First piece that got you into playing piano?

TC3

I don't think a specific piece got me into it, but this piece jump started my practicing and helped the piano-playing bug really take hold:

ranjit

TC3 I don't think a specific piece got me into it, but this piece jump started my practicing and helped the piano-playing bug really take hold:

IMO Westworld very intelligently uses piano pieces to great effect. I like the opening theme as well.

Pallas

TC3 I have so many Westworld arrangements in my "someday* folder. Every single one I could get my hands on! Multiples of some pieces arranged by different people. I'm nuts about Djawadi's WW work!

TC3

Pallas I did eventually manage to crank out a slow, halting rendition of this one, but it was a stretch piece to say the least. I'll probably revisit it someday and see if I can play it for real ...

ranjit

Pallas I have so many Westworld arrangements in my "someday* folder.

Heart Shaped Box is great too. Someone liked the piece and asked me who it was by, only to cringe when I told him it was Nirvana LOL. I volunteered to play Smells Like Teen Spirit which was also in my fingers; he declined. 😂

Westworld's producers clearly knew piano music. There's a dialogue which goes something like, I'm tired of Chopin.

Jane

After a time of never getting past John Thompson's Book 2 and then a year or two of "pop" piano instruction with a guy whose idea of pop music was "In Your Easter Bonnet" (this was the era of Beatles on the Sullivan show), my epiphany came when I went to an outdoor concert at the Watergate where an army orchestra was set up on a barge and they played Rhapsody in Blue.
I had to get the music and a recording (Earl Wild's version) and to try to teach it to myself because my pop piano teacher correctly said it was way too advanced for me.
That was the end of my piano instruction and yet another fork into autodidacticism.

Pallas

ranjit I volunteered to play Smells Like Teen Spirit which was also in my fingers; he declined. 😂

I guess you'll just have to play it for us then.

ShiroKuro

JohnCW Piano is SO much easier in that regard

We should make a “piano vs guitar” thread!!

ranjit I volunteered to play Smells Like Teen Spirit which was also in my fingers

I missed this comment, Ranjit. Do you still play Smells Like Teen Spirit on the piano? I want to hear it!! If you like that kind of music, do you also play the solo piano version of Where Is My Mind? I think maybe that was used in a movie, I don’t recall. Any way, I love that! 🙂

ShiroKuro

Oh fun question! I grew up surrounded by music of all kinds, jazz, classical, opera, Italian folk music, soul, rock, funk. Stevie Wonder was one of my favorites when I was a little kid, as was Herbie Hancock. I think I had a record with a solo piano recording of Music Box Dancer on it, maybe when I was about 10? I don't remember. But at some point, I knew I wanted to play the piano but never had the chance. When I was in JH or HS, I got into punk rock (IKR?) but also I had a recording of Bach's toccata and fugue that I absolutely adored. I was, shall we say, eclectic. 😁 At some point in my teens, I took classical guitar lessons, which were discontinued when I broke my arm very badly. Fast forward to my 20s, I was living in Japan, trying to participate in a classical guitar club, but all the members were way better than me and it was not going well. At the same time, Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo piano piece "energy flow" was used in a tv commercial, became a huge hit, was the first solo piano piece to top the popular music charts there, and I was hearing it everywhere. I thought many, many times how wonderful it would be to play it myself!

One day, I made what I thought was an off-handed remark to an acquaintance (from the guitar club) about how I'd always wanted to be able to play piano. What I didn't know was that she was a piano teacher. She said she'd loan me a digital piano -- and she did!! Along with some method books. I taught myself how to read the bass clef, and basically never touched my guitar again 😅 Within a few months, I had bought my own digital piano, and within a year, I purchased a Yamaha acoustic upright. Since I had always loved music, I didn't learn to play just to play this one piece, but it certainly was a big part of what got me playing and early on, I set it as one of my goal pieces. About 6 years after getting my acoustic piano, I recorded "energy flow" and submitted it to an ABF recital.

🙂

And wouldn't you know it, you can still it in the ABF recital index! Amazing!!

https://recitals.pianoworld.com/recital_files/Recital_03/01-Shiro_Kuro-energy_flow.mp3

I continued playing it on and off for years, although it's fallen out of my fingers at the moment.

Here's the original (we call him the Professor in Japanese 💗

thepianoplayer416

There are several pieces that was part of my childhood. At age 5 I learned twinkle and played it somewhat successfully in front of relatives before mom decided I had no talent for music. I wouldn't get into serious piano playing for another 3 decades. At age 11 a cousin showed me pieces out of a beginner book. There was the Haydn "Surprise" (from Symphony 94) in C and an "Indian" Dance in Dm. The term "Indian" was used to label the natives of N. America than referring to people from India no longer in use. I didn't pick up these pieces immediately. The hands coordination wasn't there.

In the old days my knowledge of Classical music was limited to my father's LP collection of Beethoven & Mozart orchestral works, nothing for piano in particular. The only piano piece I knew was Beethoven "Für Elise". Most people including non-musicians would know this piece.

