Who here learned to play in the proper manner? Share your memories of piano lessons!

[pink floyd cramer]

To those addressed in the thread title: I thought we might form a club within KSS for the purpose of seperating ourselves from the hordes of barbarian keyboard-rapers so unfortunately prevalent on this forum. To distract them from crashing our party, I intend to start a decoy thread promising links to keyboard tabs (not notation) for Flock of Seagulls one-finger synth solos and whatnot. We should be able to have a decent discussion before they catch on. Tea and crumpets at 11.

 

So what are your memories of piano lessons? What books/method did your teacher employ? What were your favorite first pieces you learned to play? Did anybody else here learn "Bobcat Boogie"?

 

At 9 years old, I had been picking out one-finger melodies on the family piano for some time. But unfortunately, synth workstations were not yet invented, so that just wasn't enough for me. So my father (who hated all piano players but Floyd Cramer) decided the right thing to do was find a teacher for me and my younger brother. Fortunately there was a beautiful, talented and accomplished young lady locally available. I loved to hear her play "Minuet In G", especially since I had heard it on a "Peanuts" episode".

 

I don't remember the first book used (John Thompson, maybe) but it had the usual beginning 3-note pieces, with a number assigned to each finger. Unfortunately, I paid more attention to the finger-numbers than the notes on the staff. So my younger brother (who was smarter than I) "got it" before I did. But I was a better shredder and consistently "cut him" in contests to see who could play those little melodies the fastest. So he lost interest in music lessons after awhile. As usual, flash won over substance.

 

After a couple months of good progress, the teacher got married and moved away. But I had learned to play "Skip to My Lou" (my first 2-handed, "real" song) so play it I did- at head-banging, heavy metal

volume and tempo, over and over (I'm sure others will chime in to relate how they drove their parents crazy, in similar manner). Having sated my inner Hillbilly Shredder, I then would play the first movement of the aforementioned "Minuet In G".

 

I had learned enough to learn on my own, so that's what I did for the next few years. I could struggle through written music, and also could make up simple arrangements of songs I played by ear. My Mother bought for me the Schirmer book "60 Progressive Piano Pieces You LOVE to Play", with songs like "Swinging In Fairy-Land". One piece, "Under the Rose Arbor", had a chord with a major 3rd interval in the left hand (G and B) and a major 7th in the right (F and the higher E). I remember that the sound of that G13 chord hit me right, for some reason. That was the start of my love affair with open chord voicings.

 

Flash forward to 7th grade. The new public school music teacher (for grades K through 12, VERY small school) had everybody entranced with her piano playing. The boys in my junior high music class would chew tobacco and spit behind the piano where we would sit and let the overtones wash over us while she played "Theme From MASH", "Linus and Lucy", "The Entertainer" and other great tunes. To this day I have never heard better music. Maybe it was enhanced by the Copenhagen.

 

So I would go home and (unknown to my classmates) fresh from the inspiration of Miss Ruth Frye, do my best to recreate what I had heard.

Someone ratted me out during music class one day, and 2 big boys grabbed me from each side and deposited me on the piano bench. So I played my arrangement of "The Sound of Silence", replete with a left-hand counter-melody of my own invention. My classmates were uproarius

and one of them later told me Ms. Frye had tears in her eyes. To this day, that is the best, most succesful gig I have ever done. I didn't have to buy my own dip for a week.

 

But I was "outed" as a piano player. I took a few months lessons from Miss Frye, who I was (needless to say) in love with, even though her butt was so wide I barely had room to sit on the bench next to her (to this day, I have a "thing" for bitchy women with big butts).

 

I will hit the "pause" button here, so as to afford myself the opportunity to hear other's stories. They don't have to be as self-indulgent and long-winded as mine- but if so, payback is Hell, I guess . Anybody?

[Gribs]

I am a guitar player who is interested in synths...

 

Haha got ya!

 

But seriously, I started that way here a few years ago. I really am a guitar player and had real classical and jazz guitar lessons using the Berklee method and others and always thought tabs were weird-looking and annoying compared with traditional sheet music. I also played first chair saxophone up till I graduated from HS and I picked up mandolin over the last four or five years. I did start out as a guitar player interested in synths. The more I got into them the more I got interested in learning to play correctly.

