Pallas thank you for sharing your story and I'm so happy to hear that you're pursuing your love of piano. Thankfully there are so many online resources in this day and age and the option to learn without a teacher.
My piano story is also wrapped up in some trauma (nowhere near as bad as yours) and self-esteem issues and I've been trying to decide whether or not I'm comfortable sharing it. Maybe I will, we'll see.
My grandmother played the piano, directed the church choir, and played as church pianist. My mother played and gave a few lessons before she got married. We had an upright in the house for many years, but my mother didn't play and we didn't have music in the house.
There were four children in the house under the age of eight. My mom tried to give us some lessons, but she was just so busy taking care of the household that the lessons didn't last long. I think I topped out at a simple version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Fast forward 50-some years and I'm about to retire from a career in research. I decided I wanted to learn to play the piano. I bought a Yamaha CLP-something and started teaching myself using the Alfred's Adult AIO books. My spouse (who had had piano lessons for seven years as a child) said, "Why don't you take lessons?" The very thought made my blood run cold. Still. After a time I decided, okay, maybe I'll look for a teacher. I took a trial lesson with a teacher. I told her I wanted to learn classical music. She proceeded to show me jazzy improv on a baby grand (a white baby grand) that was in sore need of tuning and regulation. At that point I started lurking on PW and someone mentioned community colleges as a place to look for or at least ask for recommendations about teacher. So I went to the local college and the head of the music department immediately set me up with one of their teachers. I took 30 min lessons with her for two years, then switched to the department head and 60 min lessons.
That teacher has been my teacher for the last 10 years and I must say, it has been life changing, bless her heart. My teacher suggested upgrading from a digital to an acoustic; one night while I was practicing, my spouse said, "Have you ever considered buying a grand piano?" I said, well, yes, in fact I had. So we shopped for several months and bought a new Yamaha C3X, which we love.
My teacher suggested I might like to take theory classes, so I took two years of theory classes and then music history class for a year. After several years my spouse started playing again and I suggested theory classes might be interesting. After my spouse completed those, we both took (me for the second time) music history classes. And now my spouse is taking piano lessons from my teacher. So--music and piano in particular has become a major thing in our lives.
If it's possible to have a heritable predisposition to the piano, I should have it given my grandmother and mother. But in reality, most of what I can do on the piano is due to hard work and discipline. Was the very small amount of piano instruction I had as a child helpful? Don't know. I think those that have had at least a year or two as children have something to come back to if they restart as adults. I don't have that, but that is water under the bridge. I intend to be playing the piano until the day I die.
Context
I was born with a natural ear. Since early childhood, when hearing others sing, I would naturally do four-point harmony, without any training. I also imagined numerous ways for a song/piece to sound, outside the box. People mistaken me for being "perfect pitch" but in reality I have a combination of "natural relative pitch" combined with some ADD (always composing in my head), and natural talent for harmony and non-taught music theory. Perhaps because of that, I loathed when my parents forced me to learn piano by sight reading. I found it very limiting for my strange brain. I'm also an audiophile who loves good sound (more on that later).
When I truly started piano
I grew up at a church, where contemporary religious music was the norm. Guitar chords, basically. Think of people like Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman. When my high school crush who was the keyboardist, left for college, I asked her who would replace her. She said I should replace her. I thought she was insane-- I had no real piano training (other than my 1 year of forced, then quit training), and no idea how to play chords. But I ended up getting some chord charts, and just figuring it out, by accompanying guitarists and vocalists. Several years later it became clear to me that I had a knack for composition/ leading a band, and I also realized I no longer needed chord charts at all.
Several years later I ended up using the chord approach, into all genres of music - pop, R&B, soul, movie soundtracks etc. I enjoyed playing anything by ear and just improvising. To laypeople, they were very impressed, so I had a high esteem about being "really good at piano."
Humbling moment
My wife made it very clear to me, that although I could do somewhat uncanny things on the piano, that I sounded horribly, from a mechanics standpoint. That anyone who has formal training would think that although I could play some really cool things note-wise, and come up with fun tunes, that my voicing, phrasing, tempo, dynamics completely sucks. And I agreed with that. This was exacerbated by playing with a keyboard for so long, where I used the volume control to mask all my deficiencies.
