“
People always ask me
"Son what does it take
To reach out and touch your dreams?"
To them I always say
Are you hungry?
Are you thirsty?
Is it a fire that burns you up inside?
How bad do you want it?
How bad do you need it?
Are you eating, sleeping, dreaming
With that one thing on your mind?
How bad do you want it?
How bad do you need it?
Cause if you want it all
You've got to lay it all out on the line
”
”
Tim McGraw (Tim McGraw: Like You Were Dying- Piano / Vocal / Chords)
“
Well, all I need is the air I breathe and a place to rest my head.
”
”
Hal Leonard Corporation (OneRepublic - Dreaming Out Loud Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin
”
”
Kimberly Perry (If I Die Young: Piano/Vocal/Guitar (Original Sheet Music Edition))
“
After a hurricane comes a rainbow.
”
”
Katy Perry (Firework: Piano/vocal/guitar, Original Sheet Music Edition)
“
When all you wanted was to be wanted, you wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now.
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - Fearless Songbook: Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist)
“
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
'Till you find your dream.
A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live
”
”
Rodgers & Hammerstein (The Sound of Music)
“
MOTHER TIME: We all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.
”
”
Hillary DePiano (New Year's Thieve)
“
Your amazing. Just the way you are.
”
”
Bruno Mars (Just the Way You Are - Piano - Vocal - Guitar)
“
Life is like a piano. White keys are happy moments and the black ones are sad moments. Both keys are played together to give us the sweet music called Life.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
the best people in life are free
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - 1989 Songbook: Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
So if you care to find me/
Look to the western sky/
As someone told me lately/
Everyone deserves the chance to fly!/
And if I'm flying solo/
At least I'm flying free/
Tell those who'd ground me/
Take a message back from me/
Tell them how I am defying gravity!/
I'm flying high defying gravity/
And soon I'll match them in renown./
And nobody in all of Oz/
No Wizard that there is or was/
Is ever gonna bring me down!/
”
”
Stephen Schwartz (Wicked: Easy Piano CD Play-Along Volume 26)
“
With you I'd dance in the rain in my best dress, fearless
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - Fearless Songbook: Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist)
“
Fight and push harder for what you believe in, you’d be surprised, you are much stronger than you think.
”
”
Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga - Born This Way Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
You don't have to be a professional to play music. Close your eyes, take a deep breath.. And let it out. Let the violin dance, the guitar fascinate, the flute sing, the piano composes. Just. Let. It. Go.
”
”
TheBakaViolinist
“
He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That’s why he won’t have anything to do with it.
I don’t follow. Isn’t his brother happy?
Utterly and always happy. And my husband says somebody’s just got to be maladjusted; that somebody’s got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Player Piano)
“
Lights flash and we'll run for the fences
Let them say what they want we won't hear it
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - 1989 Songbook: Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
You wish you could’ve learned to play piano. You wish you could’ve started drawing when you were young. You wish you could’ve figured out who you wanted to be before you graduated college. You wish you could’ve learned to love yourself sooner. Well you know what? You didn’t. And that’s just something you’re going to have to learn to deal with. But just because you didn’t do it sooner, doesn’t mean you can’t start now.
”
”
Daren Colbert
“
There are songs that you play that you have to restart, and songs that you play that you never get right. But when a song is complete, there is no more you can do.
”
”
Mitch Albom (The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto)
“
Life is like a piano. The white keys represent happiness and the black keys represent sadness. But as you go through life, remember that the black keys makes music as well.
”
”
Bang Yongguk
“
Sitting on Rosa's moth-littered bed, he felt a resurgence of all the aches and inspirations of those days when his life had revolved around nothing but Art, when snow fell like the opening piano notes of the Emperor Concerto, and feeling horny reminded him of a passage from Nietzsche, and a thick red-streaked dollop of crimson paint in an otherwise uninteresting Velazquez made him hungry for a piece of rare meat.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
Friends, like pianos, need frequent tuning. You are in the right key when you sing the praises of others. —HEATHER MACGREGOR
”
”
Margaret Fishback Powers (The Footprints Book Of Daily Inspirations)
“
Gmorning.