 

Last summer my oldest son, now 10, started asking about playing drums and my wife and I discussed it and decided that we want him to start with a strong foundation in melodic music. We consider it to be a part of his education just like math or history. So we told him that if he took piano lessons for a year we would get him into percussion, but that he would have to take piano lessons until he is 13. At that time I figure it will be up to him to continue or not. I think 13 is about the right age to let a kid, especially a very bright kid (IQ = 150), find his own way musically and just do what I can to enable that with lessons and instruments and whatnot.

 

I proceeded to start looking for a teacher, asking other parents at work who have musical inclinations, etc., and it turned out that a husband and wife who both work as physicists at 3M and live in the same town as I do send their daughters to a teacher who runs her own little studio. My kid is also an Asberger's kid and can be a challenging student, so I called up the piano teacher and told her about my son, and she said that she would like to interview him first. So I brought my son to her studio and she started with some rhythm instruments with him, listening to some music and following the beat, and then sat down with him at the piano and started with some basic stuff. We left and she called me back the next day and said she wanted to try to work with him. I asked if she had any adult students and she said yes, so I made arrangements to start taking lessons. We discussed my interests and history and knowledge base and she tries to work with that in mind.

 

My son and I both started last September and have been progressing nicely. He absorbs stuff like a sponge and picks up melodies and makes up his own stuff just like you did. He has started a little slower than me in the complexity of the music but he clearly picks up all the techniques that we are learning much faster than I do. I have to struggle to work with everything - I guess that is the difference between a 10 year old and a 43 year old. I can see that he will probably grow exponentially and surpass me quite easily while I will probably grow more linearly. So our teacher is working fabulously with my son. She has also struck up a friendship with my wife so we seem to have found a new family friend as well as an excellent teacher.

 

That is little different than a story about long ago but I am a serious piano student.

[Darkstorm]

Lol. Tha vast majority of top rated rock, prog rock, and electronica players, and including all who focussed on organ or clavinet or other then piano as main start keyboard had no use for formal piano lessons. Like a whole lot of famous top rated guitar, and bass players, they where self taught. Little or no formal lessons. Folks like jon lord laugh quite rightly at those who think formal lessons are needed to be a real good player. Few can touch him for playing virtuosity, to include all who claim lessons are what made them good. When you watch him get down he breaks most every rule of proper playing technique and just plays better then most. Lol.

[SpaceNorman]

Interesting post Floyd.... I had an uncle who started a business selling pianos - and like every one of his siblings, my folks ended up buying a tidy little spinet for the living room. So when I was in 6th grade my sister and I were immediately signed up for lessons - at which point the battles began. I had zero interest in playing piano (baseball and bicycling were much more to my liking...). The reports from my piano teacher affirmed that I wasn't applying myself - which in turn resulted in my dad "upping" my mandotory practice time to 2 hours a day. With both my sister and I sharing the family spinet for a total of 4 hours of playing a day - I took to getting up at 5:00 am and pounding out my finger exercises as loud as I could in the hopes that my sleep deprived father would allow me to quit. Little did I know he was half deaf and couldn't hear my practicing that I hoped would be so grating that I could get out of taking lessons. It wasn't until spring when I was in seventh grade that I finally found my out. I registered to participate in the Wolverine 200 - a bicycling event held each spring on Belle Isle in which the participants attempt to ride 200 miles in a 24 hour period. I managed to sell my dad on letting me quit piano lessons - IF I completed the 200 miles. 200 miles, 24 hours and one sore keister later - I was done with piano.

 

Fast forward a few years to my arrival in Germany as a solder. Uncle Sam managed to assign me to a room full of musicians - who's favorite passtime was hanging out around the rec center playing. There were no keyboard players around - and since I had a little piano background - I learned how to bang out simple two chord vamps. It was hanging out at the rec center that I learned that music wasn't about getting locked up alone with a book to practice - but rather about finding a way to contribute to a musical conversation amongst friends. Once I realized how enjoyable playing with others was - it wasn't long before I was practicing on my own so that I could be more fluent in the conversations with the group. I've been doing it ever since.

[flowthrough]

all classical training

 

never liked the piano competitions (teachers pitting their students against each other)

 

picked up synths as a teenager- and never played weighted keys again

[pogo97]

I had quite a few piano teachers from 6 to 17 years old and only a couple were good. Nor was I an especially good student. Teachers taking me on were always quite taken with my expressive playing but soon learned that I never practised. Bad Doug. My last teacher was retired from the armed forces band and was quite good, really. He gave me his old service hymnal to practise from--great for voice leading--and I still use it and remember him.

 

I also had bad teachers. One made me stop memorizing pieces because I was remembering them wrong (I'd alter the tune or harmony, usually). So I learned how to not memorize music and I basically cannot memorize music to this day.

