Influence of piano in childhood

[ted]

For the purpose of this poll, define childhood as up to around twelve. To what degree was piano music, either live or recorded, present in your early life ? It doesn't matter if you didn't happen to be interested in it at the time, just whether or not you heard a lot of it.

[jason2711]

from age 3-7 i grew up listening to my sisters (who are 4-5 years older than me) learn the piano, and i guess that might have counted.  Then when i was 7 i took it up so between me and my two sisters playing i heard the piano quite a lot... although this wasn't really the best stuff until we had progressed farther.  I had never really heard a concert pianist play their sort of repertoire until i was 14 ish, and that was on CDs, at the age of 15 i heard a concert pianist for the first time live (Barry Douglas, who I was in the orchestra that accompanied him playing Tchaicovsky's first piano concerto)  His playing blew me away, and probably from then I became a lot more enthusiastic towards the piano.

[pianonut]

you were in the orchestra accompanying him (barry douglas - my hero?)?  sigh.  sigh again.

i heard horowitz playing chopin over and over at nap time.  my mother was trying to subliminally manipulate me.  i hated chopin after that, but never told her.  maybe i'll play her something (now that i'm older) but i can't say that it influenced me positively toward it because she only played chopin.  if she had, say, played a wide variety o f music and asked my opinion about some of the choices...i might have not felt so much animosity.

[Tash]

i don't really remember it much, but it was obviously there when i think about it properly. my dad was always listening to it in his office (he worked from home) and then we had a heap of ballet cassettes (how ancient does that sound!) that me and my sis would dance around to, like the nutcracker, and we have my sis dancing to chopin waltzes on video. but i never really knew what i was listening to until sometime in my mid-teens because my interest didn't go further than merely playing my exam pieces.

[Goldberg]

Curiously, my earliest, and perhaps longest lasting, experiences with piano music involved my parents' fairly sizeable collection of David Lanz and Yanni CDs (no, really), which they would play on Sundays for a relaxing atmosphere. I remember enjoying a few particular pieces immensely, but strangely I don't recall ever really associating what I heard on the stereo with, well, grand pianos, pianists, etc--I never really gave much thought to how the sounds were actually produced. Even when I heard the "Piano by Candelight" CD and, slightly later, played around with an old Roland digital, listening to the demo tracks, it never really occured to me that there were people who really played the piano like that--I had no concept of what it was to play the piano, in other words, and I don't recall ever even seeing a grand piano up until...probably a year after I started lessons!

Though, incidentally, I will also add that I had quite some experience with "classical" music in general early in life. I was quite repelled by typical pop or rock or...whatever...songs on the radio, except for a few out-dated (even then) songs that put me into a trance when I heard them haha, but nevertheless I always insisted on listening to the radio at nights...so, indeed, I switched to the classical station and found it overwhelmingly satisfying, even though I wouldn't even give it much thought for at least 6 more years!

[Derek]

I've heard my dad play boogie woogie several times a day since I was a fetus, my sisters both played piano a lot....I heard them play Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Mozart, Khatchaturian,  and my parents both being music lovers would put on all sorts of classical and baroque music on in the living room, much of which was piano music.

[possom46]

Only on my "All Aboard" album (Sparky's Magic Piano) which started me off eventually when I was 12  My meany parents wouldn't buy me a piano until 7 years of crazing them 

[keys]

My mom and aunt would play pieces to me and I'd play them back. I was always trying to  figure songs out that I had heard elsewhere. I'd play little made up songs for my Dad. I'd accompany my Aunt and sister while they sang jazz songs. Jazz is still a big influence on my playing, I always here the alternate jazz harmonies while I'm playing my classical rep. As far as famous pianists who influenced me the most when I was little, I'd have to say that it was definately Victor Borge!

[quantum]

Many family members and relatives played piano.  Usually folk songs and stuff they learned by ear.  I never really thought seriously about classical music until I realized the stuff in the Alfred grade books didn't appeal to me.  My earlier teachers gave me some pop music to play, and I remember it didn't seem as appealing to some classical music that I had seen and heard. 

[Floristan]

My oldest sister is 10 years older than me.  She was already a fairly accomplished pianist when I was a child.  I grew up listening to her play Brahms, mostly.  She learned every Intermezzo and the Rhapsodies.

She could also play by ear, so accompanied my other sister who sang a little Puccini.  She did the "flower duet" from Madama Butterfly with a friend.  She also sang Ado Annie in Oklahoma that year.  There was always music in the house.

When I was 10, my sister was taking a music history course and they were studying Mozart's last symphony.  She brought the score home from college and sat me down with the recording and the score.  That was my first exposure to score reading.

We had a 45 rpm RCA recording of Jose Iturbi playing Chopin's "Fantasie Impromptu".  It was red vinyl.  I was about 3 and asked to hear it again and again, like children do.  (No wonder I can bearly stand it today!)

My mother and sisters would sing thee-part harmony while doing the dishes.  Popular tunes.  Maguire Sisters stuff.  It really trained my ear from childhood.

We were poor financially, but my mother was determined that we be cultured.  So piano, voice, dance, theatre.  I think she saw it as that "other life" all mothers want for their children -- to do what they didn't do, have what they didn't have.

[greenphase]

Well I'm still technically in my childhood (being 17), but there are a lot of influences in piano that led me to love it, hate it, and now love it again 

Being in an Asian family, it's pretty much a requirement to play a musical instrument. My cousins already play piano and so my parents used the same piano teacher they use because they are supposedly very good. So, when I was 5, I started to learn how to play the piano.

I hated it; I only played little classical pieces like Czerny and Clementi and the piano teacher was awful. To this day I have a slight phobia of anything involving the Classical era. I was young though; so I suffered until the 8th grade despising the lack of development I had with piano. Maybe it's my own fault for not practicing much, but my parents could have switched teachers if they knew what lack of piano learning I had.

Anyways, I joined choir that peaked my love of classical music, and I started to crave to learn the wonderful piano music I hear my fellow high school students play. And, my very good best friend wanted to teach me piano. So, I restarted my piano lessons by December of 2003.

It was hard work though, for my friend started me on a nocturne (a little too difficult now), but I loved it; I worked very hard on it and my friend forced me to practice in the high school practice room. My choir teacher also loved the fact I was learning piano so diligently that I could use the grand piano in the choir room every friday for my "piano lesson"

Now I moved to Washington D.C. (I lived in California until Sep. '04), I now am learning under an excellent teacher and I'm struggling to learn and and achieve some sort of piano enlightment ever since 

[Bouter Boogie]

My mom's piano teacher..
Heard her giving piano lessons and wanted to play myself 
(Started at an age of 5/6, lol..)

[apion]

I actually began life wanting to be an organist (etched in my genes).  It was only after my tightwad parents refused to buy an organ that I settled on the piano.  As it turns out, I now happen to love the piano far more than the organ.   

[nanabush]

I started at about 7-8 give or take a few months I forget, I originally took art lessons, but I'm the worst at drawing/painting, so i took up piano...I didn't really care about it when I was younger, well I didn't mind It I played with no complaints... but at about 13 it just picked up, and that's practically the thing that means the most to me... but I also got alot of other stuff goin on same time though I'm always busy, and I love it!