A Quote by Hugh Laurie

Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young. — © Hugh Laurie
Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.
I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.
Music and musical instruments were proximal to my life from very early on - I took piano lessons for a brief time, but then my dad had a guitar and when he was not playing it, I would pick it up and mess with it. He jokes that I used to complain that it hurt my fingers.
Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of 'Arabisation' soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as 'instruments of imperialism.'
I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream.
My grandmother was a classical pianist, so I grew up with Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven. I studied piano as a kid. My musical background and upbringing was very much a mix.
To know the piano is to know the universe. To master the piano is to master the universe. The spectrum of piano sound acts as a prism through which all musical and non-musical sounds may be filtered. The grunts of sheep, the braying of mules, the popping of champagne corks, the sighs of unrequited love, not to mention the full lexicon of sounds available to all other instruments-including whistles, scrapes, bleatings, caresses, thuds, hoots, plus sweet and sour pluckings-fall within the sovereignty of this most bare and dissembling chameleon.
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.
My father was able to play a number of musical instruments and I fell in love with classical music in my teens and I allowed it to influence me. I like to think I took and still do from classical music and various techniques, I have made classical albums and recorded seven different pieces of Bach on different albums and its all music too me.
Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.
By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.
Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
So I always liked to sing, and apparently when I was about four or five I also started to be attracted to pianos and musical instruments. Whenever we went to a friend's house, I vaguely recall climbing up on the piano, plunking on it, and trying to figure it out. So my parents figured I was interested and asked me if I wanted to take piano lessons. I said sure.
I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself.
There is perhaps nothing that is not musical. Perhaps there's no moment in life that's not musical... All instruments, musical or not, become instruments.
My parents loved music, but they weren't musicians. So my musical training as a young kid was limited to piano lessons. I was not the best student; I was awful, never practiced. But I was always interested in just messing around on the piano.
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