This comic strip pretty much summarizes how I felt when my parents started me on piano lessons.

http://www.gocomics.com/adamathome/2009/03/05/

Four years later there would have been Hell to pay if they wanted me to stop.

when I starting learning how to read a week later I was already playing transcribed anime/game music on the internet. And then I started taking lesson and I took music seriously a year later.

The answer to that question is, when I first heard my mother play the piano, my age about 3. It is certainly my oldest memory of music though I have now doubt that there would have been plenty in my house well before I was even born.

I wish my mother was still here, she died in 1959 age 59. So young by today's life span.

She played by ear (with the method of sound to each note pitch). That remains in your memory for life and taught me the same way. I just look at a note on the keyboard and subconsciously recall the sound.The rest was down to practice. Erroll Garner played that way so it is possible. Though he was a genius at it.

swingal

It's an unanswerable question for me. When did you realize you loved breathing?

My mother loved Liberace. When I actually encountered a real piano at a neighbor's house I knew what to do. I was about five.

I don't remember a time of my life before I learned to play, but it's always been fraught with ambiguity and ambivalence for me. It's part of who I am, but loving it is still a work in progress.

Steven

Thats a lovely story swingal.




As for me, I knew I loved playing before I ever played... I had to go on a 'passion-filled' search for a piano to play!

After first hearing George Winston and actually being able to improvise on the piano myself.

I wish I had a story where I said as soon as I saw the piano I knew what to do. My story is more like those love stories where it takes forever for the two to get together. I started playing when I was eight or nine and i took to it pretty quickly. I started playing because it got me out of class. I have been performing in public sense second grade. Though I did a lot of hymn arrangements and blues. Lets see, then I get into junior high and I notice that the girls notice when I play. So I start pushing myself much harder, especially with classical music. Then in high school I stopped playing for the first two years. When I started up again my junior year, I was definitely in love. First two years i was kind of burned out on music. I had been doing competitions for piano, clarinet, voice, choral(mens, full chorus, quartets), percusion. At the time it was just a bit much, always did well but it wore me out. When I came back it was kind of like meeting that girl you knew as a kid, but she grew up and became very beautiful as well as smart. I got back with her and been playing ever since.

It was the other way around for me. The piano stalked me! After years of being coy and playing hard to get I finally relented and gave in to it's roguish 88 tooth grin and seductive manner.

roguish 88-tooth grin, that is very funny.

My feelings towards first days (or years) of taking piano lessons are (VERY) vague, as are my first years of band (which I quite possibly have the most trouble remembering anything).

Back to the piano lessons, I remember that very well, and I enjoyed it, but I don't think I really and genuinely LOVED the piano until this last year (or two?), after 5 years of playing, which disappoints me very much. (the lack of love)

Growing up, my home was always filled with classical music which I loved. I used to tinker around with "Chopsticks", "Heart and Soul", "Blue Moon" and that thing you do on the black keys with your knuckles. My parents asked me if I wanted lessons, which I started when I was 10. I still remember learning "The Woodchuck" and "Crunchy Flakes" and loving the sound of myself playing with two hands. I was immediately addicted. My parents made a deal with me: "If we ever have to ask you to practice, the lessons stop." They never did. Not once.

Chopsticks is anything but simple.... the way I improvise on it anyway! I improvised and recorded a harmonically contrapuntal four voice fugue based on "I'm Popeye the Sailor-Man" on my Hammond two weeks ago that I'll upload soon. I'll have to upload an example of chopsticks as soon as my hands cool down (my chronic tendon inflammation is in full bloom right now). Even kid's tunes can take on a whole new meaning dependent upon how you approach them.

Of interest for 20th century music fans, the first sound file of my signature line is an improvisation based on Bartok's Music For Strings, Percussion, and Celeste!

swingal, your post rang lots of bells for me (my mother died at 59, too...) but in my case it was my father's playing which is my earliest musical memory. He simply couldn't walk past the piano without sitting down to play! Like your mother, he played by ear, but also read music, and started teaching me when I was seven. I think I can say that I always knew I loved playing the piano. I remember being away on holidays when I was 9 and suffering intense withdrawal symptoms because there was no piano. The first thing I would do on coming home was to rush to the piano - if I could beat my father to it.

When I was was younger, one of my really close friends could play piano really well. My great Grandmother was also a very accomplished Pianist and listening to her play just made me want to play even more. I asked for lessons and since passing my Grade 8, I can't go a day without playing it.

I started lessons and playing at 4 years old. Hated it for about 5 years. Got a better piano teacher at around 10 and the next 6 years was so/so, I enjoyed what I learned on my own but disliked many of the heavy classics and overload of Bartok that was shoved down my throat. I truly enjoyed hooking up with a high caliber jazz piano teacher several years later and the wealth of knowledge he shared with me literally allowed me to finally fall in love with playing.

Bartok! You can never have enough Bartok shoved down your throat. Or shoved anywhere else on your person, for that matter.

