Piano Inspirational Quotes

I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now.

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

Well, all I need is the air I breathe and a place to rest my head.

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

After a hurricane comes a rainbow.

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

Your amazing. Just the way you are.

When all you wanted was to be wanted, you wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now.

MOTHER TIME: We all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.

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.

the best people in life are free

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!/

With you I'd dance in the rain in my best dress, fearless

Fight and push harder for what you believe in, you’d be surprised, you are much stronger than you think.

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.

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.

Lights flash and we'll run for the fences Let them say what they want we won't hear it

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.

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.

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.

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.

Friends, like pianos, need frequent tuning. You are in the right key when you sing the praises of others. —HEATHER MACGREGOR

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*

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Don't follow the crowd until you are sure you want to be where they're going.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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!

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...

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try, Well how can I say I'm alive.

Although at first glance there may appear to be a fairly thin line between them, there are significant differences between the attempt to somehow magically exert one’s will on tangible reality for one’s own benefit (manifestation), and the inspiration to imagine entirely new realities (sometimes to add color and bounce to the drab waltz of existence, sometimes to facilitate the recognition of wonder, sometimes just for the hell of it); between an attempt to mentally force fortune to alter its course for one’s personal gain (to manifest, say, a winning lottery ticket), and possessing the lightness of spirit and the freedom of mind to live as if such developments would pale in comparison to those one regularly experiences at the piano, the easel, the writing pad, or upon viewing a pattern of fallen leaves in the gutter; to live -- against all evidence -- as if advances in fortune were already here.

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.

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.

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.

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…

Slow down. We all move way too fast.

Inspired by Zen, the avant-garde composer John Cage shocked the music world in 1952 when he composed a piece that entailed just sitting in silence at a piano or other instrument(s) without playing a single note for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. He wanted the audience to hear the music that is going on around us all the time.

You're never fully dressed without a smile

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.

Happy is fishing, boating, running, volleyball, cooking, dancing, playing the piano, gardening…as long as you remember it is.

I watched him play every perfect chord as if it were an entire song, every song as if it were a grand sonata. The old man was lost in the captivating music and I was lost too—in his commanding presence, in his seamless movement, in his unmatched talent. His fingers floated effortlessly over the worn strings of the acoustic guitar, each one crossing over the other with calming ease. I found it hard to distinguish where one part ended and another began, inspiring and stirring my soul like a miracle. Elsie watched him with great intent, with great wonder, as did I. Then she got up from her leather armchair in the corner, walked over to the parlor grand piano, and joined in just as the song began to swell to its airy peak. They played together flawlessly, a man and a woman, for what could have been the thousandth time. Yet as I watched them, as the music filled me like the warmth of coming home, I could see it was new to them too, though ancestral and old. I was swept away, amazed at how each part was so distinct, so solitary in and of itself, and how yet it could only capture its full potential, its full beauty, as a part of something greater. I thought of how we are all pieces of music, of how one person would cease to swell without the other, of how the part that moves us the most freely in ourselves might not exist at all. I watched Johnny as he continued to strum, then Elsie as her fingers darted from place to place on the keys of the piano. The music swept over me like a memory of summertime, and I closed my eyes, letting it take me where it would, to a place so strikingly beautiful that everything else was silently perfect, letting the melody lead the moment. The hopeful sound filled my expectant ears and my emotions felt new again, as if I were a child, the moment peacefully pure, like rocking a newborn back to sleep. Wet streams of tears escaped my soft, emotional eyes as I let the notes take their full effect. To Johnny and Elsie, music was a language that didn't require words. In fact, it exceeded them. For what was flowing from the withered hands of the couple before me now was in itself perfection. Words could only ruin a moment this pure. As I watched them, I realized I wanted to care about anything as much as they did about music. A tear ran down my cheek as the last note hung softly, like a butterfly might hang on air. I decided right then that some things in life were much too beautiful not to cry about. This, I now knew, was one of them.

Life is a piano what you get out of it depends on how you play it

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.

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.

How you gonna win when you ain't right within.

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

Until the hands are truly "interlocked," such fingers will seem perverse. The difficulty is mental, not physical. Once the pianist has grasped the notion that he does not have two separate hands, but a single unit of ten digits, he has made an advance towards Liszt.

Until the hands are truly "interlocked," such fingerings will seem perverse. The difficulty is mental, not physical. Once the pianist has grasped the notion that he does not have two separate hands, but a single unit of ten digits, he has made an advance towards Liszt

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.

Tu ti attieni al Tempo. Ma il Tempo non vuol dire assolutamente niente. Cinque minuti e mille anni hanno lo stesso significato. E poi citò piano:" Il momento della rosa e il momento del tasso hanno uguale durata... ".

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.

Women [who are] sick with an itch, dissatisfied to the point of dancing alone in their homes to music that isn’t so much music but dull pain with a tune. Women with demands that are mysterious even to themselves. Women who are runaways in their own kitchens. Women who are in no rush to respond to a world that’s only conceived them as its consequence. Who experience deep movement by playing air piano. Who are wind-oriented.

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

The piano teacher did not know whom she taught. She did not know how much it meant to Joshua to play well. She also did not know that the boy had yet to discover his true musical inspiration, a big-mouth, mustachioed gentleman from England.

A pen is a piano for a writer. The magnificence of the music depends on the inner and outer perceptions of the writer.

In molti amano l'odore della carta. Alcuni ne vanno proprio pazzi. Quando comprano un libro, se lo avvicinano al naso e aspirano forte chiudendo gli occhi. Talvolta mugolano. Se entrano in una biblioteca, inspirano a pieni polmoni come fossere in alta montagna, poi estraggono un vecchio volume dal primo scaffale e ci tuffano la faccia con l'intenzione apparente di baciarlo. L'odore della carta, in realtà, è odore di morte. E non mi riferisco agli effluvi chimici della carta dei libri nuovi, che sanno all'incirca di bistecca di soia. I libri vecchi, proprio loro, quelli dal profumo inconfondibile, in realtà odorano di cellulosa in decadimento. In pratica, di marcio. Quindi c'è gente che va matta per un puzzo di marcio e morte e nemmeno lo sa.

But with their backs against the wall, the Beatles produced an album far ahead of anything they’d done before. Since these guys were riding new levels of musical fluidity and inspiration, firing on so many more cylinders than anybody else had, they stumbled onto discoveries that changed the way music has been made ever since. It was an accidental masterpiece—but one that stunned them into realizing how far they could go. After that, they went full-time into the masterpiece-making business. Yet unlike some of their later artistic statements, this one was fun to make, and it shows. It’s where the Beatles became the Beatles. For artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, it was a model of artistic independence. Brian Wilson was still writing surf hits until he heard this record. The morning after his first listen, he sat at the piano and wrote “God Only Knows.” As he said, “We prayed for an album that would be a rival to Rubber Soul.

We could express this power in the following way: Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world. At these moments, suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative. Once the deadline has passed or the crisis is over, this feeling of power and heightened creativity generally fades away. We return to our distracted state and the sense of control is gone. The problem we face is that this form of power and intelligence is either ignored as a subject of study or is surrounded by all kinds of myths and misconceptions, all of which only add to the mystery. We imagine that creativity and brilliance just appear out of nowhere, the fruit of natural talent, or perhaps of a good mood, or an alignment of the stars. It would be an immense help to clear up the mystery—to name this feeling of power, and to understand how it can be manufactured and maintained. Let us call this sensation mastery—the feeling that we have a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves. Although it might be something we experience for only a short while, for others—Masters of their field—it becomes their way of life, their way of seeing the world. And at the root of this power is a simple process that leads to mastery—one that is accessible to all of us. The process can be illustrated in the following manner: Let us say we are learning the piano, or entering a new job where we must acquire certain skills. In the beginning, we are outsiders. Our initial impressions of the piano or the work environment are based on prejudgments, and often contain an element of fear. When we first study the piano, the keyboard looks rather intimidating—we don’t understand the relationships between the keys, the chords, the pedals, and everything else that goes into creating music. In a new job situation, we are ignorant of the power relationships between people, the psychology of our boss, the rules and procedures that are considered critical for success. We are confused—the knowledge we need in both cases is over our heads. Although we might enter these situations with excitement about what we can learn or do with our new skills, we quickly realize how much hard work there is ahead of us. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear, and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt. If, on the other hand, we manage these emotions and allow time to take its course, something remarkable begins to take shape. As we continue to observe and follow the lead of others, we gain clarity, learning the rules and seeing how things work and fit together. If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges.

Someone may fear that we are magnifying private religion out of all proportion, that the "us" of the New Testament is being displaced by a selfish "I." Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other?...Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.

On the sidewalks, encased in spotless plastic bags, the remains of yesterday’s Leonia await the garbage truck. Not only squeezed tubes of toothpaste, blown-out light bulbs, newspapers, containers, wrappings, but also boilers, encyclopedias, pianos, porcelain dinner services. It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought that you can measure Leonia’s opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia’s true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. The fact is that street cleaners are welcomed like angels, and their task of removing the residue of yesterday’s existence is surrounded by a respectful silence, like a ritual that inspires devotion, perhaps only because once things have been cast off nobody wants to have to think about them further.

Iconic Presentation: Sami Abouzid – A Living Music Legend

With ‘You Gave Me the Answer,’ mixed on March 21, the challenge was to evoke the spirit of Funny Face, the Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn film that inspired the song, without surrendering the benefits of modern sound techniques. They started with the piano introduction, using the fact that the keyboard had been recorded using three microphones, spread across three tracks of the master (labeled ‘left piano,’ ‘right piano,’ and ‘middle piano’) to create an echo effect that suggested a pianist playing in a large, empty hall. The echo evaporated as Paul’s piano intro kicked into the faster tempo that leads into the song. From there, it was a matter of finding the right balance between the winds, strings, and basic track—plus making Paul’s voice sound like that of a vaudeville crooner, something O’Duffy accomplished using a Pultec equalizer that thinned out the high and low frequencies. “That was designed [to sound like it was] recorded through a vaudeville microphone,” O’Duffy explained. “You’re making a great singer’s voice sound thinner and squeakier—removing the warmth of the man’s humanity. You’re screwing it up, essentially. But it’s screwed up to give you an effect reminiscent of vaudeville.”28