I do have a way of playing piano where it's very melodic and emotional, but then often it's great if whoever's singing doesn't sing exactly what's in the piano melody, but maybe it's connected in some way.
Aaron Dessner
My grandfather, Arthur Baskerville, he played and still plays a little bit piano and trombone, and so when I was a kid, I always heard jazz around the house, but I also went to his gigs, whether it be a Saturday brunch in my hometown Columbus, Ohio. We'd go and hear him play with some of the local musicians.
Aaron Diehl
My father, I think he played percussion in high school. My mother played piano when she was very young, but only for a brief while. I don't think she had a great teacher. In any case, neither of them were really into music at a young age.
I consider myself very fortunate. I mean, I think there's that old saying, 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' and I just have such a passion for jazz music and playing the piano that I just find a way to make it work, so to speak. Fortunately, I have so far.
My downtime tends to resemble my uptime. Weekends are workdays, but toned down. Over the whole weekend, I may have five meetings, as opposed to six on a weekday. I used to play piano for 30 minutes at night, but I had to pull that out of my schedule. I don't have time for nonwork stuff.
Aaron Levie
I play the keyboard, piano - I like making beats.
Abbie Cornish
I wrote my first piano piece when I was in 4th grade.
Abel Korzeniowski
I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.
Abigail Washburn
I own a guitar, a piano, a bass.
Adam Driver
I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.
Adam Granduciel
All day long you write little ideas on the piano and the guitar, but sometimes all you have to do is come in, set up the mic, press record and start the process.
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.
Adam Schlesinger
I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I'll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.
My father was a great admirer of music and the arts, so there was always a lot of culture in the house. As it happened, while my father was the ambassador in Portugal, the ambassador's residence had a piano, and so I started learning how to play it at the age of five.
Adnan Sami
Sometimes, I make music in my sleep. So I get up, put on my headphones, and compose it on the piano.
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
It's always difficult to know if a song needs more than piano, and I worry about my tendency to go in a sparse direction.
The piano and the singing are two equal things to me - maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.
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.
I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor.
Aimee Mann
I grew up playing the piano, but you know, as a rebellious child, I convinced myself that I hated it.
The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.
I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me.
I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I'm a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It's a very solitary, quiet life when I'm not working.
I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.
I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
If you lock me in the room with a piano teacher for a year I might be able to knock out a rendition of 'Roll Out The Barrel,' but will I ever be a concert pianist? No.
I chose 'Time' by Hans Zimmer because it's very melodic, and the way it progresses throughout the track is very unique. I am personally a very big fan of piano melodies, and to me, 'Time' is just perfect.
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.
We developed our own type of Igudesman and Joo electric violin, let's say, and funny enough, the shape of it was developed by the head technician of Steinway. It's actually an electric violin, which is made from the stick that holds up the piano lid.
Football management is such a pressurised thing - horseracing is a release. I'm also learning to play the piano - I'm quite determined - it's another release from the pressure of my job.
When I was first starting out as a kid, I tried to pad my resume with everything I had ever done - ice-skate, carry a tune. I can't dance for my life, but I can learn, so I'll tell people I can dance. I play the piano - I'm a really good pianist, actually.
I read a lot of autobiographical stories, and I write plays and prose. And I play piano and cello. A lot of my downtime is devoted to that.
The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within.
When John said that he wanted me to play with him on piano, I told him that there were many others who were qualified. He said, 'I want you there because you can do it.'
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.
When I had nothing else, I had my mother and the piano. And you know what? They were all I needed.
But when I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.
When I was a kid, I'd practise Chopin on piano - and I love Chopin! He's my dawg! Then I'd go out on the stoop and blast the radio. I'm from New York, the concrete jungle. Hip-hop influenced me from day one.
I fell in love with the piano. I knew it was me. I was dying to play.
I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be 'The Tree Of Life' and 'The Piano Teacher,' which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.
I went to national piano competitions and did that whole circuit. Then I played professionally to support myself when I moved out to LA.
Pianos tend to get better as they age, the more you play them. They grow into their sound.
You have to really concentrate on piano or acting. You can't do both.
I can sit down at the piano and make you think I know how to play the piano because I know, like, the beginnings of four songs.
In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed by study.
As a little kid, I'd put on shows for my family. I would sing songs and play piano. I thought while growing up in high school that I would stick with music and try to make a career out of that. As I gave it an honest, real shot, I realized it was not for me.
My youngest sister, Cindy, has Down syndrome, and I remember my mother spending hours and hours with her, teaching her to tie her shoelaces on her own, drilling multiplication tables with Cindy, practicing piano every day with her. No one expected Cindy to get a Ph.D.! But my mom wanted her to be the best she could be, within her limits.
I've forgotten a lot of things. I've forgotten how to play the piano and how to speak Arabic, though I studied it for two years.
