Football management is such a pressurised thing – horseracing is a release. I’m also learning to play the piano – I’m quite determined – it’s another release from the pressure of my job.
Every time I’d sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, ‘That’s B-flat!’
I took piano lessons and dancing lessons. I was very good at piano.
I was a piano player before I was a poet.
I haven’t written an awful lot recently, but I think I probably will start again very shortly. Being so much on the road, when you have a couple of weeks off, you’re likely to avoid sitting at the piano, and taping, and giving yourself more work to do.
I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I’ve always really enjoyed music.
In the olden days, I believe Mozart also improvised on piano, but somehow in the last 200 years, the whole training of Western classical music – they don’t read between the lines, they just read the lines.
I have a piano in my kitchen. I read a great biography about Tom Waits that said that he had a piano in his kitchen; he had a grand piano in his kitchen. And I thought, ‘Well, if Tom Waits has one, then I must.’
I play the guitar and the piano and have a group of guys who I play with. They’re uber talented.
Everyone can write their melodies and chords and pianos and guitars, but what hasn’t been discovered yet are tones and textures, and that’s very exciting. Probably the No. 1 most important thing in my music is not to sound like anyone else.
Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat ‘King’ Cole as a performer – not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I’d get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I’d ever met.
I took lessons for about everything you could imagine – gymnastics to karate to flute and piano. My mom always definitely kept me in some kind of class or program, but for guitar, I kinda gave up on then kinda just taught myself. Same thing with piano. I’ve never been good with following lessons.
I play the sax, piano, guitar, bass… I started as a kid with piano lessons.
I consider myself a part-time worker when it comes to the piano, but you need to play regularly to stay sharp.
Playing the piano is incredibly personal… But when it’s your own piece, it’s doubly so.
In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed by study.
When I was first starting out, you’d have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody.
I know some things when I start. I know, let’s say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it’s going to be about a piano, but that’s it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.
A lot of the songs are written on piano or guitar, so I contribute, and I have done so since the beginning. So it’s been good to be involved completely musically as well.
I played piano as a kid; I still play a little bit.
I played piano back in my elementary school days and I sang a cappella back in college.
I did ballet, piano and all that – my brother did martial arts, my passion.
Music is something that I’ve been passionate about. I play the piano and sing, but I always knew that it was never going to be my bread and butter. I was very interested in acting.
There’s this weird game called ‘Blueberry Garden.’ For that game an artist recorded some piano music, but evidently he only had a really terrible microphone on top of the piano, and I really liked it and wanted to experiment with that. So, I made piano recording and really mangled it, and kept experimenting with the technique.
The only instrument I know how to really play, and the instrument that I absolutely love, is the piano. I have been playing piano ever since I have been 9.
A MIDI file contains coded instructions to play a particular series of notes on an electronic music synthesizer. A MIDI file is more like a piano roll in a player piano than any type of sound recording.
The thing with the piano is, the piano is like percussion almost – well, it is. You have to… not beat on it, but there is more work involved than a Hammond. With a Hammond, you just lay your hands on the keys, man, and you’re gone.
I was up playing violin at seven and translating that information to play guitar, piano at eight.
I cannot write music. I cannot play the piano.
All my writing, I always do it in the studio, ’cause everything sounds good. The piano’s there, the keyboards; if you want to put strings on something… And everything sounds good when it’s in the cans; it sounds killer.
We developed our own type of Igudesman and Joo electric violin, let’s say, and funny enough, the shape of it was developed by the head technician of Steinway. It’s actually an electric violin, which is made from the stick that holds up the piano lid.
There’s individual turntable setups devoted to piano, bass, drums and a set for soloing as well. We like to try and explore the gamut of what a turntable can do.
I sound like a crazy person… but I feel when a piano is happy, and I feel when they find that moment to be alive. I want them to remember me.
My hands look terrible but I can do anything I want to do, so, you know, I just think I’m playing all around with more good taste and not dashing up and down the piano.
All the things you put off, like learning to play the piano or leaning a different language? You’re like, what’s the point? I’m not really gonna do that, am I?
Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.
I’m a pretty good drummer. I’m pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I’m not virtuoso. I’ve played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I’m not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.
I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn’t last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn’t have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
I didn’t want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.
I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.
I play piano, and I was really, really obsessive about playing piano in high school. I don’t know if that’s nerdy, but I definitely locked myself in the room and was playing jazz. I was 14. I guess that’s kind of cool, actually.
I’ve played guitar and piano for a while, so it’s really fun to play music on film.
My husband is a composer, so he plays piano all the time and I sit there and clap telling my unborn child, ‘Hear me clap, hear the music.’ I know music, in general, is supposed to be good for babies to hear.
I studied chord theory and started playing the piano.
My mother did play classical piano, not that well. And actually, my father sang with the big bands – he sang with Bob Crosby’s band – but he had to give up show business when his father died. He had to come back to Montgomery and take over the furniture store.
Songwriting was definitely first. I started singing, and then I was rapping; then I went back to singing. As I was growing up, I just taught myself piano and guitar.
I’ve been playing since I was 5, but I wouldn’t say that I’m serious about the piano.
I’m blessed with a good pair of ears. That’s how I fooled my piano teacher. I’d watch his fingers and I’d listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.
I never had any social life, just played the piano and studied, studied, studied.
I explained to the lady my love for John and his work, and she made it possible for me to purchase one of the 24 proofs, the one for ‘I’m So Tired,’ which I have on my piano at home.
If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you’re too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you’re not a very good pianist, you’re limited to the same patterns.
You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there’s no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.
I never set fire to a piano. I’d like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn’t any good.
FOr a while, I’d never had the opportunity to prove on TV that I could play the piano.
I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it; so was my brother.
I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: ‘You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you.
Got two kids; one’s a record producer who lives just up the road from me – great guitarist and piano player, too.
The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.
