Why do you play?

[purplefeelings3]

     I haven't talked to many pianist personally, but I would like to hear why you play the piano? Did your parents force you to? Do you do it because you like to preform? Do you like learning the pieces and expanding you repitoire? Do you like the feelings you get? Are you trying to make a statement to people, about you? Are you trying to share your feelings with others?
    I'll appreciate anything you tell me.  Thanks.

[Tash]

why not?!!!

i play cos i love it, purely out of my own interest and love. it's not gonna be my career, but plays a huge part in my future artistic career. i love learning the pieces and learning about the composers and what they're trying to convey. and also to try and show the world how absolutely fantastic classical music is! it is my goal to revolutionise my friends' thoughts on classical music and show them that it is 5 million times better than the stuff they listen to.

i love my piano!!! it makes me happy

[purplefeelings3]

Tasha_tiara thanks for responding. I understand that you simply love playing. I can also understand that you love anylizing and learning pieces. When you say your trying to convey, and to try and show the world how absoutely fantastic classical music is, is it the preforming/showing you love to do? The arguement you can present? Or is it seeing the result? Also it is your goal to revolutionise your friends' thoughts on classical music and show them that it is 5 million times better than the stuff they listen to. Do you play to complete your goal or did you make the goal as an excuse to play more? You want to change your friends' opinions which is entirely up to them and should be respected as I assume you do.  I understand you want to prove your point but they have a different one to point right back. That's like asking to fight a battle you don't have control over. I'm confused why one would do such things. I'm not trying to pick on you, but you replyed and I'm sure there are others in similar stituations. I'm curious to know other people's opinions because of my own. I don't preform much. Hardly at all. Maybe one or twice a year at the most. I don't go to competitions and I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone. I play for they sake of myself. I play best when noone is looking but when I play well I'm happy and proud. Nobody else sees and I'm fine with that. I once thought that one of the only good real reasons for playing the piano is an expression of feelings. Otherwise what's a bunch of notes. This applys to all music: if it's good, not always advanced and highly looked apon, but makes you feel good it expresses feelings and allows you to feel them to if you let it. I don't get that from listening to classical and that's why I don't but I get that from many other different types of music. But I do get that conveyed feeling when I play the piano probley because I'm conveying it. And what I play isn't advanced stuff at all, but I've been playing for many years now, or at least it seems so. I was so happy recently when my bestfriend heard me playing and told me all the feelings she felt from it. And it sounded like she experience the same thing, and that was a personal goal for me that I thought I'd never reach. I was wondering if anybody is in a similar stituation or a different one that they'd like to talk about. Thanks tahs_tiara.

[Tash]

i actually don't do a lot of performing at all. i refuse to go in competitions, not that i'd be good enough to compete in one anyway. so essentially i don't play with the main intention of changing my friend's thoughts cos they never hear me play anyway. but i do play them cd's and talk about it a lot. i don't want to completely convert them, like that's just stupid. i respect the fact that they like the music they listen to, but want to open their eyes up to all the other possibilities out there.

no it's more for me than anyone else. i find it releases all my stresses from the day. i love to play and that's what it comes down to in the end

[galonia]

I have to say, that is a very good question, purplefeelings, because I often ask myself that.

For me, it's like a strange compulsion - I actually stopped playing 2 years ago, and walked away from the piano completely, after playing for 17 years.  But a few months ago, I've started playing again and it's a totally joyous feeling.  There's no rational reason for it, it's just something I love doing.

Funny how you ask if it's because parents make us do it - when you hit your teenage years, your parents can't make you do anything you don't want to.  So maybe when people are very little, their parents make them learn all sorts of things.  But I know when I was a baby, I already loved the piano and from the time I could climb onto a piano stool, I'd take every opportunity to make as much awful noise as possible on my cousin's piano.  So my parents thought it might be good to let me have lessons so the noise I make isn't as awful!

I used to do everything - eisteddfods, students' concerts, playing in master classes and so on - I was the accompanist at school for the school choir and for soloists at any school performances, played the national anthem at school assemblies - but ultimately, I play only for myself, for that really great feeling I get when I'm playing, whether or not anyone else is there to hear it.

[chozart]

i actually don't do a lot of performing at all. i refuse to go in competitions, not that i'd be good enough to compete in one anyway.

same..