My parents bought me a toy keyboard at age 5 and I have loved playing since then. Unfortunately, they only saw the instrument as a toy and wouldnt pay for lessons, so I just had to spend an hour per week after school in keyboard classes where they gave us good pieces to play, raising me up to Grade 5 by 16, but there was never any theory or sight reading practice - I had to make do with 'all cows eat grass middle C and FACE'.

I then started playing on the Piano for an hour everyweek during my A levels, also if the music room was empty during my free periods, just happilly working through Grade 6 and 7, however I had a terrible technique, never used my little fingers, and failed my audition for the Performance module at university due to too many errors. I then found myself stuck for the next two years and couldnt get any better so quit out of frustration.

However, I started playing again last November, and somehow just knew a lot more and were a lot more comfortable. I quickly worked the tension out of my technique, have now overcome my poor accuracy and useless little fingers using Hanon, and I love playing more then ever. I have completed learning Maple Leaf Rag and can play it wonderfully, just with a couple of accuracy improvements needed in the third and fourth sections, and I have now started on Nocturne Op 9 No 2, which follows on perfectly from the Maple Leaf Rag for my left hand development.
But I have serious problems with reading the left hand chords, although I can spot and name all the notes now without using the mnomics, I can only work through two or three bars of the left hand chords a day, while I can sight read the treble clef and right hand fluently enough to work through a whole page in no time.

So now I need to work on my bass clef reading. For the last few days, I am just opening up my Chopin book onto a random page and sitting down and reading the notes for around 15 minutes, and also practicing in my head - hopefully my bass clef reading should improve using these techniques at least every other day. Once my sight reading is improved, I can start hammering away on my Chopin and Ragtime pieces, but it will take some time.

Our neighbors were moving and didn't want to take their upgrand Gulbransen so the piano came next door to our house.Down in the basement went the piano. It needed 8 men to move the monster. Little did I know that once I touched it, it would be a life-long love and endeavor.

still practicing....now writing...

rada

BJ...the Bartok was overloaded because my teacher was Hungarian and so is my background. Funny how the Liszt didn't effect me this way...maybe it was all the tritones and dissonance.

After not playing any piano for a period of a couple years and then going back into it lately I have newly found my long lost love.

Hey, happy birthday swingal !!! Enjoy the cake.

Took piano for about two years when I was seven, hated it, quit. When I was in high school ELP and prog rock came about. A couple of years later I bought a piano and taught myself (and some jazz).

I hate piano.

I had a lot of Bartok, too, when I was taking lessons. I went to district competions playing Bartok.

But, I dropped piano in high school. Boys seemed more important.

After my mother died I started playing again, on my mother's old piano, when I visited my father on weekends. One day he declared I played better than she did and said he would buy me a piano so that I could play all the time. That was after a 10 year hiatus from regular playing. So I bought a used P22 and a few years later upgraded.

So it's his fault, really. I got into it in a major way only the second time around. I'm glad that I took it up again but it would have been better for me if I'd never quit in the first place.

Although I'm a "classical" pianist, I realize how much I love playing and performing any time I get to play with a solid band or ensemble, preferably some sort of rock band...which lately has happened a lot. I can't say there was a moment, but EVERY time I'm on stage ripping out some piano part with a good drum beat behind me I can't help but feel the passion for playing. I LOVE playing the classical stuff, but I only really get the tingle of passion when I'm performing with a good ensemble.

Hm...

For me, the experience is a lot like math. The reason why you love math is that you hate it. I am always reminded of this joke:



So no matter what kind of bad stuff happens during piano work, it's all good in the end.

I realized I loved playing music at about 14 or 15 years old, and with the piano specifically , after I got my Grade 6 (Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto) piano about 2 1/2 years ago--but especially in the last 7-8 months with a great regular teacher outside of my husband!

Meri

Only january of last year--I'm only 18, but I have an older brother, and when we used to take lessons (stopped last year for me, three years ago for him), I always loved the pieces he played. I remember he played Dr. Gradus from Children's Corner, Chopin's nocturne op 55 no 1, and a Scarlatti sonata. When my brother left for college, my piano teacher bought him a book of all of Chopin's nocturnes, which unfortunately for him, he did not bring to college with him. So when I had the time, I decided to put that book to use and learned the op 62 no 2 (my piano teacher gave me Artur Rubinstein's recordings of all the nocturnes, and this one intrigued me the most!). Not that I had any problems with the pieces I was learning with my piano teacher, but for some reason I'd much rather learn pieces that I just couldn't get of my head at the time. Well, yeah... that's my story :X!

An apt reply in my case would be when did I realize I loved playing it less, which was two days ago. I still love the piano, however.

Like a lot of the other people here, I don't know when I "fell in love" but I do know that if I stopped there would be nothing about me--I am a pianist, that is all that I am, and that is all I want to be, so I love to play.

Sometimes I wonder if I just need an identity, but you know I think I really would die without it.

I can't stop playing! It's just inconceivable!