 

Another actually parodied and mocked my swaying at the keyboard. Asshole. He was the choir director and I disliked him enough that I quit both choir and lessons from him. He was, some years later, convicted of diddling choir boys at another church. Ugh.

 

Actually, both of them were choir directors at my family's church. I think there was only one other and he was excellent, but he moved up to the cathedral and away pretty quickly.

[Gribs]

This reminds me of a conversation that I had once with a friend about jazz improvisation. He played sax in grad school in the Penn State jazz ensemble. I guess that one particular year he spent a lot of time during the summer studying all his modes and applying them to his soloing and was complimented by the band director at the start of the year. So the conversation revolved around how knowing your theory makes you a better soloist. He just could not grok my "yes and no" statement until I told him I was pretty sure that most blues and rock players like Stevie Ray Vaugn, Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and others were not so famous for their improv based on their advanced music theory - it was mostly learned by experience and by trading licks with other players. Of course that is also a different form of music than jazz.

 

Right now I am just trying to get the basics down.

 

I should also add that part of the practice idea that our teacher had for my son is to have him practice some lesson pieces for a short time, say 15-20 minutes worth per day, and then spend another 10 minutes (or more depending on what he feels like doing) just messing around on the piano doing whatever he wants! Sometimes he works on his own compositions, sometimes he figures out melodies and harmonizes them. Sometime he drives me nuts repeating the same thing over and over again (e.g. he figured out the intros to "Crazy Train" by Ozzie Osborn and "Sweet Child of Mine" by GnR and plays them at accelerated speed). He frequently drives me really crazy by playing "Jump" by Van Halen (wtf, I didn't even introduce him to it and he picked it up from a friend). He also has unlimited access to my Alesis Ion on a stand in the basement with a small Carvin Amp and headphone for those times other people are sleeping or reading or whatever.

 

So I am trying to be careful to guide his learning and enforce some practice but not ram it down his throat and break his spirit.

[AfroRouge]

I'm getting pretty good at turning my oscillator's frequency knob to the frequency I want without going over or under by too much.

 

I took piano lessons as a kid. My first teacher was excellent, teaching proper form and using good exercise books to develop skills. She died when I was about 9. My second teacher was a towering bitch of immense cruelty. I hated and loathed her, and as a result, learned nothing from her. After her I had lessons every week for about five years from a woman who taught absolutely nothing, but told me a lot about her interesting world views as a born-again evangelical. I learned from her that Noah's Ark was found in the ice of Antarctica, and that when Russia attempts to nuke Israel the mountains will rise up and stop the nukes in their tracks. I also learned to play three or four pieces very, very sloppily.

 

Then I started drinking.

[cl516]

I started super early, must have been like 3 years old. they tried to make me play organ (!) but said my fingers weren't strong enough.

 

so soon after came piano lessons. my first teacher was wonderful - she had a funny walk because of an injured leg or something, but she was nice to me.

 

at 6 years old, my second teacher had skills but I disliked her. she used to beat my knuckles with a red pencil every time I played a wrong note. made me play the most boring {censored} ever. but i think she beat the theory into me.

 

last teacher i had was tied in with the school i went to. she was very old, but had an open mind and was very articulate. taught me not just the technical side. rubato!

[Gus Lozada]

What's "the proper maner" ?

[Purity_Control]

I could practice pieces until i could play them just fine, but as soon as i needed to play it in front of my teacher i hated it because i'd get so nervous that i'd break into a sweat as soon as i started playing, and then my fingers would be so wet with sweat i'd be sliding bloody everywhere on the keys

[-groovatious-]

Started piano lessons when I was 4. Studied classical and completed all my grades etc when I was 16. Included much Bach/Chopin/Beethoven/Rachmaninoff/Mozart/Debussy/etc etc as well as scales/technical exercises/ear and theory training.

 

Was always very much into jazz/latin and funk and concentrated predominantly on that once I finished my formal classical training.

 

Am now a full time musician/musical director.

[mister natural]

Lessons at the age of 6 or 7 are fuzzy in my memory now . . .

 

Teacher was a large, frumpy aunt-Mildred-type who had a funny smell. John Thompson books. Hated the lessons as I much preferred baseball, at the time

[pink floyd cramer]

What's "the proper maner" ?

 

I define the "proper manner" as whatever gets you the big bucks and lots of chicks. Johann Sebastion's Keytar Method or whatever.