Did you also forget to get the lifetime warranty for your peace of mind?
Saaaaame
Here I got some home remedy sh*t
*opens bag full of creams, alcolado, encouragement, distractions, this gif of a baby panda*
Gnight.
Did you also forget to get the lifetime warranty for a good night's sleep? Saaaaame
Here I got some Chicken Soup For The Soul type sh*t
*opens bag full of lavender sh*t, dreams, alcolado, deep breaths, flights of fantasy, this bunny at a piano*
”
”
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You)
“
MOTHER TIME: Every New Year is the same. Every day, every second is too for that matter. But when we deliver them in secret, when another year just begins as a matter of fact, it's easy to fail to appreciate what a miracle it is to have more time. So, I suppose, it feels different right now because this time you're paying attention
”
”
Hillary DePiano (New Year's Thieve)
“
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
The last song recorded for Abbey Road was Lennon’s BECAUSE - a three-part harmony in C sharp minor inspired by hearing Yoko Ono play the Adagio sostenuto of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14, Op. 27 No. 2 (Moonlight).
”
”
Ian MacDonald (Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties)
“
So, I'm gonna choose to reach out,
Choose to lay down
All of the fear that I've been hiding.
Choose to be brave
Though my heart's afraid
To be a part of your kingdom rising.
Oh,
God, I'm done runnin' from
The reason that You sent Your Son,
So I will choose to Love!
Maybe I'll hurt
Maybe I'll bruise
Maybe I'll cry
Maybe I'll lose
Still, I will choose to love.
”
”
Francesca Battistelli (If We'Re Honest Francesca Battistelli - Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to fight for things in life, I wanted to fight for something bigger than the right to eat with a fork. I wanted to love and be loved and feel alive. I had no idea how to find my way, but listening to that music wash over me, I felt, for the first time, that the struggle I faced would be worth it.
”
”
Eric Nuzum (Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted)
“
Si può sostenere che diventare adulti, cosa che la psicanalisi dovrebbe aiutare a fare, significhi abbandonare il pensiero magico per il pensiero razionale, ma si può ugualmente sostenere che non occorre abbandonare nulla, che ciò che è vero su un dato piano mentale non lo è sull'altro, e che i piani bisogna abitarli tutti, dalla cantina al solaio.
”
”
Emmanuel Carrère (Lives Other than My Own: A Memoir)
“
Many young people are still driven to art, as in olden times. Most of them are driven by their parents, who know nothing about art—only that it exists.
”
”
Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher)
“
Don't follow the crowd until you are sure you want to be where they're going.
”
”
Ruthi Postow Birch (How to Build a Piano Bench)
“
Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food to feed the world
Why when there're so many of us
Are there people still alone
”
”
Tracy Chapman (Tracy Chapman - New Beginning Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Piano/Vocal/Chords) [Paperback] [2003] 1 Ed. Howard Shore)
“
How you gonna win when you ain't right within.
”
”
Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
I wanna be defined by the things that I love,
Not the things I hate
Not the things I'm afraid of,
Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night
I just think that
You are what you love.
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift - Lover Songbook: Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist)
“
For a whole fortnight my mind and my fingers have been working around me like two lost souls. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamertine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; besides this, I practise four to five hours a day of exercises (thirds, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadenzas, etc.). Ah! provided I don't go mad you will find me an artist!
”
”
Franz Liszt
“
I don't know if You can hear me,
Or if You're even there,
I don't know if You will listen
To a gypsy's prayer,
Yes, I know I'm just an outcast,
I shouldn't speak to You
But still I see Your face and wonder
Were You once an outcast too?
”
”
Stephen Schwartz (Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame: Piano-Fun! Ez-Play Songbook)
“
For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
”
”
James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
“
I never allowed my Autism/Asperger's to have the prerogative to neither tear nor slow me down. I earned a degree in chemistry, juggle for elementary schools, play piano for seniors on Sunday mornings, and been mentoring children/teens from K-12 at Royal Rangers almost every week for six years and counting.