The year 1985 was the tri-centenary year of Bach & Handel (both born in 1785). There was a lot of Baroque music playing on the local Classical radio stations. After listening to the Bach French Suites, felt in love with the pieces. There were 2 memorable recordings by Keith Jarrett including "Sarabande" from Fr. Suite 3 in Bm and mvt 1 of the Italian Concerto in F.

Listening to piano /harpsichord music is 1 thing, learning to play was considered too difficult until I met a piano teacher giving demos that adults can learn piano. Another decade went by before I have the confidence to learn "Sarabande" from Fr. Suite 3.

A late learner but not too late...

bSharp

I enjoyed music as a kid and played trumpet. There wasn't any particular piece that inspired me to learn piano. I just wanted to learn to play!

JohnCW

It was actually years of trying to play guitar that got me into piano. I can't sing, so trying to play guitar as a solo instrumentalist means you have to be VERY good. The realization that I was never going to reach that level make me consider changing to a more suitable instrument .... piano. Piano is SO much easier in that regard. Now mastery, like any instrument, is a different matter.

thepianoplayer416

JohnCW

I come from a non-musical family. In my younger days mom let me & my siblings have music lessons. Me & my sister took violin, my brother has a guitar. Mom had decided guitar is a big instrument to carry to lessons. My brother was the tallest in the family so me & my sister got the more portable option.

When I was 5, the family had a Yamaha upright. After trying a few lessons the piano was out of the house for good. Piano was my last instrument of choice. It’s expensive & bulky to move around. I didn’t take up “piano” playing until the portable keyboard option became available. After a decade of playing, my main instrument is still a DP.

TC3

JohnCW I gave classical guitar a try for a few years before I switched to piano. I was TERRIBLE at it. It's an incredibly difficult instrument to play solo style, as you say. Piano for me, thank you very much!

PianogrlNW

My family had an upright piano and a John Thompson piano primer book, green cover, landscape format. I was 3 or 4 years old when I opened the pages and found magic. I’m not sure if my mom taught me or if the JT book explained how to play. Five finger scales and both hands. I fell in love.

MRC

Oh, this is fun! When I was very small (maybe 3 years old), I learnt a little ditty and managed to pick out the notes on the piano. I realised that it worked on the white keys, but only if you started on certain ones, so I scribbled a mark with a pencil on one of the ones that worked, which got me into trouble! I can still remember the tune:

I don't know where it came from. Maybe somebody does?

Animisha

Beethoven's Moonlight sonata! I thought it would take me a year to learn how to play it. 😄
Then I thought it would take me five years. Now these five years have gone, and I still don't play it, but also, I am no longer very interested in playing it.

JohnCW

TC3 I gave classical guitar a try for a few years before I switched to piano. I was TERRIBLE at it. It's an incredibly difficult instrument to play solo style, as you say. Piano for me, thank you very much!

If you think a guitar is difficult, try violin or flute. An old girlfriend was VERY naturally talented (used to drive me crazy that I'd spend all day trying to figure a guitar riff from a recording and she could just hear it once and play it immediately on a recorder of all thing). At one point she gave trying to learn the flute a real serious try. It was a constant struggle just to get a constant decent tone out of the expensive instrument. My daughter played the violin for quite some years, actually finally getting ok at it. But it was a might effort initially, not even frets to get the desired note right. Blah! I wish she had learned piano instead (mothers idea to push the violin). She will never return to the violin, but possibly a piano if one was just sitting there.
I think it just great that someone, with a bit of instruction, can make recognizable 'music' (might just be a one finger twinkle twinkle melody) within say an hour of sitting down at the piano for the first time. That's why I tell people anyone can play the piano (it's just a question of how well).

JB_PT

No specific piece or musical style got me into playing piano originally (I was interested in it as a toddler). But there was a specific piece that got me hooked again about 6 years ago. I don't expect anyone to be impressed by this piece or understand why it impacted me. 😏

I've been a lifelong band geek (clarinet). My symphonic band performed this piece and I fell in love with it as soon as I reviewed it for my first practice session. Our longtime piano player had recently moved out of state and we had no one lined up. I'm not sure what the conductor was thinking by choosing this one - the piano part is really critical. Even though it is a simple part that I could easily manage now, there was no way I could volunteer when I had barely touched my piano for over 20 years. We ended up doing it with no piano, and it really didn't work!

TC3

JohnCW I get you. I played saxophone in school (4th grade until graduation), dabbled on flute a bit, it is very hard to get a good tone. I've also played upright bass on and off, intonation on fretless instruments is tricky!

JohnCW

Funny how this thread got me thinking back to the very first real world music encounter in my life. I was only very young when the only grandparent I even knew came to stay with us (before elderly people were shoved into aged homes). She was deaf as could be, but could still knock out a decent Irish or Scottish tune (her background) on her little button accordion. First 'musician' I ever knew.