Quotes About Piano Playing

#1. 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.

Bruce Forsyth

#2. I play piano all the time. I'm always at my piano, playing music.

Brian Wilson

#3. Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading.

Igor Stravinsky

#4. I have these big piano-playing hands. I feel like I should be picking potatoes.

Sandra Bullock

#5. I'm quite proud of my piano playing. Robin's never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now.

Maurice Gibb

#6. Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

Vladimir Horowitz

#7. I had returned to piano-playing and music lessons when I had turned seventy-five (having written about how even older people can learn new skills, I thought it was time to take my own advice).

Oliver Sacks

#8. I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability.

Mike Stoller

#9. Writing is like anything - baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.

Betsy Byars

#10. Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

Jon Bon Jovi

#11. Conducting has more to do with singing and breathing than with piano-playing.

Colin R. Davis

#12. Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt or the piano playing of Claude Debussy is to feel the years falling away like autumn leaves from a maple tree.

Terry Teachout

#13. Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

#14. I was a piano player. I love piano playing. I just love all music.

Maceo Parker

#15. One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment.

Alfred Doblin

#16. In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.

Norah Jones

#17. This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.

Henry Ward Beecher

#18. When I was twelve, my appendix burst, and as they were wheeling my ass into the operating room, I asked the doctor, "How will this affect my piano playing?" and he said, "Don't worry, you'll still be able to play the piano," and I said, "Wow! I wasn't able to before!" And then they gassed me.

John Scalzi

#19. I got to sing solo in the junior choir when I was 10 or 11 and won a competition, and my sister's piano playing improved to a certain level. One time my sister and I worked together. The first song we ever sang in High School was Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett.

Gordon Lightfoot

#20. When I did get signed and I was going around letting people know what I was about, that's exactly how I did it: me on the piano, playing a couple of songs I'd written and talking to the people in between. That's how I got my performance chops up.

Alicia Keys

#21. Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

Matthew Shipp

#22. Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

Agnes Obel

#23. Most of all, it was the wild music that impressed Matt. It did the same thing that playing the piano had done when he was frightened and lonely. It took him into another world where only beauty existed and where he was sage from hatred and disappointment and death.

Nancy Farmer

#24. I didn't even start playing the piano until I was about 13 or 14. I guess I must have had a little talent or whatever-you-call-it, but I practised regularly, and that's what counts.

George Gershwin

#25. People don't understand what music really is. I've been a musician since I was 6 years old. I got my first piano, was playing recitals at 8, 10 I picked up a guitar, 12 I picked up my first Pearl Master drum set. I was an artist before I was an 'artist.'

Mitchel Musso

#26. First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.

Oscar Peterson

#27. Someone skipped on the rent and they left behind a huge upright piano, which got moved into our apartment so the other apartment could get rented out. I took to it and started playing.

Cy Coleman

#28. Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano-fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.

David Levithan

#29. There was always a piano around the house and I've got other brothers and sisters but I'm the youngest, and none of them ever wanted to play it. So I guess I was the only one that was gonna end up playing it, if it was one of us.

Ella Henderson

#30. 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.

Kevin Kline

#31. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

Conor Oberst

#32. If you think hard enough about it, Rowlf the dog playing the piano on 'The Muppet Show' - what kind of insanity was happening underneath the cameras to make that happen? His mouth is moving, and he's got two hands playing the piano. That's two people under there!

Rob McClure

#33. I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Alanis Morissette

#34. Usually, I'll just sit down at a piano or with a guitar, and I'll just be relaxed and playing music. Because that's what relaxes your subconscious. That's why everyone from animals to humans love music.

Cat Power

#35. I studied chord theory and started playing the piano.

Flea

#36. I give them the head, choke them, hit them in the balls.You'rehting, not playing the piano, you know

Fritzie Zivic

#37. Daddy named me Billie Jo. He wanted a boy. Instead, he got a long legged girl with a wide mouth with cheekbones like bicycle handles. He got a redheaded, freckle faced, narrow-hipped girl with a fondness for apples and hunger for playing fierce piano.

Karen Hesse

#38. I first started playing in piano bars for three reasons - to make money, to be in the company of my friends - and also to hook up with young girls. I always knew, even before I played in piano bars, about the effect of my voice.

Andrea Bocelli

#39. People always think I was just playing in a piano bar, but I only did that for about six months. The rest of the time I was playing in bands.

Billy Joel

#40. I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.

Mike Shinoda

#41. I write my songs many times to chord progressions on a piano. Unfortunately, I can't keep playing the piano, so I just record it into the software.

Nadia Ali

#42. This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out ...

Ryan Adams

#43. I've found that since I've been playing the acoustic, listening to a horn player has left me thinking, well, what can I do with that? But somehow piano players, I feel more of a connection to , now that I'm using the acoustic.

Bill Orcutt

#44. Prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you're listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time.

Kelsey Grammer

#45. It's kind of like a Zen thing. Like playing the piano, or being a centipede in Heaven.

Peter Watts

#46. No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.

Kenneth R. Miller

#47. My early life was full of music because my sisters played the piano and I started playing at three.

Jeanine Tesori

#48. I love playing piano, too, but I don't sit around doing it all day. Part of that's because I don't have one in my house - I only have synths.

Max Tundra

#49. Music has been a huge passion of mine ever since I started playing the piano at age 3. Going to concerts, performing on my own, and listening to my favorite artists growing up confirmed that love for music and made me want to pursue it as a career.

Daya

#50. When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.

Roy Ayers

#51. I used to play the piano in the band, and so there's some horrendous scenes of me playing the keyboards.

Caroline Corr

#52. 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.

Blake Michael

#53. You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like.

John Darnielle

#54. The piano is the social instrument par excellence ... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.

Jacques Barzun

#55. I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.

