The guitar is something you kind of embrace, and the piano is something you kind of - when you play it, you sort of push it away. It feels very different.
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.
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.
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.
Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.
I explained to the lady my love for John and his work, and she made it possible for me to purchase one of the 24 proofs, the one for 'I'm So Tired,' which I have on my piano at home.
I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano.
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.
The artistic side of our family was very important because one person encourages the other. It was a vey enlightening place to be as a kid because of all the music and dancing, and my dad played banjo; my sisters played piano and sang.
I always loved the guitar, from when I was quite little. My dad had a G banjo at the house that he played. When he had parties, my sisters always played piano, and my dad played banjo.
The buildings that I build very often have a dreamlike reality. I don't mean by that they have a fantasy quality at all, in fact quite the reverse. They contain in some degree the ingredients that give dreams their power... stuff that's very close to...
We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own m...
I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive.
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.
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 never actually had a guitar lesson. I taught myself the guitar from piano exercise books, which led me to have a pretty good technique on the guitar and allowed me to find different ways to do things.
Although I don't come from a musical background, I was given piano lessons along with my sisters, but I wasn't what you would call a good student. I tended to write songs rather than do scales.
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.