Turning Point
In 2021, I told my wife I wanted to get a Shigeru Kawai. She had mixed feelings. She said if I were to purchase that instrument, then she'd plan when she's not in the house, so that I could play my own way (which is pretty "masculine," banging the keys, like a rock pianist who's lost his hearing). It was my wakeup call, that if we were going to get a nice piano, I better learn to play correctly (as in, get the basic fundamentals down). We agreed that I won't be forced to learn classical repertoires per se, but if I would at least do the basic techniques and drills, then my contemporary style would sound so much better than a raw, talented, but uncouth pianist.
So we bought the Shigeru. And I practiced my tail off on the Kawai VPC1 for hours a day on Hanon, scales, arpeggios, and doing ToneBase kind of stuff. Again, there's no expectations for me to read music, play classical pieces, but instead at a minimum I need to still learn the fundamentals.
Fast Forward to Today
Just recently, my wife said I sound good. This was a huge accomplishment for me, because she is hyper critical (in a constructive way) of piano playing. So now, when I'm doing a self-made mashup of chords/ melodies that combines Chariots of Fire, with some Rachmaninoff phrases, with some Stravinsky phrases, followed by Bach "Prelude in [whatever key I feel like], followed by Interstellar, it sounds cool.
I'm grateful that I have the gift of ear, and can figure out, and play whatever I want without a score - a bit of a self-looped learning mechanism. And I'm glad that I've gotten much better mechanically.
My "niche" is going to a random piano (imagine at a Waterloo train station, airport, or having guests over). I ask them "give me a song- any song" and then they name something. So long as it's a conventional progression, I'll usually make it up on the spot, on any key. And improvise. It's cool for "showing off" but otherwise I get bored in the middle of the song, and ask for another song. Today I am going to practice "Bach Prelude in all Majors" - playing it in all 12 keys, in order to strengthen my technique while simultaneously practice my ear training and muscle memory.
Looking Ahead
I plan to keep playing piano as an amateur. I've played in numerous gigs in the past, but realized that it's more fun to do my own thing. I have seen Youtube's of folks who hear a song, then five minutes later play it, and felt I do it more proficiently than them.
I will never be a classical pianist, will never sight read, will never sound fully polished. And I'm fully content about that, as my brain operates completely different (not saying it's better or worse), and I'm glad I have pianos/keyboards I can continue the lifelong learning, making our pianos sound good (the Shigeru and Bose), and to sound less crappy than I did before.
@rogerch thanks for this thread. What beautiful stories!
I don’t have an acoustic piano, and I don’t know if I will ever have one. But here is my piano story.
When I was five I saw a piano and a person playing it at my parents friends’ house. It was a Calisia upright, a Polish piano, now discontinued. Seeing my fascination with the instrument, the pianist was so kind as to let me touch the keys and show me how to play a simple tune. It was a mind-bending experience for me and a love at first sight. Since then, for a long time there was literally nothing I wanted more than to play the piano and I begged my parents to let me.
I remember that at one point my mum took me to a music school. There were entrance exams for six-year-olds. I remember a lady who played some notes on the piano and asked me to repeat the same sounds, first by singing and then by playing them. I don’t remember much more of the exam, only the blissful feeling when I understood that I had been accepted. It ended in nothing though, because I could not have a piano at home to practise - the noise would have been unbearable to my father.
Some fifty years passed, more or less. I had not given up my dreams about playing piano, but there were other priorities in the meantime (family, work, etc.). Accidentally, I read somewhere that there were now high quality digital pianos that you could play silently with headphones on. A digital piano was a solution to my deeply rooted fear of disturbing someone with my practising. So when my husband decided to buy me my very first piano as a birthday present in 2021, I asked him to choose a digital. I know that my Yamaha CLP 735 does not compare to those beautiful grand pianos I have seen on your pictures here, but to me it is a dream come true and the most wonderful thing I have ever owned.
I am a beginner, and will always be, I suppose. I started to learn too late (at almost 60) to become anything else. But I’m fine with it, as the only thing I do care about is the complete happiness that I feel when I sit at the piano, touch the keys, make them sound, learn to play, and immerse myself in this wonderful world to which my piano has the key.
