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.
In piano, if you try to force hitting this key and that key, it's very broken. It's not pretty. When you're in archery, you can't try to force it step-by-step-by-step. Then the shot doesn't flow and it's not a good shot. If you just let the performance flow, it's really beautiful.
In my life, my parents wanted me to be a musician, I was supposed to go to Vienna to study piano. But this train wanted to go in another direction.
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
I played piano growing up. I played classical piano since I was 5, and I sang in choirs, and I sang in plays and musicals.
George Winston piano albums have been my go-to since junior high.
I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?
I'm a dancer, so I do four hours of dance a week of ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary. I also play the piano and I just started learning the guitar.
It's pretty cool that artists like Flo Rida and Bingo Players can be inspired to interpret a song like 'Piano in the Dark' in completely new genres. As an artist and writer, it's the highest compliment we can be paid.
I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.
I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'
I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano.
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.
My original dream was to become a singer-songwriter, so I sent a video of myself playing the piano and singing to all the big agencies.
I have that huge print from Pollock by the piano because the influence is reciprocal. He was into hearing music while he created, and I sometimes do the opposite. I'm influenced by everything from an ant to a dream.
I was a piano player before I was a poet.
As a piano player, if 10 is concert level, I'd put myself at a 5 or a 6, but in a completely different genre than classical or opera. In terms of classical and opera, playing accompaniment, I'd say I was a 3.
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.
My dad died in 1980, and I found out afterwards from mum that my piano lessons, which cost £2 a week, took up nearly a third of his income.
I had studied piano since I was 13, but I was surrounded by students who'd been playing since they were 5. I realized I was never going to be anything but mediocre.
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 decided I wanted to be a musician when I saw the movie 'Amadeus' around 1987. I was five years old, so it was a good time to start piano lessons after seeing Tom Hulce who played Mozart play the harpsichord on his back with his hands crossed. Such a great movie to inspire a five-year-old.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.
The artistic side of our family was very important because one person encourages the other. It was a vey enlightening place to be as a kid because of all the music and dancing, and my dad played banjo; my sisters played piano and sang.
I was born on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, a small medieval city of Alsace in France. My father, Pierre Lehn, then a baker, was very interested in music, played the piano and the organ, and became, later, having given up the bakery, the organist of the city. My mother Marie kept the house and the shop.
I play piano and I sing. But I do that for fun. I mean, I do everything for fun.
I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.
Sometimes I can sit at my computer and find a cool sound, or a new synth patch, and get super-inspired by that and make a track based on that sound. But the piano is where I find the inspiration and come up with the melody.
I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.
My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano.
I like to be with my children - not just quality time, but quantity time. I like to be there in the morning when they're waking up. I like to practice piano with them. I like to be there at supper. I need them as much as they need me. Working is not as important to me as being a mother is.
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.
The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.
Well, my piano's really beautiful. I actually have two pianos. I have a Yamaha upright from the '60s that's blond, wood, and black, and I also have one from the '20s from Chicago - not a well-known brand or anything.
Actually, music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello, which is a different experience, you're flexing a different muscle, but it's beautiful because it is music.
People say to me now, 'Oh, you've given up the piano.' How can you? Music is a virus.