Funny how you ask if it's because parents make us do it - when you hit your teenage years, your parents can't make you do anything you don't want to.  So maybe when people are very little, their parents make them learn all sorts of things.  But I know when I was a baby, I already loved the piano and from the time I could climb onto a piano stool, I'd take every opportunity to make as much awful noise as possible on my cousin's piano.  So my parents thought it might be good to let me have lessons so the noise I make isn't as awful!

Heh.. very true ~

I had gotten my first piano for free, and that's how lessons came about ~ I just kept playing little famous tunes on my own, and then we finally found a teacher (whom I'm still with, 5 years now).
I remember at first I was SO excited, my parents were all glad.
Then, until I got used to things, I found it horrible.. my parents would make me practice, and I thought it was such a tedious thing.
But then one night, still during my first year, I just sat down and decided to really work. My parents were at work, and I ended up having practiced until they got back at night.
I was actually surprised at how much I got done, and how eventually it got much easier.. and how beautiful the music could sound.

Now, it seems like it's been so long ago since I had been that naïve child, and piano seems like second nature.
I never really think about what compells me to walk over and start playing.
Sometimes I'll just urgest to play.. but usually it's more like a 'natural obligation.' It just.. happens.
It's sort of hard to explain..
but just as you guys, I do it because I like it. My parents long ago had stopped telling me to practice, because they didn't need to ~ now they tell me to actually stop haha
I find it awfully frustrating sometimes.. but part of that actually appeals to me.

I don't know..! haha.. weird to explain.. too great a topic 

[ted]

It is much easier for me to answer this question in terms of its negative aspect, that is to say, to enumerate purposes which have little or nothing to do with why I play. As my main drive has always been creating music, composition and improvisation, I use the word "play" to mainly, but not exclusively, indicate these activities.

I do not play for a living.
I do not play to perform. If my music gives pleasure to somebody else it is good, but incidental and inessential.
I do not consciously create music for posterity.
I do not play to compete with people living or dead, even for private satisfaction.
Neither praise nor criticism matters much to me.
I was never forced to play or learn, but rather I tried to force other people to teach me, and had to be forced to stop playing.

Now to the difficult part.

It does make me feel good - guaranteed - always. My music has never given me a bad moment. However that in itself says little. After all, many things from love and sex to strawberries and cream, crackers and marmite, cups of tea, have done much the same thing. The trouble is that in attempting a justification one inevitably lapses into using those little words of religious philosophy which say everything and nothing and nobody is left any the wiser.

Let's try a different approach. In any life there exist timeless moments, holes in the fabric of mundane existence, through which we perceive something else. Huxley called it "suchness" or the "clear light", Elgar called it the "other place", Beethoven called it "approaching the divine". The desire to capture the invariant, and wholly beneficent quality of such moments  in some permanent form, using the intransigent and unutterably clumsy materials of hands, piano, recording devices and paper and pen, lies close to the reason I play. In this connection, transience and timelessness are not mutually exclusive.

But then why embark upon this activity itself ? My attempt at answering your question amounts to an infinite regress, an asymptotic series of "whys", each an explanation of the previous. The whole thing is really impossible to explain in terms other than itself. A rose is a rose....

I suggest you read Aldous Huxley. He is the only author I have ever read who has come anywhere near to explaining why I play music, and he was much better at English than I am.

[Spatula]

Because I tell myself to do so.


And so I did. 

[super_ardua]

I do it for fun!

[dj]

I like to think i can convey my thoughts and emotions 2 other people better through music....im not particularly sure that this is true because a lot of people are so dull they just don't understand music.....but i'll keep myself under this delusion for now.

[steinwaymodeld]

From everything in my life

Piano is the only thing that can calm my soul.
Just touching the keyboard will make me forget about all the annoying stuff going on in my life.

It's my only and final escape.
I will die if I can't play piano.

[Rob47]

Because I want to figure out what all those notes mean.

[goansongo]

Cuz I look sexy when I play.

[Floristan]

In any life there exist timeless moments, holes in the fabric of mundane existence, through which we perceive something else. Huxley called it "suchness" or the "clear light", Elgar called it the "other place", Beethoven called it "approaching the divine". The desire to capture the invariant, and wholly beneficent quality of such moments  in some permanent form, using the intransigent and unutterably clumsy materials of hands, piano, recording devices and paper and pen, lies close to the reason I play. In this connection, transience and timelessness are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, this is close to it for me.  The discipline of the piano, the patience it requires, the dedication, the work -- which then allows me to convey the ineffable, which music is.  It is all involving and requires me to use all my resources, not just part of them.  It requires my brain, my senses, my body, my heart, my soul.  It is my entire life in microcosm, every time I sit down to practice.

[Rockitman]

To score chicks.



No really,  to score chicks.


Just kidding.

It does keep me off the streets though.  And away from the mindless sitcoms and MTV that my teenagers have on everynight. 

I was force fed piano by a very strict mother and so I considered the instrument vile when I was young.  If only I had the attitude I have today back then.  (I coulda been a contenda!!!) 

I feel I've wasted my best opportunity to excel at this instrument as I left it alone after I turned 13.  Now I'm 41 and just picking away at it.  I'm still not as good as I was when I was 13 though, that's frustrating.  Brain and fingers don't coordinate like they used to.  Must have been the drugs. 

[Bob]

I play because I find it fascinating.  Performing can be like stepping into a different world, timeless, being totally aware of the music, having extra control over your playing, extra awareness, a higher state of being, experiencing the music with more intense powers, having the music come alive...

I play because I can't -- I can't play the piece and I want to.  I can't play the way I want the piece to go.  I can't play certain things, certain techniques.  And now I know how to go about overcoming these obstacles.  I play because I know I can do these things in future if I keep practicing.


I play for the emotions of the music.  To feel things.

I play because these are the "great masters."  It's high art.  It should be the creme-de-la-creme of human existence.  I play because it's something that a genius wrote, or something that defines a certain area of music.

I play because music demands exactness.  There is always another hurdle to overcome.  You can always do things better.  It sharpens your attention.

I play because it's cool to figure out how to do things better.  It's cool to put a piece of music together.  It's cool to figure out what I need to do to raise my abilities on a piece of music.  I like to improve the connection between what I think and what sound I produce. 

I play because it just sounds cool and I like to be in control of all those sounds.

\@_  )  )   )    )     )  "Yeeee-hhawwww!!!......"

[Ed Thomas]

Pretty much for the same reasons I breathe.

[Repo_Man]

Pretty much for the same reasons I breathe.

...To supply oxygen to your body?

 

For me, many reasons. I'll try and stay concrete here, heh.

One specific outcome I'm after in practice is to perform. I want to show other people the music. This is kind of a selfless/selfish paradox. There's nothing quite like knowing I've played something inspiring to someone else. I want nothing more than to sit down informally and take whoever's listening on a journey through music as I know it.

On a tanget; now that I think of it, I'd rather perform informally for friends or people passing by than formally in a concert. I'd rather have a casual audience of individuals than a mass for an audience.

Piano (music) is also a continual challenge. There's enough repertoire out there to twist my fingers 'till the grave. There's enough diversity that there's always something new to learn. There're all kinds of integrated skills that improve your playing on the whole (improv/composition, sight reading, hearing what you read...). It's not like you'll ever 'figure out' music, or get to the end of it...

I've also got some pretty egocentric drives. I like being able to say my accomplishments aren't materialistic. The attention from doing what seems like magic to others. If there's a good pianist nearby I work hard to become the better (competitive)... I could probably go on with the less-than-glorious aspects of my drive.

Really though, I don't see these as any kind of a problem... These more animal drives can be very useful.

What a load question though! I'm constantly stopping myself from digging too deep into "Why I play piano"... Basically I think the big one for me is to play for others.

[Bob]

I play for honor, out of loyality, because it's a decision I've made.

I play because I know it's makes me better -- more educated, more disciplined, smarter, etc.  It makes me better than the lazy slob I would have become and still might if I don't stay sharp.  I play because I'm terrified of becoming one of those uneducated, ignorant people I sometimes run into.  I want an open mind.

I play because it's an art, sopisicated, complex.  Inside of shaping clay, I shape sound.

[huen]

i hv start learn it when i was 17 years old .... firstly i would like to play the debussy 's  compostion becos it makes me feel peaceful and calm ....  also i feel that play piano is smart handsome and noble feel     after my technic is better i would like to analysis each part of the song detailly and play it perfectly thats make me feel challengable and enjoyful ~~~

[jazzyprof]

I play therefore I am.

[julie391]

i love music, piano is the ultimate way one person can play music, therefore....i play.

[Rob47]

Because my parents forced me until i got my ARCT, then i quit and started smoking stuff and other rebeliious teenage things during highschool, then i realized i sucked at everything except for piano, and got into university for piano.

But I'm really working hard at it these days and my focus has returned.

your friend
Rob

[julie391]

i have never been forced or really encouraged - the passion and drive to play and improve is all my own.