As a producer, when I’m trying to make something soft, I start with a slow tempo. Then after that, it would be straight to acoustic guitar and vocals, or I’m going to go strings and just piano.
I’m sorry to say that no, I do not play the piano.
When I was at school, I wanted to play a piano, and they said, ‘No, that’s for the classical students.’ There’s always been this air around pianos, which can very often discourage a young person from having a go.
I learned to read music when I was 10 and did piano and took lessons.
People say to me now, ‘Oh, you’ve given up the piano.’ How can you? Music is a virus.
When you play piano, your left hand and right hand are synced. Your brain basically has a clock, so that the right hand knows that 0.3 seconds after I hit this key, I need to hit that one. And the right hand knows not to hit keys that the left hand is playing, so the hands do not collide.
But it wasn’t just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach.
Piano is like drudgery.
I guess, you know, if I didn’t make it with the piano, I guess I would’ve been the biggest bum.
My mother also had us take piano lessons, and this had a similar effect. I hated those lessons, but I now play regularly for pleasure and have even tried my hand at composing.
I grew up in such a musical family, and my dad was the first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and my mom was a piano teacher and a painter, so it was kind of a creative environment, and it was kind of in my DNA.
I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid.
I never really had the chance to play the kind of music I wanted to play. It was always just classical. It had its limits. I play piano now and again in the new forms of music that I actually want to play, but at the time, it was something that I just kind of moved past.
I sit around for ages waiting for inspiration. Then when I get an idea, I want to go with it and get something as quickly as possible. It’s like catching a fly in a bottle. I’ll play with drums for a bit, then the piano for a bit, play the guitar.
Our daily life is filled with electronic pianos, ring tones, the disembodied voice giving you your bank balance over the telephone. Even silence can be electronic, courtesy of sound-canceling headphones.
With ‘Broadcast News,’ it became a non-issue, and with ‘The Piano,’ it became a non-issue. Both parts were written for more statuesque women. It was nice to change people’s minds about that, because that’s neither here nor there.
Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.
I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven’t got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It’s never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don’t know what I’m going to get next.
I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.
I think my love of music comes from my dad. I was born with an ear for music, like him, and started with the piano when I was 4 but fell in love with the drums. My dad always has music playing.
My body is an object of work. That’s why I think to be an actor is one of the most violent jobs. If you’re a pianist, you have your piano. If you’re a guitarist, you have your guitar. But if you’re a dancer, or you’re an actor – your instrument is your body.
I started playing in the band and learned to play piano by ear.
Banging on the piano while my grandmother was watching me. I’d run up to her and ask: ‘How was that, Grandma?’ And she’d say, ‘That was beautiful, baby!’ And I’d run back to the piano and play some more. I’m sure that’s why I still play today, because I was encouraged from such a young age, 2 or 3.
Although I don’t come from a musical background, I was given piano lessons along with my sisters, but I wasn’t what you would call a good student. I tended to write songs rather than do scales.
I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I’m a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It’s a very solitary, quiet life when I’m not working.
I’m not really a piano player, but I play enough to get away with it.
My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.
My son’s taking drum lessons, and my daughter’s taking piano lessons. One day they’re going to start a band.
I’ve always wanted to smash a guitar over someone’s head. You just can’t do that with a piano.
I was put through piano lessons when I was a kid. I say ‘put through’ because it was fun and I loved it, and it’s been beneficial now, but it was difficult because, although I can read music, I much prefer just playing and improvising and at least finding my own way to play an instrument.
Everything that has a spare piano is ‘like Satie’ and everything with strings is ‘filmic,’ Sometimes I get annoyed when they say my stuff sounds ‘like Satie’. No, it doesn’t. At least, I don’t think so.
I can remember sitting at the piano. My sister was playing, and my brother was singing something, and I said, ‘I want to try that.’
I played piano, I learned a lot about music.
I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.
I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.
My parents didn’t have records, they didn’t have radios, and they didn’t listen to music. My grandmother was my main connection to art and music. She could play piano very well, and she had perfect pitch.
I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of ‘Prisoner In Disguise’ when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
I went to national piano competitions and did that whole circuit. Then I played professionally to support myself when I moved out to LA.
Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano.
My mother played the piano and my father the violin, I can remember my dad teaching me how to waltz; I had my feet on his, my mother playing the piano, and my husband will tell you the lessons weren’t very successful.
Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
I happen to be a guy who also plays the piano and sings, so people automatically associate me with Billy Joel.
It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.
I had this spooky psychological thing about ‘The Piano’ before it began, which was how everybody was going to go nuts on the set. Because a film tends to set up the way people are going to behave.
The piano is kind of my second instrument.