[dan88z]

My Dad had a friend Dante who played B3 in a lounge. He talked my Dad into buying the L100 that I learned on. I was 6 or 7, they'd be at the organ, Dante trying to teach my Dad things like "When the Saint's Go Marching In" and other easy tunes. I'd be watching. They'd get up, I'd sit down and pick out what they were doing by ear. Around 9 I wanted to play bass, like Elton John's bass player. My parents said "If you want to play something, play the organ that's sitting in the living room". I said, OK, but can I get lessons? There was a piano/organ store in the mall that was within walking distance. I signed up for lessons with "Mr Stubbins" and went to him for probably 3-4 years. He taught me all kinds of stuff that I use today. Not so much theory or Hanon like stuff, but harmony and countermelody, without me knowing it. He'd go get a book off the rack in the store, bring it back, and it'd be some musical. South Pacific, Sound of Music, other standards that I wish I had kept up on. He was building repertoire with a 12 year old lol. All stuff a kid doesn't want to play. He'd scratch out the chords and write his own in and teach me how to make the changes without moving too many fingers. I was around 8th grade, so 13-14, and Mr Stubbins left. He had a degree in composition, and got a job writing for some TV show. Enter the young, beautiful college age girl. I can't remember her name, but I could hardly concentrate when we were in that private room together. My entire half hour was spent trying to look down her shirt, which I successfully did a few times. She was the opposite of Mr Stubbins, she could sight read Bach fugues, and had no interest in chord substitutions and counter melody. She got me started on Hanon, and helped me with my goal piece, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach. You see, the movie Rollerball was big at the time, and that was the theme. It took me all summer to learn that piece, a half a page to a page at a time, but I had it down pat.

 

All the while I was listening to rock, and got in my 1st band in 9th grade. I started reading Keyboard magazine and did the little lessons they had in the back. I learned how to play 13th chords and the guitar player who I still play with taught me blues scales, and I began improvising and listening to how people played. I tried out for jazz band in 10th grade, the 1st year of high school at the time. The kid who played bass in our little band gave me a hard time about it, saying I'd never make it just because I taught myself 13th chords. That fired me up of course, so I went to the audition, sat down and played 12 bar blues, soloing over the top of my 13th chords. The band director had me play a chord and asked if I knew what it was, which I did. I got the gig, along with a senior girl who could read well, and she sort of brought me along. The director hooked me up with a well known jazz piano player in the area for lessons. He was a great player but had no "bedside manner" and was pretty insulting towards my lack of sight reading skills. Even though I could follow a lead sheet with no problem, since that was how I had learned to play, I wasn't a good reader. I didn't last long with him, and I never took another lesson. It didn't hurt me much as I got a lot of outstanding musician and soloist awards at jazz festivals my Jr and Sr year, and performed with a regional audition only band that toured Europe and played Montreaux. I was 17 at the time, a pretty monumental gig for a kid. I immersed myself in listening and copping licks from all of the records I was buying. McCoy Tyner, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett, Chick, Herbie, and also listened to a ton of rock, especially Todd Rundgren where I dissected his production and vocal arrangement skills. My school offered 3 years of music theory, which were practically college level courses. I learned sight singing, trained on how to hear intervals, had "modes" presented to me in a way that finally clicked, did composition and transcription and a ton of other useful stuff. The 3rd year of it was a class with about 6 kids in it, all who were good players so it moved fast and we absorbed everything the teachers gave us. I also sang in every choir you could possibly do- concert choir, which was the main one that anyone could do, and several audition groups- chorale, which was a very competitive group that would go to festivals all over the place and win, jazz choir, madrigal singers, which were small groups with 3 people on each part, and barbershop quartet. All this helped with my vocal harmony skills that are one of my strong points today. I can pretty much harmonize to anything now, and my ear training was so good at that age that I can figure out pretty much any part I need to for my bands.

 

I don't think you have to have a ton of formal training to be a good player, but I think you need some sort of foundation in theory. You gotta know what you are doing to a degree. Nothing frustrates me more than playing with someone who can't instantly play something like a a Cm9 chord and has to pick out the notes to get it right, or doesn't know the chord in various inversions anywhere on their instrument.

[flat earth]

Always had a piano in the house since I was a tot. Started proper lessons aged 8 which lasted 4 years, realised i couldn't read (still cant very well, I play by ear) then gave up. Started again with a different teacher after 'experimenting' in a band for further 4 years. (Got to grade 5 Victoria college), then shocked my teacher by producing an Adam & the Ants song book and suggesting we try that instead of all this 'boring {censored}' , I distinctly remember the shocked look on her face. All went down hill from there. Bought a Poly 800, was hooked. Never looked back. My interest in sound design was bolstered while attending film school, and composing ambient sound tracks. Hardly ever touched a piano since.

