First piece that got you into playing piano?

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.

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! 🙂

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!

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.

lilypad

We always had a big old upright piano in the house, but I don't remember ever trying to play it until one day when I was around 7 years old, my dad borrowed a record player to play a recording of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. I remember going over to the piano and experimenting until I could play a right hand triad imitation of the opening bar.

I don't remember it inspiring me to play piano, but I think it inspired my parents to get me and an older sister into lessons the following year when they could afford it.

TLH21

When I started school, aged almost 5, a teacher used to play us pieces on the piano then explain what they were all about. It was magical. I have no idea what the pieces were, except that they were classical music pieces, not the sort of stuff my parents listened to on the radio at home.

JohnCW

TLH21 a teacher used to play us pieces on the piano then explain what they were all about.

My experience with music at school was actually the complete opposite. At elementary school we were taught musical theory without any context. Dots with silly tails on lines, it made no sense at all. Fast forward to high school and our music teacher would bring in her record player and stick on say a Mantovani album, and play it to 15 year old boys who were into the Beatles or Rolling Stones, to 'educate' us in 'real' music. We weren't the slightest bit interested, and so learnt nothing.

A few years later, in a shared house with someone who played guitar, my musical journey started.

TC3

JohnCW That's unfortunate. I had a similar experience with my classical teachers. It was only when I started studied jazz that theory was integrated with ear training, playing, listening, etc. That's when it made sense to me. Of course, there's no reason classical theory couldn't be taught the same way, but it often isn't.

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