@Pallas Thank you, I loved reading your story too 
Rubens Bought first house, decided it needed a piano, so bought an old broken baby grand Pease from 1911,
Rubens, I have a photo graph of my grandmother holding me when I was a baby and in the background is her Pease upright.
And thank you all for the kind words. Everyone's piano journey is different, but somehow we all find our way to sitting down at the piano.
For me, I had always wanted to play the piano from a very young age but I didn't have access to one until I was 7. My mom had an old upright, but it was at her parent's house a state away since our house was supposedly too small. But when I was 7, we moved to a larger house with ample room and so my mom was finally able to retrieve her piano. I was obsessed with it and begged my parents for lessons, but they said no. So I decided to teach myself. I dug through my mom's music books and found some beginner books and learned how to read music, and then I found the music for Für Elise, which I thought was the most beautiful piece ever, and I taught myself how to play it. At that point, my paternal grandmother decided that if my parents weren't going to put me in lessons, she was. She had a friend who was a piano teacher and started me with her. It wasn't a good fit - even though I was a beginner, I was already more advanced than she expected and she couldn't adapt her teaching style to my needs. Finally, my mom realized I was actually serious about playing and so she found another teacher who was a much better fit for me. I stayed with her for years, until she could no longer teach due to her old age. I had two more teachers after her, one was another poor fit and actually kind of killed my love of playing. I took about a year break from lessons at that point, and then found my fourth teacher who brought me back. I stayed with him until I moved out of state.
During this entire time, I played on that old beat up upright of my mother's. It wasn't well maintained (though it did receive regular tunings at least) and was in pretty sorry shape, but I was lucky to have it. I never would have had the opportunity to learn without it. That old Thayer will always have a special place in my heart.
Yamaha C5X
I started guitar lessons when I was nine, but I was very drawn to piano and switched after 6 months or so. All I had at home was a cheap/small keyboard (Casio?) so I couldn't really progress too far...the following year I started learning clarinet at school and that became my focus (I still play, 37 years later).
When I was in the 7th or 8th grade the adult daughter of a family friend was leaving the state to go to law school. Her piano would be stored in a barn unless she found someone to take care of it. My mom volunteered - this is how I ended up with a huge old player piano (with the guts removed) in my bedroom for 4-5 years. I don't recall the make. I started piano lessons again but that only lasted for a year or 2. I did not have the discipline to practice much; I just wanted to play what I liked. This is why I crashed and burned as a freshman in high school when I accompanied the choir. I would procrastinate until there was no hope of learning the music in time for the concerts. It was a humiliating experience (and my own fault of course).
My grandma played piano and ukulele in a professional Dixieland jazz band. At some point in my early 20s I inherited her piano, a Kimball Artist's console from the 70s (I later got the ukulele too). It was a fugly shade of brown that just screamed 1975, but I thought the legs and music desk had a pretty design. I had that piano until 4.5 years ago. I had finally started playing/learning seriously, and I was not pleased with the bright tone or the fact that it took over 3 hours to tune and didn't STAY in tune very long. It was a difficult decision to get rid of it (just because of nostalgia), but I like to think that she would have wanted me to have a healthy instrument. So I bought a new ED Seiler upright that I love. The only issue is that the action needs to be removed and lubed every year or so because it gets creaks/squeaks when I use the sustain pedal. I need to have this done soon; I'm approaching the limit of my tolerance again. 
Stub
Pease pianos are practically all destroyed by the ravages of time, sadly. I remember all the love and care I put into refurbishing mine, only to realize that the proper repairs would cost more than a new piano. But it had character, and a beautiful tone. It was from the Golden age of american piano manufacturing, where dozens (hundreds?) of makers were competing to make the best pianos. I know for sure that had my Pease been maintained properly by its previous owners it would have been a superb instrument to this day.
brdwyguy I've noticed a 'common' thread in most of the stories
Has anyone else NOTICED that most of us were taught, maybe even slightly 'forced' into playing/learning piano.
And then we all stopped playing, for some, years, for some, even decades - but we all RETURNED to playing once again.?