[solomon8]

Music, first and formost, should be played for the love of music. If you can't feel that then don't waste your time. You will get out of it as much as you put into it. The harder you work and study the better you will become.

 

I think Askenazy, Cliburn, Horowitz, Rubenstein and the many other fine pianists speak quite well for the formal study of music and the levels it can take you to if you choose to do the work and put in the time.

 

Competitions are a means, a fast track if you like, by wihich talented students can become well known and start a musical career. There are many talented musicians, but only a few make it to the point where they can get rich at doing it. It takes a lot of study, promotion and intelligence in this day and age.

[mister natural]

 

Music, first and formost, should be played for the love of music. If you can't feel that then don't waste your time. You will get out of it as much as you put into it. The harder you work and study the better you will become. I think Askenazy, Cliburn, Horowitz, Rubenst . . .

 

 

Jesus; this was a cool thread until lecture hour broke-out

 

Keep up the stories !

[Mourndark]

I spent about 8 years in "proper" classical lessons. I didn't enjoy it. By the end of it, I was so bored of the "pick three pieces, learn, exam repeat" rigmarole that I packed it in in favour of playing the trumpet, which seemed so much more interesting to me, and allowed me to play in bands. While I had mastered some of the important things like basic theory, chord patterns and playing with ALL fingers on BOTH hands, I was still having trouble with scales - I would invent new fingerings everytime I played...

 

It was only when some put "Dark Side of the Moon" in front of me that I realised that the piano could be so much more interesting and starting learning more about this rock stuff, which had things like chord notation and improvising - fantastic! After a few years of noodling and absorbing styles, I heard Keith Emerson play for the first time, and took up classical playing again like a shot, experimenting with any composer and style I could think of. My playing literally improved overnight - I could see the importance of posture and the technical excercises I abhorred. I started teaching myself these things, and have been for a few years now. I've come to realise in the last few months that while I may be able to play Rachmaninoff Prelude in C# Minor and many Beethoven sonatas, I make it very difficult for myself as I use some inefficient method of my own invention. While things like Hanon have caused some improvement, I am currently think of getting lessons again.

[Fisnotigut]

Had a neighbor who had an old Lowry organ. I used to go over to her house at around age 7 and she's show me how to play songs like "Your Cheatin' Heart". She told my mom and dad how quickly I picked it up and they got me started on lessons. I don't remember what books I used but up until around the 6th grade I hated practicing. Almost quit. Then I started putting a tape of songs I wanted to learn on the piano and learned them by ear. I really started practicing then. Switched teachers again and it was a whole new ballgame!

 

I never did competitions and rarely did recitals. I performed two hour long concerts while in high school of mostly classical music (one of them I played an Oscar Peterson tune).

 

Went to college with a piano performance scholarship and had an unfortunate accident during my freshman year with one of my fingers so I had to quit playing for a while (I cut the tip of one of my fingers off on a meat slicer while working at a restaurant). That was the last of my lessons. It's all been by ear since then. I occasionally pick up a classical piece to see if I still "got it" technically, but I don't have the patience for that anymore.

 

I really wish I had started the lessons back up. The piano instructor at the university was extraordinary! Oh so much I could have learned.

[Pigger]

I come from a family of musicians.

 

I started piano lessons at age 5 at a Catholic college in Iowa. The nuns would slam my fingers with a plastic stick (in hindsight, it may have been a conductor's baton) when I would screw up; so much fun!

 

At age nine, we moved and my formal piano education ended, but the Chicago paper used to put out words & chords for pop songs at the time

(1967) and I started playing along with the radio (WLS, WCFL) to pop songs. Fortunately, my parents encouraged this sort of thing, and I could play and sing as much as I wanted.

 

I've never gotten any more formal training, but I'm thinking about taking jazz lessons.

[girevik]

To me, "proper playing" is just whatever it takes to get the job done, and at the same time be able to play pain-free well into old age. I don't want to end up like Keith Emerson who just canceled his tour because of hand injuries. Don't get me wrong, he's a great player, with great accomplishments, but we never hear about the equally aged Brian Auger, Herbie Hancock, etc. canceling tours because of hand problems. Way too many stories of great instrumentalists who ignored pain and never figured out how to stay relaxed even while playing fast.

