Top 1200 Piano Playing Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

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.

Fingers don't have much to do with playing the piano. The idea that they do must be unlearned.

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.

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

I have owned and played a Steinway all my life. It's the best Beethoven piano. The best Chopin piano. And the best Ray Charles piano. I like it, too.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.

In a way, there's nothing wrong with playing the piano, but it's not a huge trauma if you don't.

I didn't start playing piano until I was 18.

To play your colors by eye is worse than playing the piano by ear.

I decided that playing piano was a little bit too common, you know what I mean?

I didn't decide to start to playing piano until I was almost 13 years old when my friends and I thought it would be fun to start a band. None of us actually played any instruments so the band never quite got off the ground, BUT it made me go home and ask my parents for piano lessons. That was really the beginning for me. Once I started, it was all I wanted to do.

I despair about the lack of proper respect shown for the piano. If you want it to sound like a traffic jam, go out in the street and forget the piano. That's not a piano sound.

Playing the piano is incredibly personal... But when it's your own piece, it's doubly so.

When you hear a solo piano, there's a solitude about just one instrument playing. It can be beautiful; it can be sad.

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

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

It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred.

The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

I grew up playing the piano, but you know, as a rebellious child, I convinced myself that I hated it.

The interesting thing is that, well, here's what I think about songwriters and songs. Sometimes people sit down and say, "I gotta write a song today, I have a title" and all of that, and sometimes inspiration just happens, almost like "Sugar, Sugar" and a couple of the other songs. But basically, I just started playing the piano, and I'm not a great piano player.

My principal commitment is playing the piano. But I always loved words.

I love playing the piano. I really want to start taking lessons but need to find the time.

I just found the piano so fascinating and wonderful, and I begged my parents to buy me one. In the end, they bought me a toy piano and eventually an upright piano, and I started lessons.

I play the piano a lot at home, I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage... I don't think I'll get the chance for a while.

I learned to play piano on my own and my parents thought "Oh it would be a good thing for you take piano lessons. That's the way you really need to learn to play the piano."

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.

I started playing piano when I was around four; thats my first passion.

Well, I was interested in playing the piano from as early as I can remember.

I actually don't like playing the piano or conducting the orchestra.

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.

I studied chord theory and started playing the piano.

I started playing piano when I was around four; that's my first passion.

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.

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

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

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

I'm literally nowhere yet... When things started going well, this French designer called Ami gave me some shoes and clothes to wear. But when I sat down to play the piano, the very new shoes kept slipping off the pedal. So I took them off, threw them away, and have never worn shoes while playing the piano from then on.

I never thought of being an actress, I was always singing or playing on the piano.

I just love to play music. I enjoy it more than anything. I enjoy it more than drinking with my friends in the pub. I'd much prefer to be playing live and playing the piano - playing is one of the most enjoyable things I do and I live for it. So it's very rare that I'd not be up for it. I'm very lucky to have something that I love so much; I don't know what I'd do without it.

I grew up sitting beside my grandmother playing the piano and singing.

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

I was up playing violin at seven and translating that information to play guitar, piano at eight.

I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.

I spent thousands of thousands of hours playing the piano, and by thousands of hours, I mean playing in cover bands or wedding bands or disco bands or original bands or playing cabaret for Todd McKenney.

I play the piano a lot at home. I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage. I don't think I'll get the chance for a while.

Why does the world need a Piano Day? For many reasons. But mostly, because it doesn't hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.

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

I sometimes write songs on the piano, even though I don't actually play the piano. I always hire someone to play for me whenever I decide to sing a song I have written on the piano. My song 'Rosa' is one.

I was playing drums in church when I was six. Then I picked up the piano when I was 11 or 12.

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion.

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

One of the features of being a piano player is playing as an accompanist for other people.

I have been playing the piano for my entire life - since I was three.

I've been playing since I was 5, but I wouldn't say that I'm serious about the piano.

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

I started playing piano when I was 6, ukulele at 7.

When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss.

I started playing piano around the age of five and, you know, I fell in love with music.

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique.

I grew up playing piano and violin, and then basketball took over.