During the couple of years it took to write ‘At The Bottom of Everything’, I decided, on the sort of hopeful whim that occasionally overtakes me, to sign up for piano lessons.
I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.
I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be ‘The Tree Of Life’ and ‘The Piano Teacher,’ which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.
I like ‘Goodbye My Lover’ because it’s a really personal song and I recorded it in my landlady’s bathroom in Los Angeles. She had a piano in there and for me listening back to it, it actually sounds like the voice I hear in my head. It’s so close to what I can imagine.
Avicii’s melodies were so simple and cool, and they were actually similar to the melodies I played on piano. I thought if I could teach myself how to produce and get those melodies out of my head and into the computer, maybe I could make some cool music, too.
I do have a way of playing piano where it’s very melodic and emotional, but then often it’s great if whoever’s singing doesn’t sing exactly what’s in the piano melody, but maybe it’s connected in some way.
My downtime tends to resemble my uptime. Weekends are workdays, but toned down. Over the whole weekend, I may have five meetings, as opposed to six on a weekday. I used to play piano for 30 minutes at night, but I had to pull that out of my schedule. I don’t have time for nonwork stuff.
And I think it’s a real challenge to be up there sometimes with only a keyboard if they don’t have a grand piano… and to try to win people over that way. It’s really hard.
I’ve been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I’ve seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.
The basic idea is always constructed around piano or guitar and a voice, that’s what we live and die by, because if you build up from that foundation, it’s going to be strong.
I draw and play the piano badly. But when I’m doing those things, I’m concentrating so hard there’s no room for worry. I find that onstage, too.
I used to play the piano by listening to it – like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid – and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I’m a piano player and singer who can’t play piano very well or sing very well. That isn’t a recipe for success. I have to get better.
You could call my piano my trademark, or one of my trademarks.
I discovered it was easier to carry around a pen than a piano.
I play piano very badly. That’s my great regret.
Some people get on the whole touring circuit for years and years and years on one record. What interests me is sitting down at a piano, writing songs, getting into a studio and exploring new sounds to come up with something I’m really proud of.
Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It’s very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.
I’m fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: a sound that won’t dissipate over time. Essentially, the opposite of a piano, because the notes never fade. I suppose, in literary terms, it would be like a metaphor for eternity.
I sometimes write songs on the piano, even though I don’t actually play the piano. I always hire someone to play for me whenever I decide to sing a song I have written on the piano. My song ‘Rosa’ is one.
In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there, like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too… You start learning, and it’s like playing a piano. You know exactly what keys to stroke, ’cause really, with comedy, you’re, like, fiddling with people’s souls.
I’ve always been involved in music. Whether it be taking piano lessons or something, I always have.
I started taking piano lessons from the age of six years old. It’s such an essential part of what I do in the production process. I wouldn’t be Kygo today without those piano lessons.
I could hear my friends outside playing soccer while I was expected to stay inside practicing the piano. It was like torture!
I left Northwestern University after a year and was in New York playing piano in a little bar on 58th Street, and I didn’t know whether to go back.
I play the keyboard, piano – I like making beats.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know you’re not really invited for yourself. You’re just an ornament.
I grew up in a family of piano players. Both my sisters were serious players, and they both, as they became more accomplished, aspired to buy a Steinway and asked my dad to buy a Steinway.
Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
What I love about piano and vocal is it’s incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you’re not distracted by an orchestra. When it’s just a piano and a voice, it’s about the purity of singing the song.
I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It’s At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years.
My brother Max made my desk. It’s a masterpiece, like a piano. Everybody who comes in my office loves my desk.
The things I do outside of playing the piano are done out of an inner necessity, not just because I want to try my hand at different things.
Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it’s to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn’t say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.
The more I got into presenting things to the world, the further it was taking me away from what I was, which was someone who just used to sit quietly at a piano and sing and play. It became very important to me not to lose sight of that.
The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.
I certainly miss playing piano, and I really wish I did it more – it’s really a very therapeutic thing to do for me. I just need to be home for more than a few minutes to be able to play more, I guess.
I just want to play like Jimi Hendrix. I love other forms of music and wish I could play classical piano, or saxophone like John Coltrane, but that will never happen. Because my nature is to play electric guitar really well and to emulate my heroes from the late 1960s.
Of course there is school and sports, but I also like X-Box 360. ‘Black Ops 3’ is one of my favorites. I also like to play the guitar and piano.
When I was young, we had nothing. The carpets and upholstery in the palace were full of holes. The floors creaked. Everything was so old. Yes, we had a piano, an upright given to us by the Fine Arts Department. But it was out of tune.
Music was my first love, and at Marlborough we put bands together and sang the pop songs of the day. Although I couldn’t read or write music – I still can’t – I taught myself to play the guitar and piano by listening to songs and working out the chords.
Sometimes, I make music in my sleep. So I get up, put on my headphones, and compose it on the piano.
I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.
When I was playing piano, it was like, ‘I’m going to write a song using all the white keys.’ My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good.
My mom’s a concert pianist, so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight, I started writing my own songs, and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I’m trained classically, which is a big influence on me, I think.
I took piano lessons as a kid, and my daughter’s played piano since before she started kindergarten, so classical piano is something I really love.
My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.
I studied with Felix Blumenfeld, who had studied piano with Anton Rubinstein and composition with Tchaikovsky. Felix, my professor, was the right hand of Anton Rubinstein. Blumenfeld knew his playing by heart, from every angle.
I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.
When I was three, I didn’t play with other kids very much; I was kind of isolated. I got used to be being bullied and having to think my way out of situations in the same way that other kids would fight their way out. Then I discovered a piano, and it became my playmate.