”
”
Matthew Kenslow (Juggling the Issues: Living With Asperger's Syndrome)
“
These solo concerts were without precedent, not only in jazz history, but also in the entire history of the piano. They were not renditions of composed music committed to memory, nor were they a series of variations on composed themes. They were attempts at very long stretches (up to an hour at a time) of total improvisation, the creation from scratch of everything: rhythms, themes, structures, harmonic sequences and textures. Before a concert, Jarrett would try to empty himself of all preconceived ideas, and then allow the music to flow through and out of him. He said that if he was not able to empty himself he would, almost invariably, have a concert that was not as good. There might be periods when he seemed to be marking time but and feeling his way into a new area, but this was also part of the total experience which delighted and enthralled audiences. The sustained intensity of Jarrett’s inspiration during these marathons was literally awesome and, almost in the sense of preacher and congregation, he seemed to want the audiences to be not only witnesses but also participators on the occasion...
”
”
Ian Carr (Keith Jarrett: The Man And His Music)
“
Even Europe joined in.
With the most modest friendliness, explaining that they wished not to intrude on American domestic politics but only to express personal admiration for that great Western advocate of peace and prosperity, Berzelius Windrip, there came representatives of certain foreign powers, lecturing throughout the land: General Balbo, so popular here because of his leadership of the flight from Italy to Chicago in 1933; a scholar who, though he now lived in Germany and was an inspiration to all patriotic leaders of German Recovery, yet had graduated from Harvard University and had been the most popular piano-player in his class—namely, Dr. Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstängl; and Great Britain's lion of diplomacy, the Gladstone of the 1930's, the handsome and gracious Lord Lossiemouth who, as Prime Minister, had been known as the Rt. Hon. Ramsay MacDonald, P.C.
All three of them were expensively entertained by the wives of manufacturers, and they persuaded many millionaires who, in the refinement of wealth, had considered Buzz vulgar, that actually he was the world's one hope of efficient international commerce.
”
”
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
“
Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness
I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.
At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.
I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.
Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible
to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I’ve named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.
I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can’t you see that I’m deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.
”
”
Rita Dove
“
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child in possession of a good instructor must be in want of an education. Alas, kids don’t care. It’s impossible to demand inspiration, passion, or self-discipline without affinity for learning. Let me rephrase that: you can’t coerce caring. Adults try! We use grades, little statues, and ice cream sundaes to prod kids into reading, diagramming sentences, and practicing piano. Meanwhile that same child will stand in the hot sun for five hours shooting free throws to break a personal record. No reward except satisfaction. How do we get more of that into traditional school subjects?
”
”
Julie Bogart (The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life)
“
His performance was also intensely visual, with his volatile movements in front of the piano, and his cries and wild vocal accompaniment to his playing, all of which spoke eloquently of his extraordinary passion for the instrument and the music he coaxed, tickled and sometimes pounded out of him. Many critics were put off by all this, thinking it was a mere outward show- and therefore insincere. In fact it is an essential part of music-making for Jarrett, his way of achieving his state of grace… the ecstasy of inspiration. Miles Davis understood that immediately, and so did most other musicians. Jack DeJohonette says: “The one thing that struck me about Keith, that made him stand out from other players, was that he really has a love affair with the piano, it’s a relationship with that instrument… Keith’s hands are actually quire small but because of that he can do things that a person like myself, or other pianists with normal hand spans, can’t do… it enables him to overlap certain chord sequences and do rhythmic things and contrapuntal lines and get these effects of like, four people playing the piano… But I’ve never seen anybody just have such a rapport with their instrument and know its limitations but also push them to the limits, transcend the instrument – which is what I try and do with the drums as well.
”
”
Ian Carr (Keith Jarrett: The Man And His Music)
“
But as for sermons! They are bad, aren’t they! Most of them from any point of view. The answer to the mystery is prob. not simple; but part of it is that ‘rhetoric’ (of which preaching is a dept.) is an art, which requires (a) some native talent and (b) learning and practice. The instrument used is v. much more complex than a piano, yet most performers are in the position of a man who sits down to a piano and expects to move his audience without any knowledge of the notes at all. The art can be learned (granted some modicum of aptitude) and can then be effective, in a way, when wholly unconnected with sincerity, sanctity etc. But preaching is complicated by the fact that we expect in it not only a performance, but truth and sincerity, and also at least no word, tone, or note that suggests the possession of vices (such as hypocrisy, vanity) or defects (such as folly, ignorance) in the preacher. Good sermons require some art, some virtue, some knowledge. Real sermons require some special grace which does not transcend art but arrives at it by instinct or ‘inspiration’; indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but the occasions are rare. In other times I don’t think an educated person is required to suppress the critical faculty, but it should be kept in order by a constant endeavour to apply the truth (if any), even in cliche form, to oneself exclusively! A difficult exercise. . . . .
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien)
“
Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.
”
”
James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
“
I'm not going to tell Mozart what piano to play on, I'm just going to tell him I want to hear something beautiful
”
”
Bradley Bowman
“
Perhaps we as a nation need a rest too - a breathing space, an amnesty, a season of mourning, a month of indulgence, a year of reprieve, a century of celebration. A laying down of arms, a laying on of hands. A long, cool rain of forgiveness.
”
”
Patricia J. Williams (Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own)
“
The difference between a child who is taught piano from force, even with ‘good’ intentions, is in stark contrast to a child who feels deeply inspired to learn music.
”
”
Tara Bianca (The Flower of Heaven: Opening the Divine Heart Through Conscious Friendship & Love Activism)
“
nymph or siren from Basque mythology with duck-like feet (Lamiak = plural Lamia) 2 Txorizo: pork sausage 3 Pintxos: small snacks made from a variety of ingredients fastened to a slice of baguette bread with a toothpick 4 Trikitixa: a small accordion with buttons instead of piano-style keys
”
”
Caryn Larrinaga (Galtzagorriak and Other Creatures: Stories Inspired by Basque Folklore)
“
My Aunt and Uncle can’t stop me. The other contestants can’t break me. The judges do not decide my fate.
♬ “It won’t always be like this.” ♬
It is a song wrapped in a memory. A memory wrapped in a song. And it is all mine. No matter the outcome. No matter the prize.
This moment is all mine, and no one can take that away from me.
♬ “But the beauty is here to stay.” ♬
The piano notes had already stopped as I sing out my last line. Like it was just me, vulnerable and real, as I leave it all on that
stage.
”
”
Sunshine Rodgers (Just Brooke (No Stage Name Needed!))
“
knowing that I wanted to be a piano player, and knowing that practicing, of course, was just something piano players did, I turned my daily practice into a habit. Now, habits get a bad rap; we tend to think of things like biting our nails or smoking when we talk about them. But really, a habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” Tooth brushing is a habit (for most of us). So is showing up to work on time. Those are some good habits. Habits can be good; say it with me. Once you’ve trained your brain to view practicing as a habit, the next step is finding the motivation to adopt that habit. The key to motivation, I’ve learned, is coupling your profound inspiration to a strong belief in yourself, and that’s not something even the best teacher is able to instill. It has to come from within. Building a strong core identity to drive your motivation requires first believing that you’ll eventually master the skill you’ve set out to learn—no matter how farfetched that might initially seem to yourself and others. Having the correct image of yourself is really key here; you have to think of yourself as the thing you want to be long before other people think of you as that. You may only have taken one trumpet lesson and sound horrible, but you still must think of yourself as a trumpet player in order for the habit to stick. You are whatever you do repeatedly. Practicing became such a constant in my day—and in such a natural, unforced way—that I hardly had to think about it. It had become, in other words, a habit.