Teddy Thompson

#56. I could hear my friends outside playing soccer while I was expected to stay inside practicing the piano. It was like torture!

Ildar Abdrazakov

#57. 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.

Miranda Leek

#58. Real data is messy ... It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!

Tom Stoppard

#59. That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

Morton Gould

#60. When I was younger, playing piano and guitar were all things that I wanted to do for a short period of time, like any kid.

Katie Cassidy

#61. I only started playing piano because I had chickenpox when I was about 14 and wasn't allowed to play my drums for a whole week ... We had a piano in the house, so I just sat down and played that instead.

Taylor Hawkins

#62. I started playing in the band and learned to play piano by ear.

Kevin Richardson

#63. I consider the piano my 'main' instrument and have been playing for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that I might have come up with something resembling a song as early as 4 or 5 years old.

Ian MacKaye

#64. The piano by its black and white keys always attracted me, my father showed me how to use ... and slowly I got into playing.

Richard Clayderman

#65. I went straight in. Fade in, one ... whatever. He's playing the piano in the radio station.

Ronald Harwood

#66. Well, since I'm six years old, I've been playing the violin, the piano, I've been singing. It's always been a dream of mine, but I really never had the courage to actually go and do it professionally.

Paris Hilton

#67. I started playing the piano when I was about two and got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore when I was five. But I left when I was 11.

Tori Amos

#68. 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.

Laura Marano

#69. I was ballet dancing at four, playing piano by six, and doing commercials by 12. When I was 21, I was on the number one live comedy show in Puerto Rico. I told my parents, 'I'm going to New York to become a performer.' And I left.

Roselyn Sanchez

#70. I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

Martin Gore

#71. I really like your playing

Tom Waits

#72. Collaboration is just about finding people who are better than you at certain things and combining your powers. Like, if I'm not the strongest at playing piano, I'll work with someone who's really good at it and we'll combine both our brains to write a song.

Charlyne Yi

#73. I heard a young black pianist. He was a teenager, I was eight years old, and he was playing boogie-woogie, and he just knocked me out. He thought he was alone in the old barn on the beat-up upright piano, but I was hiding in the corner so he wouldn't see me.

Mike Stoller

#74. When I do my own books, I take it as more of my own confessional, but when I illustrate for other people, it is intriguing because I feel like I shouldn't be stepping too much into the limelight. It's like playing the piano while someone else is singing.

Peter Sis

#75. The first time I met Ray, I was going to school around the corner from his house. One day, he was playing the piano. I eased up on the porch to listen to him.

Billy Preston

#76. I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater.

Aprilynne Pike

#77. I've been playing my instrument since I was about three or four. That's when I started banging around on the piano, trying to be like The Beatles.

Nat Wolff

#78. I dreamt of you last night - as if I was playing the piano and you were turning the pages for me.

Vladimir Nabokov

#79. I do a so-called trip into myself: I sit down at the piano and the melody might start to evolve from my playing or then I might start to sing it.

Enya

#80. On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates

Malcolm Muggeridge

#81. I liked the piano. I always liked playing. I just hated homework.

Mike Shinoda

#82. Oddly, when I started to make the record, I wasn't aware I was making a record. I just was sort of disgusted with the whole thing and sequestered myself in the basement and started playing the piano just for something to do.

Paul Westerberg

#83. I started playing the piano from the age of three and I started teaching myself; we always had a piano round the house.

Ella Henderson

#84. I've been into music for a long time. I started playing drums when I was 8 and piano when I was 10, then bass and guitar when I was 18.

Lukas Haas

#85. If you write a song, and you go into a restaurant, and there's a guy with a piano singing and he's playing piano, singing your song, or you hear it at a wedding or at an airport ... it's fun!

Jesse Harris

#86. I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.

Daniel Rossen

#87. The hymn being sung had been 'Morning Has Broken', with a discarded ambulant unit of Lobsang's playing the Rick Wakeman piano accompaniment, and pretty soulfully too. And

Terry Pratchett

#88. My father was always playing the piano. He played all kinds of music - Gershwin, all kinds of stuff.

Kate Bush

#89. I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.

Ronnie Milsap

#90. Well, my sister played trumpet. Can you imagine having a sister blowing the trumpet around the house, Fred? And my brother, he played piano. Everybody was playing some kind of music, so it was natural for me to get into it.

Freddie Hubbard

#91. One day you will come to Montauk and see your dad playing the piano And see your other dad wearing glasses Hope that you will want to stay for a while Don't worry I know you'll have to go

Rufus Wainwright

#92. I play the piano and have been playing since I was 7, mainly classical Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart.

Kiana Tom

#93. It takes great technique, tremendous discipline and energy and practice, and damn few are capable. Art is confidence. Technique makes it possible to achieve artistic greatness, but doesn't guarantee it. The great piano artists are not the ones who are best playing Clementi exercises.

Dirk Benedict

#94. I like to play music and sleep. But most of all, I love to work ... I don't really play sports, so I like to spend my time playing guitar or piano.

Drake Bell

#95. There have always been people making music. On their porches, playing folk songs. Playing piano in quiet salons. You don't have to listen to every MySpace page, so what's the difference? It's just noise that you filter out.

Tim Hecker

#96. I play only classical music. My pianos are my only big indulgence, but they're a necessity. When I'm playing the piano is literally the only time I can be completely abstract and disconnected from the regular world and yet be connected - to my music.

Rafael Vinoly

#97. If I'm going to Hell, I'm going there playing the piano.

Jerry Lee Lewis

#98. I didn't have bands that I was playing with growing up, so I learned to try to adapt and play these songs that were guitar songs on the piano, and sing them.

Page McConnell

#99. I grew up playing classical piano and percussion.

Janina Gavankar

#100. 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.

J. D. Souther