Best 432 quotes in «piano quotes» category

Ability to think, like the violin or piano, requires daily practice

Where the piano is, there is one's treasure, as far as I am concerned....nothing, surely, is more delightful than sitting down at the piano on a summer day, and playing Chopin or Debussy while the natural sunlight drifts over one's shoulders through the vines outside, creating a filigree of shadow in the printed page...a shifting pattern of ghostly leaf and blossom that dances to the mood of the music.

When I was thirteen I spent a lot of time pretending to like dance music because everyone at my school seemed to love it. If only I'd known it was OK to have different tastes to others and that one day my mind would be blown open by an older man who would introduce me to The Smiths, The Cure, Buzzcocks, Talking Heads and almost every other band I adore to this day. I also wish I'd been reassured that one day, yes, a boy would actually fancy me in spite and potentially, deliberately, FOR my zero boob/skinny legs combo. But mainly I wish I'd listened to my mother when she said learning to play the piano might come in handy in the future and would actually be something I would thank her for forcing me to do. Every Wednesday we would drive to Mrs Batten's house listening to The ArchersI, with me in the passenger seat trying desperately to think up excuses for why I hadn't practiced that week. Though it seemed very unlikely at the time, I am thankful for those piano lessons every time I manage to impress a boy by hammering out some Chopin when drunk (swot up, kids!).

you can run out of garlic, you can't really run out of music

You don't have to be brave for me.

You hear lots of notes, don’t you? Some have a major sound. Some have a minor sound. But there’s not one blue note among all these black and white keys. The real blues, the soul of the sound, comes from the spaces in-between.

After a while, though, you realize that a whole slew of young singer-songwriter piano players are getting compared to you. That's when you feel the passage of time is occurring.

After I write a sequence, I just open the script and then sit at the piano keyboard and "play" the script. (And because I also draw and paint, sometimes I sketch out the action as well.)

After the Second World War, I returned to California to study composition with Darius Milhaud, who wrote wonderful works like 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit' and 'La Cretion du Monde.' I especially enjoy his work for two pianos, 'Scaramouche.

You play with great skill," he said. "Thank you." "Is that your favorite piece?" "It's my most difficult," Helen said, "but not my favorite." "What do you play when there's no one to hear?" The gentle question, spoken in that accent with vowels as broad as his shoulders, caused Helen's stomach to tighten pleasurably. Perturbed by the sensation, she was slow to reply. "I don't remember the name of it. A piano tutor taught it to me long ago. For years I've tried to find out what it is, but no one has ever recognized the melody." "Play it for me." Calling it up from memory, she played the sweetly haunting chords, her hands gentle on the keys. The mournful chords never failed to stir her, making her heart ache for things she couldn't name. At the conclusion, Helen looked up from the keys and found Winterborne staring at her as if transfixed. He masked his expression, but not before she saw a mixture of puzzlement, fascination, and a hint of something hot and unsettling. "It's Welsh," he said. Helen shook her head with a laugh of wondering disbelief. "You know it?" "'A Ei Di'r Deryn Do.' Every Welshman is born knowing it." "What is it about?" "A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart." "Why can't he go to her himself?" Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets. "He can't find her. He's too deep in love- it keeps him from seeing clearly." "Does the blackbird find her?" "The song doesn't say," he said with a shrug. "But I must know the ending to the story," Helen protested. Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. "That's what comes o' reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That's not what matters." "What matters, then?" she dared to ask. His dark gaze held hers. "That he loves. That he's searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he'll ever have his heart's desire.

Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.

All too frequently the amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing 'Chopsticks' on a concert grand piano.

A lot of my approach to the instrument, especially as I've gotten older, is to treat the piano in ways that are not very pianistic - to consider the sounds I'm after first, and to deal with technical considerations later.

And that's what got me to the piano, that's what got me up in the morning: a blank piece of paper and a hope to have something by the end of the day.

Any professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you've got to arrive at is a kind of typical gestural crap, right? You might agree, though you wouldn't call it gestural crap

A piano is a machine, but you've got ivory and there's weight behind the keys and you have this really - you feel the resonance in the instrument, you feel the vibration in the pedal. I mean, these a still very crude.

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.

As a young composer I had a particular fondness for Liszt's Beethoven Symphony arrangements for the piano, and to this day I enjoy playing non-piano music at the piano.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

Bravery is a complicated thing to describe. You can't say it's three feet long and two feet wide and that it weighs four hundred pounds or that it's colored bright blue or that it sounds like a piano or that it smells like roses. It's a quality, not a thing.

Being a part of the crowd with incredible musicians onstage summoning the muse and delivering that to us - doesn't matter if it's an orchestra, two bluegrass banjo pickers, a solo singer, piano player, or Bruce Springsteen - when it all comes together, you can just feel as if you are a part of something bigger and grander than yourself.

But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?" Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach.

At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes? I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.

Can you play the piano like Beethoven? Or sing like Carly Simon? Can you take fie pages' worth of quotes and turn them into a usable story ten minutes before deadline? I don't think so, unless you have more hidden talents I don't know about. We all have our special sills. They don't make us better or worse than each other. Just different

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.

Cats sleep Anywhere, Any table, Any chair, Top of piano, Window-ledge, In the middle, On the edge.

Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.

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

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

Comedy, I figured, was the thing that came to me the most easily. Playing the trumpet and piano took practice. I thought that was a waste of time. I'd go out on the street corner and be funny. In a minute.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.

Chopin was the first piano composer who knew exactly how to make piano sound reach fullness, radiance and grandness. What to regard and what, by all means, to avoid. Chopin was keenly aware of the overtones and he did take care of them so artfully.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

Drawing is like studying Greek and piano- you can't speak or play in your conscious, which is clumsy. You must get it into your subconscious, which is graceful. But that takes time.

Discipline, strictly speaking, is activity carried on to prepare us indirectly for some activity other than itself. We do not practice the piano to practice the piano well, but to play it well.

First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.

Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.

FOr a while, I'd never had the opportunity to prove on TV that I could play the piano.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my keyboard piano, oh Lord, why don't we?

Every time I see a piano, I have this urge to play it.

For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

God gave me a gift of singing and playing the piano, and when I do it, it's exciting, of course. But it's more than that. It's truly the way God created me to release my soul and my spirit, to really worship him. ... I'm made to create music.

For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun.

God didn't give me the ability to play the piano, or paint a picture or have compassion. But... he did give me the ability to crack a walnut with my hoo-ha.

Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife underhand into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all the furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it.