”
”
Scott Bradlee (Outside the Jukebox: How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession into My Dream Gig)
“
Life is a piano what you get out of it depends on how you play it
”
”
Tom Lehrer
“
Cultural Diplomacy—and an Accolade Among Piazzolla’s tasks during his first summer at the Chalet El Casco was the composition of “Le Grand Tango,” a ten-minute piece for cello and piano commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom Piazzolla sent the score. Rostropovich had not heard of Piazzolla at the time and did not look seriously at the music for several years.7 Written in ternary form, the work bears all Piazzolla’s hallmarks: tight construction, strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity and melodic inspiration, all apparent from the fierce cello scrapes at the beginning. Piazzolla uses intervals not frequently visited on the cello fingerboard. Its largely tender mood, notably on display in the cello’s snaking melodic line in the reflective middle section, becomes more profoundly complex in its emotional range toward the end. With its intricate juxtapositions of driving rhythms and heart-rending tags of tune, it is just about the most exciting music Piazzolla ever wrote, a masterpiece. Piazzolla was eager for Rostropovich to play it, but the chance did not come for eight years. Rostropovich, having looked at the music, and “astounded by the great talent of Astor,” decided he would include it in a concert. He made some changes in the cello part and wanted Piazzolla to hear them before he played the piece. Accordingly, in April 1990, he rehearsed it with Argentine pianist Susana Mendelievich in a room at the Teatro Colón, and Piazzolla gently coached the maestro in tango style—”Yes, tan-go, tan-go, tan-go.” The two men took an instant liking to one another.8 It was, says Mendelievich, “as if Rostropovich had played tangos all his life.” “Le Grand Tango” had its world premiere in New Orleans on April 24, 1990. Sarah Wolfensohn was the pianist. Three days later, they both played this piece again at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. [NOTE C] Rostropovich performed “Le Grand Tango” at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in July 1994; the pianist was Lambert Orkis. More recently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has described “Le Grand Tango” as one of his “favorite pieces of music,” praising its “inextricable rhythmic sense...total freedom, passion, ecstasy.
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Maria Susana Azzi (Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla (2017 Updated and Expanded Edition))
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Not to be confused with Der Flügel, which is an earlier form of the baby grand piano, the Flugelhorn is a wind instrument akin to the trumpet, but has a wider, conical bore. It is actually a descendant of the valved bugle, which had been developed from a hunting horn known in eighteenth-century Germany as a Flügelhorn. This valved instrument is similar to the B♭pitch of many trumpets and cornets and was actually inspired by the eighteenth-century saxhorn on which the flugelhorn is modeled. The German word Flügel means wing and in the early part of the 18th century Germany the leader or Führer of the hunt was known as a Flügelmeister who issued his orders of the hunt with, you guessed it, a Flügelhorn.
Some modern flugelhorns feature a fourth valve that adds a lower range and extends the instrument's abilities, however some players use the fourth valve in place of the first and third valve combination making the instrument somewhat sharper and more confusing. The tone range is "fatter" and usually regarded as more “mellow” and “darker” than the trumpet or cornet. The sound of the flugelhorn has been described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn and is a standard member of the British-style brass band. Joe Bishop an American jazz musician and composer, not to be confused with Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack, was a member of the Woody Herman band and was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn.
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Hank Bracker
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If it's the other guy's fault, you can't fix it. Don't blame other people for your problems. That gives them all the power. Own up to your mistakes.
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Ruthi Postow Birch (How to Build a Piano Bench)
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A pen is a piano for a writer. The magnificence of the music depends on the inner and outer perceptions of the writer.
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Debasish Mridha
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While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try,
Well how can I say I'm alive.
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Dido (Dido -- Life for Rent: Piano/Vocal/Guitar)
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Happy is fishing, boating, running, volleyball, cooking, dancing, playing the piano, gardening…as long as you remember it is.
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JoAnn Fastoff
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Resolution of conflicting interests within each of us—the desire to fulfill a personal purpose versus the desire to forget about it and just go have fun, for example—takes time and focus and application of a lot of qualities, like playing a difficult piece of music with two hands on the piano. Many people are looking for a simple pill to make that apparent dichotomy go away. Once they discover it doesn’t exist, it’s very frustrating.
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Darrell Calkins