If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
Paul McCartney's dad told him that when he was a kid. "Son, play the piano and when you go to parties, the girls will come to you."
I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain.
Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
Look at the piano. You'll notice that there are white notes and black notes. Figure out the difference between them and you'll be able to make whatever kind of music you want.
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.
[Thelonious] Monk is a subject in itself. I mean, most piano players in most big bands sit down and they play with the band, you know. But Monk would just sit there like this. And all of a sudden there'd be a pause from all the trumpets and everything and Monk would go 'plink!' like that. And everybody would go 'Yeah!
My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
Of course, the recorder will never have the repertoire of the piano or the violin.
I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.
What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.
I have so much music that I do. Just like how a visual artist is always sketching something but they might not share it, I'm always writing songs or coming up with melodic lines on piano or guitar. It's therapy. It's always happening.
My family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons.
Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.
My favorite sound is definitely mules. If it was an instrument, it's really pingthe touch of the black keys of the piano.
The elephant smoked too much.(explaining why the keys of his piano were so yellow)
I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
I play the piano. I bought an upright piano that is actually electric, so I can practice my scales with headphones on and not make my neighbours' lives hell!
Psychoanalyses is like music lessons, for 5 years you do not notice any progress and suddenly you can play the piano.
This happened to me last week. We're in the process of remodeling our house; we've been doing it for a while now. And we have the painters in, putting sheets up around the furniture, you know? And we have a piano, just a regular, up against the wall piano. One of the painters said to me, "Is that y'all's piano?" I said, "Nah, that's our coffee table, it just has buckteeth! Here's your Sign!
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.
They usually have a piano in every nursing home, and I always wanted to perform for whoever would listen when I learned something. I grew to understand very early that a lot of these people who are in nursing homes are elderly and don't have a lot of things that give them joy from day to day.
It was quite unusual to use the recorder as a concert instrument. But my mother, a pianist, actually helped me a lot by assuming that anything done on the piano can easily be done on the recorder! She helped me with technique and was just as critical about my playing as she was with her own. I think that has been one of my fortunes.
I used to play the piano, I was pretty decent, so that was the only thing I could hold onto in terms of coming up with melodies; but at the time I [still] just couldn't, so my early beats were really sample-based.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: