How did you know ?

[pink_girl]

I'm new at the piano and i'm curious, how did you know that playing the piano and taking lessons is for you. Would love to read your posts.

[adodd81802]

Playing the piano and taking lessons are 2 different things

For most I think you are introduced to music at an early age in some form, and that develops in the direction that feels right. The piano should feel the most natural instrument in your hands. I've picked up guitars, violins, tried the drums even a harmonica. I don't get them, in my head I can't connect or get comfortable. I sit at a piano and could play twinkle twinkle for all I care but it feels right.

In general taking lessons, or learning from others you consider better, is simply a must-have for those that want to better themselves, which is in our nature to do so. I am certain there is no great pianist or "child prodigy" that hasn't had lessons. (Please feel free to correct me if i'm wrong there)

[bronnestam]

My grandparents had a big, black upright piano. I wanted to make sounds on it when I was little, but I could not do anything useful.
Later on we had some piano recordings with ragtime music that I truly loved, including the soundtrack to "The Sting" by Marvin Hamlisch. I believe he was my first piano hero.
Another recording I loved to hear was Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, with the "Elvira Madigan" theme. For some reason I alway got in such a calm and relaxed mood when I heard it. Later on, my mother told me she liked to relax to that music while she was pregnant with me, so obviously I heard it even before I was born!

And even later on, some of my friends got pianos and piano lessons and I liked to sit and listen to them while they were playing and practicing, and I was so ENVIOUS. People who owned pianos seemed so lucky in my eyes. I so wanted a piano myself but we did not have one and back in those days, a piano really wasn't a thing you bought just like that. I played the recorder. I am not ashamed of that, because recorder is a highly underestimated instrument, but still, it felt so small and ridiculous compared to a piano.
To me, piano has always been the ultimate instrument. So beautiful, so versatile, and it can be a whole orchestra on its own. I cannot imagine a more lovely interior decoration in a home than a top condition grand piano, actually. I mean, even if it were JUST for the looks!

My grandmother promised to pay for a piano if I ever got lessons - there was such a waiting list for that - and ... finally ... they called from music school and said that I had got my lessons.


I played for a couple of years and then I finished school and was not allowed to continue in municipal music school any longer, that were the rules. And besides I had to move to the university and started my career as an engineer instead.
Some years ago I got the idea of picking up piano playing again and I started with big ambitions. Got injuries, started again, got more injuries ... I realized that I really needed a piano teacher and finally, after a long search, I found someone who accepted adult students on intermediate levels. The only piano courses for adults were otherwise for pure beginners, everything else was for young diploma students.  

During the last two years I have had this teacher for monthly lessons and I have also attended summer schools and a master class where I knew the pianist, who generously let me enroll although I was twice as old and not even half as good as the other students ... So I have had altogether 8 different teachers since the beginning of 2014! It has been such a pleasure and so very much rewarding. I also study books and online material to get even more input.

[yewtree]

Bronnestam,  I admire your drive and determination to learn the piano, may  you go from strength to strength and achieve your goals , hard work I know, but you've got what it takes.

[hfmadopter]

When I was young maybe 6yo I saw a piano in an Aunts house and to my surprise I was allowed to sit at it and kind of work the keys. I had 0 clue what I was doing. I was maybe 7-8 when my parents offered me a chance to have music/instrument lessons in a private music school and they offered me a choice of instruments. Well in a Polish house that means it boils down to accordion. I wanted piano or organ but got accordion. I took lessons for about 5 years once we got the program going. I quit in my early teens, kids were starting bands with the 1960's Rock Organs and guitars. I felt like a misfit. In my mid to upper 20's I had an Epiphany I guess you could say. Regardless of what we call it, The desire to learn piano hit me like a hammer. I was married with kids by now , I spoke it over with my wife who fully agreed and is perhaps my biggest advocate in Music to this day, besides two of my daughters , two pastors and their wives. So a couple of days later I see this old upright on the side of the road on my way to work and it was starting to rain. Work had trucks with lift gates. I stopped and asked if they wanted to sell it, they agreed to $75. I went to work and grabbed another guy and a truck with a lift gate, paid the money, slid it on to the gate, into the truck and away we went to work. And got it inside where it was dry ( warehouse). At lunch time the same guy and I took the truck to my house which was only a mile away, backed up to the front door and we rolled it right off the gate into the front hall. And that was the beginning of it all. Much much more just seemed to fall in place but this will get two pages long if I get into it all ! Suffice it to say that was right around 1978. So I would have been 27 going on 28 that year. I found a fantastic teacher through my piano tuner and took lessons with her for 11 years, I also took some summer courses and seminars through the years. Today my own music comes to me, I work on and play a lot of my own compositions.

I obviously can't describe in one post all that took place from 1978 to date LOL ! That piano is long gone, I own a grand piano and a digital piano these days. Best I can tell you, if you love piano and piano music, never stop learning, growing !

[outin]

I'm new at the piano and i'm curious, how did you know that playing the piano and taking lessons is for you. Would love to read your posts.

I didn't. That's why I quit at age 10 or 11.

Then 30 years later I tried again for no special reason and found it rewarding enough to continue. I am not one to question my decisions or speculate, so I will just keep doing it until for some reason I decide to stop...or drop dead.

Taking lessons became a necessity after a very short time of self teaching because I was not satisfied with the results.

[leemond2008]

I play a fair few strigned instruments, guitar (electric and acoustic) banjo, ukulele, I fancied something different so I bought myself a keyboard.

I sat staring at it for a few days and then realised I would have to learn how to read music, I figured out the basics on my own (I had a few guitar books that had the musical notes as well as the tablature so I kind of transcribed them, it was pretty crude but it gave me the idea) after a few weeks I got bored and didn't touch my keyboard again for 2 or 3 years.

Then I injured my shoulder and struggled to play any of my stringed instruments so I got started on my keyboard again, after a few weeks of solid practice I thought 'hang on a minute this is going pretty well' and I realised that I wanted to improve as much as possible, after a few more weeks I started struggling with a fair few things, technique, timing, even the more difficult aspects of reading sheet music, so I got myself a teacher

6 months with my teacher and things are really starting to take shape now.

And that is about the whole of my story

[visitor]

i knew because i was so terrible at the kazoo and mouth harp. so on to my 'third choice' it was.