Just thought I would mention that, and wonder if it gave us a better appreciation/understanding of the piano playing experience. I know for me, I have a true connection with my piano now, even more than I ever have had before.
thoughts?
brdwyguy
Thanks brdwyguy! I've enjoyed reflecting on your post!
In my case I never stopped playing altogether, but I certainly had stretches of time during which I played very little. Since piano is a hobby for me, it sometimes gets set aside for the demands of family, jobs or other interests.
I sometimes wonder where my playing would be if I had continued lessons all these years and played more consistently. But I made the choices I did for good reasons. I will never regret putting piano on the back burner to give me more time and energy to spend raising my kids!
Even when I wasn't playing very much the piano sat there in my living room, patiently waiting for me. When I was too busy to play it was nice to know that one day when I was less busy I would have the piano to occupy my time and keep me learning.
My answer is that I had an appreciation of piano even when I was not playing very much. I am grateful to my parents for supporting my playing when I was a child, and I'm grateful that I've continued playing at least a little bit throughout my life. I look forward to continuing to play!
Thank you so much everyone for posting your stories. Even you rokhead! Somehow I managed to stay awake while reading your post 
brdwyguy I've noticed a 'common' thread in most of the stories
Has anyone else NOTICED that most of us were taught, maybe even slightly 'forced' into playing/learning piano.
Oh gosh. I have a lot to say about this and at one point in my childhood I hated piano so much. Don't be a tiger parent, folks! I'll share the full story some other day, there's a lot to talk about. On one hand my sister and I play well as adults, but on the other hand it really sucked to be us back then. I'm just glad I was able to reclaim piano for myself and start playing chamber music (my true love), where I feel like when you're with musicians who are on the same page and work well as an ensemble, something truly magical happens.
When I was a teenager, my parents decided we could all play an instrument. I chose the guitar, and I had lessons that were so bad that the teacher should have paid me instead. After a year of not learning much, I quit.
My sister had chosen the organ (a precursor to a digital piano) and I had taught myself some pieces, the most difficult one was the exposition to the Entertainer. Whenever I saw a piano, I played this piece.
Slowly, slowly, as I moved through middle age, a wish to learn to play the piano started to grow in me. During a Christmas dinner at work, I told a colleague that I would buy a piano when I had retired. -Why wait? she said, and when I told my husband, he immediately went online and found me a Casio Px150. I found Alfred's and started to practise on my own. I didn't think I needed a teacher. I could figure out myself when to play which note! 
My work was very stressful, and I was too tired to practise much. Still, I made some progress and gradually, I started to wonder why everything I played sounded so ugly. I understood that I did need a teacher after all, and started with Peery on Artist works, and then with Piano Career Academy. I acquired Pianoteq, Kawai VPC1, new monitors, and I am still very happy with my set-up.
After PCA's curriculum, I wanted to choose my own pieces, and I got a private teacher. I have just changed to a new teacher. I am now early retired, and I practise 1-2 hours most days, except when we go out for a day trip. I am not much bothered about progress as in reaching higher levels, but very much interested in learning to play as beautifully and expressively as I can.
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...
The short version...
Started pickin' out tunes on the piano at around age 5. Started lessons around age 6. Didn't initially like it all that well but someone gave me an old piano book of Mozart and I started pickin' stuff out of that. Teacher caught me doing it and we started into a more classical push. Practiced a lot of hours and it made a difference.
Played in church from about the age of 10 or so. Conservative, hymns mostly. Went to church schools through 12th grade and continued with lessons. Had a piano scholarship if I'd wanted it but declined, had other things I wanted to do. I got bored with classical. I felt like I was playing in a box all of the time and got scolded if I played something differently because I liked a chord with an added 9th or 13th or flat 5 or something else because that's NOT the way they wrote it. Screw that. (Sorry. I just needed more than just verbatim of what someone played 150 years ago and people repeat over and over and over and over and over even today.)
Joined a contemporary gospel band shortly after HS, and one of the names would be known by most everyone. Really just didn't like the music. (Still don't like contemporary gospel.)
Continued to play in church, sometimes piano, sometimes organ, up until about 5 years or so ago when I finally had enough with that particular church (some would say "cult") and have not been a part of church music since. (Long story, not really appropriate for this forum.) Most notable, and the last years of the significant church stuff, was probably a stint in New Orleans where I got to romp on an old Allen organ week after week. The local culture allowed even a conservative atmosphere to approach what might be "roller skating rink music", Cajun style, so long as it was a hymn tune. LOL!! Also got to play along side of a notable piano/organ player (Preservation Hall Jazz Band) numerous times, enjoyed that. He's a nice guy and I appreciated the time spent. A move to TN about 10 years ago put me in a much different atmosphere and I did play some church stuff, along with a band of sorts here but not the same. Much more of a bluegrass bend, which was OK. But that ended when I dumped the church denomination. Never picked up anywhere else church wise as most everyone is Bethel and Hillsong, which as I mentioned, I don't like, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
Started playing with a jazz group about 2 years ago. Some real sleazy stuff going on behind the scenes and I just didn't wanna be a part of that. Several of that band left at the very beginning of '23 for the same reason including the drummer that is now the head of our current thee piece band. Playin' some jazz now and enjoying it, meeting new people and playing on a few stages that are significant, at least locally, and along side of some people who actually travel in music circles in Nashville. Seeing where it all goes. Still learning new tunes and new riffs as I go.
I sometimes think I'd like to take some more lessons but have not found someone I think could really help me on my journey. I do watch YouTube tutorials and sometimes pick up something interesting. And I'm often asked if I give lessons. Nope. I'd be a lousy teacher. LOL!
I found this picture of me playing the piano with my grandmother when I was two!
This may have been the start of my piano journey!
This is a lovely thread! I would lose focus if I would read them all at once, so I keep it open, and every once in a while I read someone's story. So interesting.
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...
brdwyguy I've noticed a 'common' thread in most of the stories
Has anyone else NOTICED that most of us were taught, maybe even slightly 'forced' into playing/learning piano.
And then we all stopped playing, for some, years, for some, even decades - but we all RETURNED to playing once again.?
In general there might be a pattern! For me - a bit different. My folks just wanted to give us a way to develop our brain or something, and maybe build up a bit of self-esteem and confidence. Basically some sort of development. I'm super glad and happy that they did get me to piano lessons with a local teacher, who is no longer 'with us' for quite a while now - but I can say she is an excellent person. Excellent. She was my only piano teacher (as in formal lessons teacher, as I had always said that we also learn from the teachers that wrote books and made video lessons, and wrote/composed music that taught me directly and indirectly - even listening to or looking at compositions had people teaching us something). She started me off with piano. It was great.
And because I just love music - no matter what, and just love pianos of any sort --- I just keep learning and playing. I have never taken a break from playing piano in my whole life. Actually - the only times - which isn't a 'break' as such, is when I'm on holidays - as in traveling - away from home. That's when I don't play any piano. And that's fine, as we have developed to a stage where the music is in us. And we just need the music in us in order to then generate the music whenever we get to hop on a piano next - at any time.
Also .... importantly, people returning to playing piano after a relatively long time ... that is excellent.
What a delightful thread! I can't believe I missed it until now. I'm still trying to get used to not having to stay in just the adult kiddie corner any longer
I guess my story is rather short, because there really isn't much to tell. I grew up in an artistic family. One of my aunts was a ballerina, another a piano/harpsichord teacher, my uncle artist/painter, my dad a clarinettist/teacher/world champion harmonica, my mom violinist/pianist, etc. From a very young age I realized that I could probably never match any of them, so why even bother. I stubbornly refused to learn any instrument seriously - though I did enjoy noodling around at the piano or guitar every now and then.
Of course I was silly enough to marry into a family of artists because why stop at putting up with just my own family being artistic, right? 
On my husband's side I could add professional stage and film actors, playwright, opera singer, pipe major/flamenco guitarist, organ builder, famous poet and writer to my list of people I could never live up to.
Now that I'm no longer young and not feeling the need to prove anything to anybody or live up to any expectations, I started to eye up the lovely Clavinova that was doing nothing in the basement. I started playing (again) in January, signed up for another forum to stay motivated (and hopefully motivate others), and now moved across to this one because all my new piano friends did
The rest, hopefully, is future history! And the story turned out to be longer than I thought 
