleased with, it cost about 1300 GBP. It is better than many acoustic pianos that could be had for that price. HOWEVER, every now and again I am privileged to play a Steinway, and there is hands down no comparison. There are things I can do on a Steinway that my digital piano is simply not capable of, and neither would many cheap acoustic pianos. Most of these things have to do with subtleties of tone. I don't know enough about the mechanics of piano construction to say what they are, but I know that if I hit the keys on a Steinway in different places with different touches, I get different sorts of timbres. I think that this effect is more pronounced on a Steinway piano compared to other grands, but that may be just me buying into the mythology. Could I tell the difference between a Yamaha grand and a Steinway grand if I was blindfolded? I don't know. (never tried...)

Because of mechanical limitations, I think that some of a great performance is definitely down to the quality of the instrument. As I said in a separate thread, Rubinstein would "sound" the same on my digital piano as I "sound" - he'd just operate it a heck of a lot better. He would obviously be much more musical than me, but the basics of the sound are there - you cannot get beyond that. It would be the same if I had a rubbish acoustic - he might be able to make it sound good, but that would probably because he was playing it so musically you wouldn't notice the duff notes or that he had to work harder to play it. It would always sound better on the 60k Steinway than on my piano.

So my crude analysis is that: Yes, cost is important up to a point. But I am not sure that comparing a 1.3k digital piano to a 60k Steinway is a sensible comparison. I could probably spend 10k and come up with a very acceptable compromise; I don't think that spending the extra 50k would make me five times happier with the result.

I have wondered this too - especially in the context of how easy it is for examiners to differentiate between someone who is getting the best out of a poor instrument and someone else who is not such a good player but has a top quality instrument.

I don't know Skylarks, but remembering what sort of sound my daughter's violin teacher could get out of our old 1/4 size Zeller, I'd say Joshua Bell could do a pretty good job with that!

As far as the oboe is concerned, my remarks are somewhat similar to Corenfa's about the horn.

I started with a plastic oboe. When I initially started I thought that I would by happy if I could just get it to sound the way it did when my teacher played it. But, as my ear became more discriminating I began to realise that although my teacher did sound "good" on my oboe, he sounded even better on his own. He also let me try on occasion not only his own oboe but also any other oboe that happened to be passing through his hands on the way to another pupil and I began to feel that although I could have gone further with my plastic oboe, some (but not all) of the wooden ones had a sound that I preferred and keywork that fitted more comfortably under the fingers.

I then bought a second-hand Marigaux. After I'd had it for about four years or so, it began to play increasingly out of tune. However, when I mentioned this to my teacher he said that in fact it had always played like that and it was me that had changed. I found the tuning problems more and more frustrating and ended up buying a Howarth XL (their top-level oboe). Initially I was going to buy a slightly cheaper model but when I tried them both, I far preferred the XL. However, like Corenfa, it wouldn't have made a good starter instrument; it is heavier than the plastic one was but more importantly it is not forgiving of poor technique the way both the plastic one and the second-hand Marigaux were and requires more air.

Another way of describing my thinking is:

Suppose you gave me 60000 pounds (somewhere I heard that is how much a Steinway piano costs) and told me I could only spend that on stuff to do with music.

Would I buy a 60k Steinway piano? Probably not. I'd spend at most half of it on a nice instrument, or two nice instruments (a really really good digital and a nice grand), and save the rest to be spent on music lessons and concerts for the rest of my life.

Buying myself a 60k Steinway (assuming I would have somewhere to put it, which I don't anywa ) would not make me 46.15 times the pianist I am now (that's how many times more than Steinway is than my digital). I probably wouldn't know how to get the best out of it. Music lessons for the rest of my life well might teach me.

Now there's a whole new thread!

Aw, that would just be unkind Too much wishful thinking...

Some time ago my son was playing at a family gathering when someone piped up that of course he could play better than them because he had a better cello than them. He picked up the other person's cello and played it quite beautifully getting a superb sound out of what was a bog standard factory instrument. Yes he said his cello responded better than the other one but he showed what was possible. He has over the years developed, and still is developing, a good technique so could get the best out of the instrument.

His own cello is much better and he makes a beautiful rich sound on it but it can be a little temperamental at times. Well she is an elderly French lady. Perhaps a more modern instrument would be easier to play and less troublesome.

If an upgrade is out of the question perhaps you could get the set up checked to make sure it's set up as well as possible. A few minor adjustments and a change of strings might make it play differently.

Occasionally I would get to play on my teacher's viola and it did sound a lot better than mine, even with my suspect ability on it. He estimated that his viola and bow together were worth about ?5,000. (With hindsight I wonder if he was understating that somewhat). He also had an oversize viola that was somewhere in quality between mine and his and again there was a noticeable improvement playing that.

My own machine got me to grade 7 18/19 years ago last year as the uni was starting a string group for below the orchestra level I dug it out again and I bought it some (semi-)decent strings and that made a difference.

I suspect some of it is confidence. If we trust the instrument to make a nice noise we may be able to respond better to the music and some things will be easier to achieve.

