Quotes About Playing The Piano

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

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

Flea

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

Fritzie Zivic

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

Brian Wilson

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

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

Peter Watts

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

Kenneth R. Miller

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

Jeanine Tesori

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Caroline Corr

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

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

Ildar Abdrazakov

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

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

Kevin Richardson

#36. 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

#37. 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

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

Ronald Harwood

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

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

Vladimir Nabokov

#50. 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

#51. 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

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

Mike Shinoda

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

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

Kate Bush

#59. 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

#60. 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

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

Kiana Tom

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

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

Jerry Lee Lewis

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. Solving problems is a practical art, like swimming, or skiing, or playing the piano: you can learn it only by imitation and practice.

George Polya

#70. Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.

Nina Simone

#71. My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.

Pete Seeger

#72. Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I.

Michel De Montaigne

#73. My mother played the piano and my father the violin, I can remember my dad teaching me how to waltz; I had my feet on his, my mother playing the piano, and my husband will tell you the lessons weren't very successful.

Quentin Bryce

#74. It seems that a lot of people, who haven't known of me as a pianist, think I've just started off as a comedian. And so for them the piano was something extra. But, of course, playing the piano was something that came before all of what's happened now.

Dudley Moore

#75. I love playing the piano. I have one in my apartment, and I learnt by ear. I sing a lot of Coldplay, but do my own stuff too.

Christopher Egan

#76. Mom and sister played piano growing up; my grandma still plays piano in church. They always beat me over the head trying to get me to play piano, but I was more interested in riding dirt bikes and playing in the mud.

Dustin Lynch

#77. I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.

William Hague

#78. You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

David McCullough

#79. I suffered a bout of depression that pushed me to reevalute things in my life, and I learned a lot about myself and the world and my spirituality. I sat at a piano, and the ideas fell into my head. I started playing, and I felt comfortable with my music for the first time.

Matthew James Thomas

#80. 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.

Marian McPartland

#81. I was trained at classical piano as a youngster back in PA. To rebel, I bought a drum set and played in some rock & roll bands. In college I picked up a guitar and became obsessed with practicing which led to playing guitar in indie rock bands in the mid 90's. Which led me to Los Angeles.

Jeff Cardoni

#82. I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.

Dan Hill

#83. I don't really have loads of friends - three or four who are close. The thing that I love the most is playing with my band, and with everything else I feel kind of uncomfortable. I don't think I'm socially awkward. I just prefer being behind a piano.

Tom Odell

#84. I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!

Charles Hazlewood

#85. 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.

Ringo Starr

#86. I started playing the piano, pretty much on my own, when I was 5, and I started writing music when I was 7. In fact, I won a composition award. It was a crummy little piece, but I won with it.

Maury Yeston

#87. Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

John Darnielle

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. My dad keeps referring to me playing the piano when he's trying to teach me something in archery.

Miranda Leek

#91. I should hate to be employed and have no time for my needlework and my painting and playing the piano and seeing people. I find I have little enough spare time as it is." "Rubbish, caro, one can find time for important things if one makes an effort." conversation between Georgie and Lucia

Tom Holt

#92. Someone was playing piano nearby and the music drifted slowly in and out of my mind like the ebb and flow of ocean surf. i almost recognized the melody, but i could not be sure, it slipped like a cool and silken wind from my grasp.

Chaim Potok

#93. Everyone asks me if piano had helped me in football. I guess improvisation and creativity helps on the field, but that's a reach. The two skills are just so different. And, by the way, I get more nervous playing piano.

Joey Harrington

#94. 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

#95. I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.

Mark Knopfler

#96. Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

Gustave Flaubert

#97. I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.

Jake Gyllenhaal

#98. I actually grew up playing the piano in the church and was deeply involved in music ministry.

T.D. Jakes

#99. I stepped back from being out front to playing bass. So we started switching: I'd play bass on one song, we'd switch on the next song; I'd play piano ... we'd play mandolin.

Bob Livingston

#100. I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear.

Paul McCartney