 

I was 8 when I had my first piano lessons. My teachers were my uncles, who were themselves still kids (high school teens). They used lessons from Michael Aaron piano books. If I'd been more aware of things and had more passion for the piano I would have really gotten on their case to teach me some of that cool Chopin stuff that they played, or at least get me in that direction instead of the boring children's songs. The one uncle that really wanted me to play graduated from high school a year later and moved out. I was less motivated after that and by 11 wasn't playing anymore.

 

Next piano lessons were in college piano classes. They were ok, but I got the most impact from the couple of private lessons I had with a jazz pianist in the South Florida area, several years after college graduation. I wish I remembered his name. He was the one who made me keep my wrists, forearms, and hands on one plane, curl my fingers, etc. He had me get the Alfreds Adult All-In-One series (all three books) and Jazz Bits and Pieces by Bill Boyd.

 

My last piano "lessons" to date were with my coworker when I lived in Tampa. She taught piano lessons in the evenings, but my "study" with her was limited to our office conversations. She went over all three of my Alfreds books, and attached Post-Its with commentary. The only thing she had a problem with was the thumb-under method for playing scales. I was used to thumb-under but now I only use it for really slow stuff - a well timed hand shift does the job just as well. She didn't really like anything in my Bartok Mikrokosmos book. I don't think she had a problem with the music itself. Her disagreement was more with Bartok's apparent teaching method, since Mikrokosmos was his "method book".

 

If I did things over:

 

- More sight-singing practice (piano pieces, lesson material, whatever)

- Started on Bach stuff earlier

[skuller]

i began piano lessons at age 8. i hated practice because it pulled me away from my friends. i hated my piano teacher because i thought he and my mom were having an affair. regardless, i played every day for 30 minutes a day. "you'll thank us/them one day" they, and everyone in the world told me.

 

all i remember about the books my teacher used was that the books looked identical except for the color of the cover. i remember one song i learned required i hold an orange in my right hand. he was very good himself, and was a good teacher. if i didn't think (i've never known for sure) he was having an affair with my mom, and he didn't have this peculiar garlic smell, i probably would have gotten along much better. he always told me that his teacher was an old bitch who would hit his hands if he messed up. i didn't realize i had it easy, even when he told me.

 

eventually those song books went away and i started learning disney songs, and david lanz pieces. i started playing piano at school and attracting attention from the ladies. i took my first girlfriend to one of my piano recitals. when i started on clementi sonatinas i was old enough to decide that i for sure wanted to quit lessons.

 

while i wasn't "pianoing" i was "euphoniuming" in school band. then i met a guitarist!!! he inspired me to get a bass, and a couple years later i joined my first band and began to realize my musical training had not been in vane! about 2 years after "bassing" i picked up some electronic samplers and keyboards. most of the techniques i learned have definitely stuck, and i can play a good chunk of scales in any key. i am very familiar with the modes and can move about the keyboard freely while maintaining knowing what i'm doing.

 

i hardly learn existing pieces anymore. CPE Bach's worst nightmare, right? my entire repertoire has been forgotten, and i still have trouble committing even my own pieces to memory.

 

an interesting bit is that whenever i improv, i notice heavy influence from david lanz even though i never really listened to his stuff other than when i played it. "dancing on the berlin wall" and the "skyline firedance" amongst others..

 

I learned from her that Noah's Ark was found in the ice of Antarctica, and that when Russia attempts to nuke Israel the mountains will rise up and stop the nukes in their tracks.

 

that's hilarious.

[augerinn]

I remember piano lessons

The hours in freezing rooms

Cruel ears and tiny hands

Destroying timeless tunes

[The Real MC]

My first piano lesson was "4:33"

 

OK seriously, I showed my abilities at an early age when I would pick out melodies at the piano at age 3. I took piano lessons from age 5 until 21, had four teachers. I studied classical (but was not classically trained), ragtime, jazz, popular music. I gained a local reputation playing ragtime, got pretty good at Joplin and "The Sting" was in vogue at the time. I was also active in community and school orchestra and choir. Played the piano music for a few musical plays.

 

I participated in a bunch of recitals, and in the senior competition in HS I won first place. I used the $$$ prize to get my first synth - a PAiA modular.

 

Since I stopped the piano lessons I have moved on to funk, fusion, and more classical (especially Bach organ). I also picked up arranging skills, I had a pretty keen ear for picking apart brass, reed, string, and percussion parts.