I think that, initially, I was most passionate about music and particularly about playing the piano. I started playing when I was nine, and I was obsessed with it, really. I wouldn't even go spend the night at a friend's unless they had a piano. But I didn't have the chops, the extraordinary talent to be able to play the piano professionally.
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 really enjoy playing the piano. I took lessons throughout middle school, but I had to drop the lessons. I actually got too busy, but I hope to pick up the lessons when I'm in college if I can.
I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.
I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.
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.
I took classical piano for a couple of years, but I sort of lost interest - I couldn't read a note today if I tried. I still enjoy that stuff, and I think I naturally gravitate towards the classical licks; in fact, I know that I do. I gravitate towards the classical licks that I heard by famous old composers.
Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.
You wouldn't expect a cattle dealer to sit down at a grand piano and play it beautifully. That's my father.
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
I think I might have played a song on piano or guitar in a school talent show. I went to an all girls school, so there were always little things going on, but it wasn't really until I was 17 that I did a proper performance. My first big one was Glastonbury, before I was signed.
There are three things on my piano - my Best Villainess award, my Grammy, and my Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame statue.
The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home, I play the piano and make them on the piano.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I'd gotten that reaction. I'd had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.
I think Ada in 'The Piano' is the most interior character I've ever had the chance to play, either on the stage or in anything I've done for film or TV.
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.
Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, I'd like to study piano.
I started playing piano when I was 6, ukulele at 7.
I write my own music. By myself, on a computer, I program guitar and piano.
I've been playing since I was 5, but I wouldn't say that I'm serious about the piano.
My mom, grandma, great-grandma - we're all named Mary, and we all play piano and sing.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
I asked for a piano in the TARDIS, but it hasn't happened. I'd love to see the Doctor rock up and play, but it'd have to be done in an inventive and silly way.
I never had any social life, just played the piano and studied, studied, studied.
My big influences are piano artists like Billy Joel and Elton John.
Homer Collyer's chosen form of self-expression is the piano, although late in life, when his hearing also goes, he takes to writing.
I was a piano player. I love piano playing. I just love all music.
Sheets of sound. Well, that was when I got tired of certain modulations. Like when you want to get back to C, and you've got to go to D and then G and then C. I was fooling around with the piano, and I figured out some other way to do it.
It's quite hard to have your mom as a teacher - it's like, she's not necessarily a 'real teacher' for me. But she'd always teach me to really hear the music, and develop my ear, and to try and hear the harmonics of the piano.
There's one point where I play the piano upside down. When I first did that, I hit my head and it really hurt. But people were laughing, so we've kept it in ever since. I probably have severe brain damage.
I tend to like the traditional sound: three-part harmonies, guitar, and piano. I mean, a well-played guitar is a joy forever... or something.
I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.
I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments - guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums.
I started piano when I was four. My mom taught me. And then I went to Manhattan School of Music during high school, like every Saturday. And then I went to Berklee for college, in Boston.
In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice.
