What Made You Start Playing?

[Isidora]

I thought this might be a fun gettin'-to-know-you kind of thread. So here's the question. What songs/artists/bands made you want to take up keyboard playing? Were there any special revelatory moments that let you know that you just had to learn to do this yourself?

For me, there were three distinct moments. The first one happened when I was still in junior high. I was in the habit of leaving the radio on all night while I slept, and it happened that I was awake at around 3 in the morning one night and heard the most majestic synthesizer piece I'd ever encountered before. It turned out to be the intro to Rush's Subdivisions. It sent shivers down my spine, it was that beautiful. The next moment happened a few years later when I heard Deep Purple's Machinehead album. Jon Lord's Hammond organ had my full and undivided attention. Not even a guitarist of Ritchie Blackmore's skill could compete with that. The last moment happened not more than a few months ago. It was the first time I ever heard Rainbow in the Dark by Dio. That keyboard riff is simply unbelievable. I bought my Yamaha MM6 shortly after that.

Well, that's what got me into keyboarding. What's your story?

 

[Terr-or Form]

Okay, but you asked for it ...

When I grew up, music wasn't about sound - it was about how fast you could play with mass amounts of distortion and how difficult the scale was. If your fingers looked like spiders on nuclear crack and your hair was splitting the atoms in the very atmosphere you were occupying, you were cool. Synths and keyboards were cheap and unless you were eating the neighbors babies using your guitar or drumstick as the fork, you were a dork.

Funny though, I always had a thing for Rush and Industrial music.

So there I was, trying to rid the world of "fake" music and crusading against the foul sinners of synths and keyboards and trying to be the fastest most difficult scale playing bassist the world has ever known. If a drummer couldn't keep time doing 64th note double bass and the guitar player wasn't spitting venom from his fingertips, I wasn't going to have a band.

Then I met my wife...

She was (and is) a musician and she plays keyboards. Her voice was so incredible that I started to listen to her and her views on music. As a show of trust (and it took every ounce of my being to do this), I took her to Sam Ash and told her to pick out a keyboard for her wedding present. That day we spent $4,200 for a brand new 88 key Korg Triton Studio. I looked like I aged 300 years for I was totally going against my grain of existence and sold out on the very thing I crusaded so hard against. I figured, "...what the hell, she will have her band and I will have mine. If she needs me to play some gay ass bass line for her I will and if I need her voice I have it." I consigned myself to a life of love for the woman and tolerance as respect to her tastes.

So, one day, I was home alone and started fiddling with this keyboard. Before I knew it, I was reading the manuals trying to figure out just why I spent four grand on this thing. I was also having trouble finding the star drummer and guitarist and found that, "Hey, this damn keyboard can keep perfect time, has lifelike sounding drums and it will play what I want it too!!" Enter my fascination with Industrial music and Rush and it all came together.

For three solid months I stayed up until the wee hours of the night and early mornings just learning. I started to realize that:

Keyboard players are true musicians
Keyboard players arrange and compose
Keyboard players have to know about all instruments to emulate them properly
Keyboard players are only limited by their own imagination
Keyboard players don't need me

When I realized the power of this $4,000 instrument, I fired my guitar player, said the hell with drummers, asked my wife to forgive me and embarked on a new journey on music.

Now we play hardcore Industrial/Dance music. I play a live bass but I play funk/slap, classical, sometimes fast and sometimes intricate and sometimes one note wonders. I arrange, compose and program most of our songs. My wife plays the lead parts and we switch on vocals (she can sing, I sort of just grunt through distortion effects). I have had the best musical experiences of my life and now understand that music is created not justified. I've since learned recording, mixing, and just how to be a MUSICIAN and not a nazi hair puppet. The best thing - I'm not limited at all. If I need or want a sound I don't have, I can create it.

I look back now on stuff I used to hate and realized that these were the movers and the shakers of music. Much like Toltstoy and Beethoven, musicians always used whatever tool available to invoke a feeling or thought without words. For those who want to bash the keyboard and synth players - I can say from experience that they are truly uneducated and choose not to progress. They aren't musicians, they are actors playing a part. You don't have to play the instrument but not appreciating their role is ignorant. True, some types of music may not have a significant place for these instruments but, they are, without question, true musical instruments!!!

...okay, done ranting now...

 

[Larzee3]

I was classically trained on woodwind instruments. I learned how to play the drums a while back. Drums are now my primary instrument. I heard bands use a variety of sounds, such as grand piano, chorus etc. These sounds all came from a keyboard. I realized I could do a lot with less people if I learned how to play a keyboard. Just got mine in last week and I have been slowly but surely learning. When I am competent, I'll shell out the cash for a high end workstation.

 

[Laura]

What a TERROR-iffic post!!! You're a hell of a writer!

When I grew up, music wasn't about sound - it was about how fast you could play with mass amounts of distortion and how difficult the scale was. If your fingers looked like spiders on nuclear crack and your hair was splitting the atoms in the very atmosphere you were occupying, you were cool. Synths and keyboards were a cheap and unless you were eating the nieghbors babies using your guitar or drumstick as the fork, you were a dork.

Yeah. I remember the days of Headbanger's Ball on MTV when some Metal musician said "keyboards should be thrown in the fire." Heavy was cool and everything else was "lame". I rarely saw a keys player in a rock band.

Then bands like Dream Theater came along and rescued keys & made them way heavy, but still beautiful AND just way cool!!!

I've since learned recording, mixing, and just how to be a MUSICIAN and not a nazi hair puppet. The best thing - I'm not limited at all. If I need or want a sound I don't have, I can create it.
I look back now on stuff I used to hate and realized that these were the movers and the shakers of music. ...okay, done ranting now...

Congratulations! You GREW UP. You stopped hiding behind a label and opened your mind. Way to go!

As to the question that started this post..."how did you get into keys"? Uh... well I always liked that Ambient and spacey stuff. I found an old Ensoniq in our attic and thought I could create some great music to go with my Nature recordings. (http://www.geocities.com/shadow42.geo/insect-summer.html)
I was sure disappointed when I found out that Ensoniq was broken.

But what really blew me away was discovering Dream Theater and Prog Rock. More & more I realized that keys Kick Ass as much as Guitar. And how much more creative you could be with 61 keys and hundreds of sounds instead of 6 strings. Once I mastered the left hand skills I could play along with myself in a way no guitarist can do. Last but not least, I'm not getting any younger and the keys player usually gets to sit down.

 

[Terr-or Form]

What a TERROR-iffic post!!! You're a hell of a writer!

...and the keys player usually gets to sit down.

Thanks Laura!!

I still play bass live so I don't get the opportunity to sit down. Either does my wife as she stands when she sings. Ah well, I guess someday I could try sitting on a bar stool

 

[Sargas]

My story may not really be that interesting, but here it goes:

When I started school, at about the age of 6, they had a Piano in one of the bigger rooms, so basicly everyone was constantly playing in it, trying to compete with each other without actually playing something, because no one could play anything... But I tried atleast, and did my best to make it sound like something else than just plain noise.
One of our teachers there played the Piano quite well, and she noticed that I was interested in learning, so she tought me a few things.
Then my parents noticed my interest as well, as I was sitting at the Piano one day when they came to get me home, so they bought a really cheap simple keyboard (it's not like you buy anything expensive to a 6-year-old ) with about 40 keys or something... But I was sitting at that keyboard, playing one song over and over the whole day.
Then they decided to buy me Piano lessons with a real teacher.

I was playing the Piano for about 10 years, though it was mostly just for fun, I didn't really have big plans of becomming a musician, until I started in a music school.
There, I found my band, they asked me if I wanted to join a progressive metal band, and as I did like metal, I surely wanted to join.
And that's where I went from being a Piano player to a keyboard player, as they were playing Dream Theater covers back then. Unfortenatly, I really had an extremely sucky keyboard, with about 56 keys and 100 sounds, which none of them actually sounded like they should (an example: I had 2 sounds that were almost identical, one was supposed to be a Saxophone, the other one was Rock Guitar :S, and that sound was the best one on the whole keyboard...).

So, I kinda had to buy a new keyboard, so I bought the Yamaha DGX-220, which surely was an uppgrade from my old Medeli MC-50. And that's where I really started practicing for real, since the Medeli was really boring to play, which resulted in less practicing at home. With the Yamaha, I got sounds that actually sounded similar to the name of the sound, which really boosted my interest and improvement speed.

That's it for me, thanks for reading

 

[RotorOnTop]

I started early, at the tender young age of 5, my parents had (at that time) a Country Western Band, called the Rock a Billy's. My dad taught me how to sing 2 songs, Blue Suede Shoes, and Sixteen Tons, then they took me to all the bars they played, had me working in the kitchen, behind the bar (yep, I could de-cap a bottle) and then some where during the night they'd get me up, I'd sing my 2 songs, they'd pass the tip jar around and keep all my money...as time rolled by I took lessons, and eventually became good enough to play drums in their band...I continued on drums through out the 60-'s. The 60's and 70's were all about being a musician, arrangements and vocals/harmonies....Deep Purple (John Lord), King Crimson (later some members formed Pink Floyd) , Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Santana and Yes were my "keyboard" bands during this time...the 80's music literally sux'd to me, big hair music and most metal bands (an out cry to demolish disco which I also hated)...but, hey that's just me...and I still yearn for the days of vocal harmony and actual playing abilities... and I'm still trying to learn all of John Lord's licks, incredible, I saw Deep Purple live in Chi town back in 73', simply awesome. I've been married 32 years, my wife and I have had bands for most of that time. Her on keys, me on guitar...now last nine years we do a duo, backed by our own original CD rhythm tracks (drums and bass guitar)...like we use to say, keep on truckin' lol

 

[Mourndark]

I started playing piano probably when I was about 5 when my parents sent me to have lessons with the old lady down the road, which I did for 8 years. I didn't enjoy it, and I was longing for something other than the routine of "learn three pieces and a pile of scales, do an exam, repeat" so I abandoned exams, along with classical playing and she tried to teach me some jazz. I was playing a lot of trumpet at the time, which tended to take priority as it meant ensemble playing, so I gave up lessons all together.

Around the same time, I met a member of staff at school who was putting on a show that contained a Beatles medley I was singing in. As jazz playing wasn't working out, I got the chord sheet and taught myself to play it. While flicking through my parents cassettes, I found two musically important things. The first was The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series, which, apart from being sublimely funny and surreal, it featured a soundtrack including Jean Michel Jarre, Terry Riley and Ligeti and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which introduced me to sound experimentation and synthersizers. The second tape was the Dark Side of the Moon. That blew me away. I listened to it until I wore down the cushion pad. Here were a group of musicians doing something amazing. To my classical mind, the idea of pop songs from my Beatles experiences were still there, but it was crafted like a piece of classical music, encompassing many musical ideas. Unlike the Beatles, I had no idea who these people were - all I had was four surnames as song credits and a picture of a prism. Courtesy of my Unsuitable Uncle (everyone has one) I discovered The Wall (aged 16, The Wall is indescribable), Live at Leeds and Miles Davis' fusion era, although I still had an overiding belief that rock musicians weren't really musicians in the sense of the classical playing I'd done before.

While browsing a record shop I picked up some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, which blew me away once again. Here was an obviously classical pianist playing sonically exciting and technically brilliant music. While I was frantically teaching my hands to work together again and read sheet music, I found some pictures of Emerson's Moog and was instantly taken by it (being a physicsist). From then on, my time was spent surrounded my mounds of keyboards trying to emulate Jarre (who I had rediscovered) or downloading as much free sheet music as I could of Greig and Rachmaninov and trying to play Emerson and Wakeman by ear.

Throw in some serialism, ambient, dance, blues and 80s cheez since then and that's more or less where I am now! (Sorry for the essay!)

 

[Charlisangel]

Well I Like progresive music and my favorite instrument was the keys so I said why not. Et voila!

 

[Riotblade]

Keyboards were actually the first instrument that I "fooled" around on. I was 5 years old waiting to play my Nintendo 64 because my parents were watching a movie, so I went into the basement and played on the keyboard.
I haven't played it ever again til around like March 2008 lol

 

[Gratwhol]

Ah, Nintendo 64, good times.

I started playing when I was about 9 years old, and the reason was my father. When he played the piano in the evenings, everyone gathered around him and just listened, and ultimately, he inspired me to start with an instrument myself. I was actually going to start on a guitar school, but if I was going to do that I had to wait half a year in queue, so I ended up taking piano lessons instead.

At first, the piano lessons were fun and exciting, but after a while I got pretty tired of doing the same old routine over and over again. I wanted to quit, but my father adviced me not to. He told me that I would regret a decision like that later, and that the joy of playing an instrument would be invaluable. Even though I didn't really want to continue, I actually did.

The funny thing was that I had decided I didn't like music. I always thought some of the songs on the radio were okay, but I never really had a favorite artist or band. The teachers at the school thought the fact that I didn't like music, even though I played piano, was extremely funny.

When I was 15, I decided to stop taking piano lessons, as I was confident I could teach myself from there on. But after quitting the piano lessons, I stopped playing completely. After roughly a year, an old classmate offered me to join his newly formed band, and in the following week I bought my first keyboard. Since then I've been playing non-stop

<<Gratwhol>>

 

[EJFan]

I didn't even touch an instrument (apart from an abortive, short-lived stab at the trumpet in fifth grade) until I was 20.

Then at school, some of my fraternity buddies were hard core Elton John fans ... this was about the time of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I began to enjoy his classic early stuff ... then, one of them couldn't make it to the show they were all going to at Madison Square Garden and sold me his ticket.

November 1974 ... Elton at his zenith as a performer, and John Lennon's last ever appearance on a stage.

I was cooked! From the first synth waves of Funeral For A Friend, I didn't stand a chance ... And during Bennie And The Jets (which remains my all-time favorite song and arguably THE reason I learned how to play), something snapped and I was consumed with one thought ...

"I HAVE GOT TO LEARN HOW TO DO THAT"!!!!

A few months later I was hanging out with a buddy in the music room of a local college. He played keys in a band. I sat down at a grand piano and basically said "hey, show me how this thing works". He showed me how to distinguish the notes and a few basic chords ... then came a I-vi-IV-V progression in G - suddenly we were playing Crocodile Rock !

The rest, as they say, is history ...

 

[fanOasys]

For myself, no musician made me want to play the piano.
My mother is a pianist and my grand-mother (at my father side)was a pianist too.
But I spent my childhood listenning to classical music (Beethoven, Mozart,Chopin...) and I was a big fan of Jean-Michel Jarre.

When I began to listenning to metal and came in the keyboardist community I've found my "masters" like Vitalij Kuprij and Jordan Rudess and other keyboardist like Kevin Codfert, Bobby Williamson and Shreddy and of course Jens Johansson.

But I don't really have someone who made me start playing, it's only in the genes.

 

[b3maniac]

My grand mother and my mother both played piano, so there was always a piano
aound for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I took a couple of years of formal lessons, but then dropped piano to play clarinet in the school band. About that same period, I got a guitar and started playing guitar or bass bands with some of my friends.

As I learned to play the clarinet, I also picked up sax and later bassoon, and by high school was playing sax in the horn sections with R&B style bands. Before the end of high school I was playing sax with a group of older musicians when our organ player left to go into the military. The band owned the organ and a leslie, and the other guys encouraged me to start playing the organ on some of the songs we played. I remember that "Light My Fire" and "Color My World" were two of the early songs
I learned to play, and from there picked up more and more organ parts as time progressed. By the early 70's, I was playing mostly organ and only occasional sax
parts, and after that played more with bands that had little need for sax.
In the 1980's I was working again with a horn section, but solely as the keyboard player. As digital sampling became affordable for a working musicina, I started dabbling with playing more horn lines and still cover a lot of horn (and other) parts with keyboards today.
I'm thankful that I had that early exposure to the piano as it has given me a lifetime of creative pleasure.

 

[BistroBaron]

"Lost inside a chord."

I thought this might be a fun gettin'-to-know-you kind of thread. So here's the question. What songs/artists/bands made you want to take up keyboard playing? Were there any special revelatory moments that let you know that you just had to learn to do this yourself?

Six kids in our family growing up. Mom sang, played piano and violin, and decided each of her children had to take an instrument. (Dad said he played radio and TV, thank you.) To this day - in their 80s - Mom plays all those old Mitch Miller sing-along songs for their friends. (I'm in my 50s.)

For each of us six, it was in 1st grade that we all began with piano lessons - in the 50s - $2 per lesson. LOL Some of my siblings didn't like piano and switched to sax, flute, clarinet, but that was okay with Mom and Dad as long as we each had an instrument.

I stuck with piano, won a couple of competitions as a tweener and young teen; passed the local college's - strong music school - entrance exam (required pieces) when I was 14. Giged throughout college as one of my many "work your own way through school" jobs.

