I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl’s leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can’t even play Chopsticks. But I’ve got a nice piano at my house!
Unlike a high-wire walker, I don’t think any musician strikes the wires of a piano or draws a bow across a violin’s strings primarily for the kick of an adrenalin fix. There is danger on stage, but dropped notes are not broken bones; a memory lapse is not a tumble to the ground.
It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.
If I sit down with an electric guitar, what’s going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I’m sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like ‘Desperado.’ You’re not going to write ‘Desperado’ between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume.
I’ve done eight grades of piano training from Trinity College and also done my sound engineering course.
I always wanted to play some kind of instrument – piano, saxophone, whatever. I took it up for a while, then forgot about it because I didn’t have the time.
The short story and the truth is that I was taking vocal lessons here in New York… One day, instead of my lesson, the piano player and I went into a studio… and we put down some demos… Those demos got to Quincy Jones through an agent… He listened to them, he called me, and we started to record.
We had a bunch of instruments around the house. Like, I played different instruments, trumpet, bass, drums, piano, all that, but whatever I could get my hands on.
I started skiing around the same time as I began playing the piano, at around four, before moving to the violin at five.
You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass – but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.
For me, the keyboard is always an additional sound to the piano. Piano is the main instrument; I can’t go anywhere without acoustic piano. It’s been my best friend since I was 6 years old.
I learned to play piano in a rock n’ roll context or band context from country records – you know, Floyd Cramer – and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.
I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive.
I’ve had grand pianos that are more expensive than, like, a year’s worth of rent.
My muse has always been the piano.
So yeah, I play the piano for most of the show, but I like rock and roll.
I wish I could play the piano. I started when I was four and finished when I was five. I got bored. I couldn’t tell my left hand from my right back then!
The first thing that I put in my apartment was a piano. I bought one for $50, and it was a lifesaver because I just went home and played and played… I’m sure I annoyed everyone on the same floor.
They were keen for me still to play the piano, which I was going to, but 45 minutes of piano would be extremely boring. I like a bit of light and shade.
My mother wanted very much to play tennis; she wanted, most of all, to be a singer and play the piano.
I took piano lessons and I wanted to play drums when I was six. Luckily enough, my parents let me have a drum kit in my room – which is kind of crazy.
I’ve played piano and guitar when I was younger.
I just loved classical music, but I also loved playing rock guitar, and I loved playing piano, so it was a natural thing that those things would merge at some point.
My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had faith in my ambition, and I think that made all the difference.
Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.
I get nervous when they start shooting piano players.
My grandfather, Arthur Baskerville, he played and still plays a little bit piano and trombone, and so when I was a kid, I always heard jazz around the house, but I also went to his gigs, whether it be a Saturday brunch in my hometown Columbus, Ohio. We’d go and hear him play with some of the local musicians.
I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of us get to play ‘Blue Moon’ in a hotel lobby.
I guess as a kid, I was always creative, and I was involved in music, like piano and violin and choir, so I always knew – I always knew that I wanted to do something that would allow me to be who I am. Generally, that was creatively, imaginatively.
‘Beneath the Piano’ by The Devil Makes Three somehow reminds me of an old Johnny Cash song. The song is a lot of fun and tells a story.
Obviously I’m not the best singer; obviously I’m not the best piano player or the best songwriter, but I’m doing my best on all of ’em. Once you have all those things in place, then I think everything falls the way it should.
I think I wanted to be a punk-rocker before I wanted to be anything else. I remember wanting a mohawk, and I wanted to cut the sleeves off of my jean jacket because I used to want to be Dirty Dan from Sha-Na-Na. This is before hip-hop was even around. I had the skinny piano tie. I had it, man.
The first thing I learned was the ‘St Louis Blues’ when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.
I just wanted to release an album of piano music for music’s sake. I’m not expecting to sell millions of albums. It’s was just nice to be able to sit down at an acoustic piano and make some music.
Some of my favorite music in the world is Haydn. I had a sabbatical one year and made myself one promise: to play a different Haydn piano sonata each day – they are inexhaustible treasures.
I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.
And of course there’s so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it’s obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.
I wouldn’t trust any man as far as you can throw a piano.
I think I’m a very poor piano player.
Frankie Muniz is amazing at everything he does. Many people don’t know that he can play the piano like you wouldn’t believe, and he can bowl and play basketball like you wouldn’t believe.
If you lock me in the room with a piano teacher for a year I might be able to knock out a rendition of ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ but will I ever be a concert pianist? No.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.
I never actually had a guitar lesson. I taught myself the guitar from piano exercise books, which led me to have a pretty good technique on the guitar and allowed me to find different ways to do things.
When I was six, my best friend’s parents bought him a piano. My mother noticed that every time I would go to his house, the first thing I would say to him was ‘Levester’ – His name was Levester – I said, ‘Levester, can I go play your piano?’ So, on my 7th birthday, my parents bought me a piano.
You have those songs that are very special to you that you don’t want to get ruined by production. Something like ‘Start Again’ shouldn’t be touched. It’s a classic-sounding song on a piano and violins and harmonies, and I think those songs are perfect as they are.
Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I’d never play them live!
Schoolwork came easy to me. I learned to play piano effortlessly. I was coasting.
I started at the piano at the age of 4.
The song ‘What Goes Up’ was inspired as I was playing the piano and reminiscing about the Spaceship One launches I witnessed in the Mojave desert. It is an awesome thing to comprehend the magnitude of what a human being dreams and imagines can be realized.
Piano feels soft. Violins and all different string instruments feel soft. Guitar, even electric guitar before you start adding distortion, that you can play soft.
I don’t like a lot of monitors on stage. I like the real raw sound of the open piano.
A guitar riff played on a piano doesn’t come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.
If you write a song, and you go into a restaurant, and there’s a guy with a piano singing and he’s playing piano, singing your song, or you hear it at a wedding or at an airport… it’s fun!
But when you hear the complete album, it gets dark, really straight-up rock, with some really intimate moments with just me and the piano. It’s not completely me because there are parts of me that aren’t on that song, that are on the album.
