Which instrument is most often played out of tune?

Has anyone ever noticed that there's an instrument that's played out of tune (unintentionally), more often than others? I do have a candidate of my own, but I may just listen to the wrong orchestra so I'm not pointing my finger yet. Theremins don't count.

Guitar, because it has six strings to go out of tune and guitarists mostly have shit for ears.

soprano saxophone is notorious for this, mainly (i think) because most players come to it from the tenor/alto without changing their embouchure.

voice

Come on, guitarists don't have shit for ears: They can't read music!

voice -> guitar -> lots of other stuff.

Toy xylophones and wind-up music boxes seem to be cherished for their out-of-tuneness.

Piccolo is supposed to be notorious for being impossible to keep in tune for long. Based on my limited experience listening to piccolos, I'm inclined to agree.

melodica. which is not really anyone's fault.

voice

― WEB SHERIFF (LOLK), Wednesday, June 30, 2010 9:39 PM (Yesterday)

i imagine you can play a piano for many years out of tune and not even know

Honky-tonk piano = pretty much out of tune by definition

I see your guitar and raise you a 12 string guitar...

Mellotron, ever tried to keep one of those things in tune onstage? Gaaaah

Impressed you've played a mellotron - on stage or anywhere!

Suggest consulting the recorded output of the Incredible String Band for the answer

Hot, humid weather at my son's orchestra recital last night seemed to be fucking up the oboes quite badly. Can't say I've ever oboes being particularly bad in other contexts tho.

Fretless bass. Get that fingering a bit off and the whole thing is ouch.

How many people can play a theremin in tune, as opposed to simply making sci-fi movie noises with it?

^^^ Replace "theremin" with "harmonica" and "sci-fi" with "chain-gang"

voice

― WEB SHERIFF (LOLK), Wednesday, June 30, 2010 9:39 PM (Yesterday)

― Your review is so far outside the realms of reality (ksh), Thursday, July 1, 2010 4:11 AM (5 hours ago)

Tea chest bass.

Fretless bass

Double bass

Can't say I've ever oboes being particularly bad in other contexts tho.

Old musicians joke: "The oboe, the ill wind that nobody blows good"

lol yeah I've heard that. love an oboe tho personally.

Well, yeah if you can play it

Oboes are really hard to play full stop though, especially for kids.

I think its voice -> guitar -> piano -> other things but I have heard some horrific cello playing in my time.

Violin = disembowelling a cat. Speaking of which, suppose I should mention the bagpipes.

Tbf the oboeists last night played fine, they just took a few minutes at tuning up to get them usable. Heat is a pig on wind or string instruments. Don't know whether we have good teachers in Hull but every time I hear the violins they manage to avoid the disembowelled cat thing that I remember from my own school days.

actually wait no i have it: timpani.

You know what is lovely is when a rock band has a violinist onstage with them, and the violin gets hot under the stage lights, and either it's not audible on the monitors or the little meek violin girl on the corner of the stage doesn't want to stop the big hairy band dudes or talk to the big sarcastic sound dude, or maybe she has just been tucked away somewhere without a monitor, and it is SO OUT OF TUNE to the audience but nobody in the band notices

that stuff is really good for bar profits if the bar is in another room

accordions are payed out of tune a lot, they are a difficult instrument.

played

accordions aren't a difficult instrument because they are easily played out of tune - tuning them is more intensive than tuning a guitar, and they get a similar amount of "abuse"

violins, violas, cellos, upright basses. I think strings have the longest learning curves of any instruments

accordion/harmonica -- that's kinda why i said "melodica" upthread. if a reed instrument along these lines goes out of tune, it's like ... you have to take it to someone who can open it up and start doing stuff like shaving reeds, right?

melodica sticks out to me because people will often have one banging around and just use it -- i don't know who's going to bring their melodica in to a reed tuner or what have you -- so i feel like you hear a lot of bad single-note melodica melodies that are pretty far off. (whereas an accordion player will probably take it in for maintenance, and people tend to just make hashy noises on harmonica either way.)

would kinda nominate bass here, by the way -- i think often rock bands record with a semi-"live" setup and don't notice one string on the bass is out of tune, because they're just hearing the low frequencies, and then as it gets mixed down and thinned out onto a record, the glaring out-of-tune string suddenly comes into clear midrange focus.

accordion/harmonica -- that's kinda why i said "melodica" upthread. if a reed instrument along these lines goes out of tune, it's like ... you have to take it to someone who can open it up and start doing stuff like shaving reeds, right?

that is correct.

i used to play some trumpet in bands and that was a bugger to get in tune

Of the common orchestral instruments, the double bass is by far the hardest to play consistently in tune.