Picked-up guitar and bass along the way, along with "the usual keyboard suspects" of the 70s - Rhodes, B3, Moog, ARP, etc. Warn't disco grand? LOL After college, went on the road for 3 years; biggest thrill was sitting-in one night with Lou Rawls 30 years ago when his pianist got sick. Went west; hung a bit there; got "discovered" by Cher's manager, but, alas, we never got our pictures on the cover of Rolling Stone. Hardly. LOL

So...the beginning was "Mom made us" and "I can't believe I hafta practice an hour a day when I should be out playing football." And then it became a joy and something that began to flow from the heart. Two songs hit me, both times when driving down the road, then pulling over and listening to the lyrics...

(1) "Fire and Rain" (James Taylor) - the chorus -

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.

- That fit perfectly into what was going on in my life at that time.

(2) This one may make you wince, but hear me out. "I Write the Songs" (Barry Manilow) - one of the verses - -

My home lies deep within you
And I've got my own place in your soul.
Now, when I look out through your eyes,
I'm young again, even though I'm very old.

- He caught a lot of "Who do you think YOU are" at the time, but the song was never about him - it was about the rhythms that lie deep within us - and the timelessness of music.

To me it doesn't matter how "good" you are, rather what you "feel" and the emotions set to music via the keys in front of you. There's a line from the musical Forever Plaid that I've always liked - - "Lost inside a chord." And I think that thought applies to all pianists/keyboardists everywhere who close their eyes and sway a little as a melody flows from their fingers...

Peace.
BB

 

[Laura]

II bought my Yamaha MM6 shortly after that.

You have a Yamaha MM6? Me too! Do you play it at gigs or just at home? Sometimes I think if I ever get really "good" and "serious" and have serious gigs, I would have to "upgrade" to a more "pro" synth that has more 'guts'. I can never hear myself at jams. Then again, maybe I just need a louder amp.

 

[Riotblade]

I didnt start playing again til March 2008. Everyone I knew was playing instruments and I thought I should. But I didnt want to play an overrated instrument like guitar or drums or bass. I picked keyboard because I can do all them with a keyboard haha.

 

[Benson_JV]

Hey guys, I'm new here, so i thought i'd post here first!

Started when i was 7 (i think?) my nan bought me a begginers keyboard (cheap from argos i think.) I started to mess about with it, then eventually got lessons. Went to lessons, enjoyed it, blah blah blah, for 7 years. Then quit, it just got the point where i was sick of playing the stuff at lessons. I'd bought two Organs during this time, cant for the life of me remember what they were (even though i still have one downstairs.) Now, I'm 15, i own that organ, a Korg X5D and JV1080 midi module. I play in a Power/whatever Metal band, (think Children Of Bodom mixed with Stratovarius).

 

[kanthos]

I started playing when I was 5, although my parents have somewhat embarassing audio tapes of me showing musical abilities as young as one or two. I took classical lessons right until I was almost 14, just before starting high school. I'd been getting bored of it (festival and exam timing had me playing the same set of pieces for just under a year), so I chose to quit lessons.

Up to that point, my musical exposure had been whatever my Mom wanted to listen to: classical and folk, really. In grade 10, I discovered jazz and started learning to play that. Throughout high school, I stayed involved in the music program, playing piano for the choirs and reeds in the jazz and concert bands. In university, I played sax in the school jazz band most of the time I was on campus.

Two things over the last few years really opened my eyes to other possibilities. One was playing keyboards for a campus production of Footloose a few years ago; the other was discovering and getting involved with the OverClocked Remix community. Before that point, I wouldn't have said I played keyboards, or really played anything besides jazz and classical (playing at church, while in more of a rock vein, was easy enough that I didn't really count it). Being exposed to more and broadening my tastes has pushed me in different directions.

A year ago, my wife and I moved and started going to a new church which happened to be short musicians. I started playing with my laptop and a controller, using some B3 and rhodes as well as organ. Getting lucky with vacation pay owed when I changed jobs, I was able to get a Nord Stage and focus even more on the B3 and classic keys sounds. Right now, I'm working on understanding synthesis and making effective sounds, and hope to pick up a keyboard with a broad range of samples and good layering capabilities to see where that takes me.

 

[saramitch85]

My parnets were into music, and growing up in it, It felt nature and then became something I really loved!