A professional cellist I know was having lessons with Paul Tortelier years ago, and one day had to turn up with an "orange box made in an Eastern European factory" because something needing a luthier's attention had happened to his own very good cello: he reluctantly appeared at his lesson with said box, and told Tortelier why he'd got this monster with him. Tortelier apparently picked up the orange box, lifted it up and down in the manner of a weight lifter, a few times, then put it down and proceeded to play it like a Stradivari .

I have also had the plastic oboe- wooden oboe problem: in my case, the plastic one actively got in the way of progress, because I never got the feedback of just what a nice sound is on an oboe. Even my friend James, a superb oboist, could only make it sound ordinary, and I never got remotely close to a nice noise on it. My second oboe teacher would get me to play her Howarth during lessons, and the instant uplift to my sound when I first blew a few notes on it was amazing to me. Because of that experience, I have, when buying recorders, always bought the most expensive I could afford, though also paying attention, when choosing them, to what sounded best in my hands: so the most expensive woods, ebony and rosewood, don't feature in my collection because I don't "gel" with them.

I have also had the chance to play a 100 000 quid Steinway. Didn't work at all - the machine was just too massive a brute for my poor technique to make anything of it.

So I think the real balance is likely to be - more money buys a better instrument, but yes, one also needs the technique. A poor instrument will hamper progress though, as you don't get the musical feedback needed. I do wish that it had been possible for me to have a decent oboe from early on, but on the other hand, having only ever had a bad one left the way clear for me to learn the instrument I actually now seem most suited to .

In a way, it's quite nice I play a 'cheap' instrument! Of course, I need lots of them so it evens out a bit But, if someone gave me 60K to spend on music, I don't think it would be possible to spend it all on instruments, well, unless I went for handmade 440s and 415s in every possible size and then some
I'm also rather fortunate in that I have a reasonable disposable income, which anyone seeing me 'impulse buy' at the early music festival can verify This does mean I can buy recorders that are probably far far better than I am, though. I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing, because I am at least past the twinkle, twinkle stage - and also, as I said above, with recorders it's not like even the most expensive one you can find is in the Stradivarius price bracket.

I think doing a silly thought experiment actually helps here...you have two seven year old starter violinists. One gets an 'Orange Box'; the other gets a Strad insured to within an inch of its life. Who is going to make the better sound? Probably neither, at the brand-new-beginner stage! But a year or two on...will the instrument really make that big a difference at this stage? Do the same with two FRSM violinists and you might be able to tell that one is making the best of a bad tool and the other is having an easier job with a better tool.

I think the person does make a bigger difference than the instrument; but that's no reason not to get the best instrument you can. The trouble is, the 'best' instrument for you evolves over time - something that's too heavy or too hard to work with or whatever now might be ideal later on.

As long as you can progress on an instrument without hindrance, it is good enough for you!

When I just switched from one flute to the other, it was because my old flute became a hindrance. However, I couldn't afford much, and the old flute was a very nice and capable instrument, so I got myself a flute from the same series so to speak, only with B foot and open holes. Now, progress is not a hindrance anymore. And I have still much much much to learn, and this instrument will serve me well till I do.

I was talking to the clarinet guru in Dawkes the other day and he was raving about the new Buffet Divine which he said irons out an awful lot of difficulties. But some of them are not really difficulties that a novice (or even an experienced but slapdash) player would notice - the fact that you don't have to make so much embouchure or diaphragm adjustment for a big leap and don't have to mess around so much with alternative fingerings to make sure that there is an even tone throughout and good intonation. But you would still hear the difference even if you were quite a beginner :-) I think. I will take my young son to try out cheap clarinets soon and report back whether you can hear the difference when you really ARE a beginner!

FWIW I don't usually have any difficulty hearing the difference between a "starter" and an "upgrade" instrument - over a range of different instruments. We recently bought a new trumpet for DS1 - he was playing an ancient school 2nd-model-up Yamaha. He tried 5 trumpets at the next price point up (around ?500) and another 5 at the price point beyond that (?700-800) and one another couple of hundred pounds more. We had to go to the ?700 mark to find a difference (the ?1k one didn't sound any better).

We easily heard the difference between a ?350 and ?1k cello.

And when I was young many years ago I could easily distinguish a ?90 clarinet from a ?120 from a ?160.

At the highest end of the scale it's down to personal taste and quirks, I'd say, whatever the instrument. And let's not even start talking about denser clarinet barrels or platinum violin strings...

My daughters previous oboe teacher had a wonderful sound. when we bought her a second hand oboe he asked to try it. The sound he got from it was as good as from his own more expensive instrument. For fun he then tried the loan instrument she had been using (guess he thought he'd show her there really was no difference). His face was priceless as he sounded awful, nearly as bad as daughter

I guess if the instrument has a reasonable set up and is okish quality then a good player will be able to get a sound not far off that of their expensive instrument. If the instrument is rubbish they may get a better sound but it will still be a poor instrument. A more experienced player will probably adapt more quickly to any tuning issues for instance and that will make it sound better.

Agree with everything Corenfa said about pianos. Also Anacrucis statement that a poor instrument will hamper progress.

I was not convinced that I needed a better piano; I believed (and I still believe) that my previous piano could have taken me a long way further. Also, I have seen pianists on cruise ships made wonderful music on pianos that I thought were almost unplayable when I tried them
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Having said that, once I finally got the new piano, it was like taking the brakes off as far as the learning progress was concerned. In fairness, this was probably more due to the fact that I was practicing much more (new toy syndrome ) than to the new piano itself, but it the effect was the same, either way.

It's true that I can't really do justice to the instrument, yet (maybe never), but I have no excuses now!

I saw Lawrence Power in concert recently. He likened his uber-expensive viola to a supercar. Apparently it is extremely sensitive and difficult to control. He said it took him many, many months to get used to playing.

Obviously it would be crazy to put an instrument like this in the hands of a novice or (by the sounds of it) even many professionals. Just as inappropriate, although perhaps not *quite* so dangerous, as letting somebody on L-plates try to drive a Formula 1 car.

It sounds like you already know the answer.

Of course the player has the most impact but a nice instrument makes it easier for anyone to produce a decent sound. I upgraded my oboe to a nice (though not top-end) Howarth when I was about Grade 3ish and even then I found a big difference over my previous Buffet (which was by no means a bad instrument). Intonation and tone were much improved. Even my teacher was impressed.

However, I think there is a balance to be struck (law of diminishing returns) and I don't think at the moment I would find much difference if I went to a professional instrument like the Howarth XL (which I undoubtedly covet) and I'm quite sure my current oboe is perfectly adequate for a much more advance player than I am.

It is nice to have nice things though

I intend to come back later and make a proper job of a reply once I've put on my new C string to settle (will be a definite improvement over a Dominant that has been in my case so long it's gone green ) but just thought I'd mention before I forget that the Music Medals scheme has a specific marking criterion for "A poor instrument is skilfully managed". I think because it is targeted to primary school group beginners, who are more likely to be the victims of some real grotters.



Sadly I love my current viola and would not want to sell it on in a part-exchange, but if I don't part with it then an upgrade is definitely out of the question. It may be that the upgrade I could afford is not worth doing anyway as I'm already into the thousands of pounds bracket. I must take it to a place I trust and respect as it's not been looked at for setup since (ahem) 1994. I took my violin (a borderline VSO) in somewhere as a test run and wasn't happy to let them at my viola.

As a flutist, the cost of an instrument makes some difference. It would be really difficult to learn on a "rubbish" flute, one that is too flimsy, so the thing constantly leaks so notes just don't sound. Conversely, it would be just as hard to learn on an instrument that is "too good" because it would be too responsive and less forgiving of errors than the cheaper beginner instruments.

When I switched from my venerable Buffet to my current Azumi (not massive price difference - current flute is approx ?700) I found I had to learn to control the new dynamic possibilities, and the current flute is more sensitive to mistakes in the airflow direction/speed than the buffet. Some notes are easier on the better flute (top C in particular) but that's not something that's an issue for a beginner. I'd guess that the decent student instruments (Silver plated Yamaha, Trevor James, Pearl etc) are probably a better choice (admittedly at ?300+ not exactly a budget choice) than a ?1,000 solid silver flute or one of the more professional head joint options. That said, the body of one of those options, if maintained properly) would easily get up to G8 plus if teamed with an upgraded headjoint.

I think it is different for each instrument. I recently bought a violin and even as a complete beginner I could tell the difference between a violin costing ?60 and one costing ?300. The lady in the shop played them as I didn't know how to. My 5 year old daughter has a toy guitar which sounds great! Her teacher said it is fine for lessons and she is learning how to play on it! It was from Toys R us.

I wanted to buy her a real guitar but the teacher played some fast and impressive licks on the toy and told me to save my money...

Change instruments when it stops working is always good advice.

Or when a new/ better instrument outweighs the repair and sentimental value.

But whatever happens, never tell a student (Whatever age) that a new instrument/ funds is available, because he/she will intentionally play bad in order to get the new one. Since you are accustomed to the 'bad' sound, the new instrument just sounds fantastic.

There is a similar story about a drummer with an unknown band and non-descript drum kit. Apparently Phil Collins was in the audience and went to meet the band after the gig. The drummer asked Collins what equipment he used to get his special sound, and Collins simply went to the available drum kit and started to play ... with his own special sound!

Maybe it is apocryphal. Most of these stories are. But the point it is making is true. A top class artist on a poor instrument will sound better than most of us on the world's finest.

That point about a fine instrument being like a supercar is a good one. I know some Steinways where a slightly heavy touch makes a note come out like it has been sledgehammered, yet just slightly lighter and it fails to sound. Very difficult to control, yet if you have the skill to control it, capable of wonderful things. Other Steinways are more forgiving, but ultimately less capable, but they are the sort of instrument that most of us would be more comfortable with, and sound better on.