Player Piano Quotes & Sayings

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs. — Robert Hughes

If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet. — J.D. Salinger

I don't like the piano player music of the movies, the Michael Nyman, and sometimes that piano music makes me puke. It's not really romantic. It's just trying to get your Pavlovian juices flowing because it's a technique now. — Charlemagne Palestine

If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns. — Stephen Sondheim

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing. — J. D. Souther

I love my music, so I want to produce, write, and serve my music. I've had to learn about EQ frequencies and programming and space and clutter and how to be a better piano or bass player - everything. — FKA Twigs

My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference. — Harry Truman

I can play piano, and I write everything on piano, but I don't really feel like a piano player, necessarily. — Lia Ices

A MIDI file contains coded instructions to play a particular series of notes on an electronic music synthesizer. A MIDI file is more like a piano roll in a player piano than any type of sound recording. — Charles Petzold

My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano. — Brian Wilson

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music. — Chick Corea

We're gonna release a studio album probably a year from now and we've got these recordings that we did with Coco Taylor and Johnny Johnson, who was Chuck Berry's piano player. — James Young

I cut the scene out, but there was a moment where Christoph Waltz plays the piano in 'Django [Unchained]' - Jamie [Foxx] is a magnificent piano-player but there's never a moment where Django plays the piano. — Quentin Tarantino

I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical. — Harry Connick Jr.

Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change - drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything. — Cootie Williams

He's a seminal force, a guru, an original creator of the New Orleans piano style.. the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac Rebenack, James Booker, and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master. — Jerry Wexler

I always believe that every song tells a story, so the last thing I want to do is edit out like the meat of the story. I would pick songs based off a), whether I felt like I could do anything with them, and b) whether I felt like I could keep the story intact. And then you sit in with one of the piano players and one of the vocal coaches and kind of work out your arrangements that way. — David Cook

[Thelonious] Monk is a subject in itself. I mean, most piano players in most big bands sit down and they play with the band, you know. But Monk would just sit there like this. And all of a sudden there'd be a pause from all the trumpets and everything and Monk would go 'plink!' like that. And everybody would go 'Yeah! — Ray Brown

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place. — Kurt Vonnegut

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me. — Chrisette Michele

I always wrote music for my friends, but my focus was on playing piano. I didn't think I'd be quite good enough to be a soloist, but I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could work as a player, a teacher. — John Williams

Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot. — Zooey Deschanel

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living. — Elizabeth Lesser

Don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player! — Elton John

The short story and the truth is that I was taking vocal lessons here in New York ... One day, instead of my lesson, the piano player and I went into a studio ... and we put down some demos ... Those demos got to Quincy Jones through an agent ... He listened to them, he called me, and we started to record. — Lesley Gore

I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it. — Hugh Laurie

I've watched other people singing, I've become a much better singer. I've become a singer that plays the piano instead of a piano player that sings. — Elton John

The first reason why I started to use the [electric] keyboard is because I really like the bending sound of the guitar and bass player. I can't bend the piano sound. I really like the feel behind it. I feel it adds flavour and character to my music. — Hiromi

I had been inspired by an organ player named Earl Grant, who played organ and piano together. My mom took me to see him. So I went home, put my piano and organ together, too. — Billy Preston

I've found that since I've been playing the acoustic, listening to a horn player has left me thinking, well, what can I do with that? But somehow piano players, I feel more of a connection to , now that I'm using the acoustic. — Bill Orcutt

Being a part of the crowd with incredible musicians onstage summoning the muse and delivering that to us - doesn't matter if it's an orchestra, two bluegrass banjo pickers, a solo singer, piano player, or Bruce Springsteen - when it all comes together, you can just feel as if you are a part of something bigger and grander than yourself. — Patrick Fabian

He had approached the villa on that night of the storm not out of curiosity about the music but because of a danger to the piano player. The retreating army often left pencil mines within musical instruments. Returning owners opened up pianos and lost their hands. — Michael Ondaatje

They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. — J.D. Salinger

have been in the war? Suddenly she said, "Are you the piano player, upstairs?" For that was how she and John had come to refer to him, The piano player, upstairs. He turned his nose to her again, warily now. "I play," he said. She nodded. "We hear you," she told him. "My husband and I, we listen," she said. Every — Alice McDermott

I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice. — Billy Joel

I'm not an overly skilled piano player or organ player at all, but I think I'm the right piano and organ player for the Heartbreakers. And I've been the right piano and organ player for a lot of sessions that I've been called on. — Benmont Tench

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it. — Michael Sheen

I think I'm a very poor piano player. — Ray Manzarek

Hope you don't think this is Billy Joel unplugged. I'm a piano player. I'm already unplugged. — Billy Joel

When Seymour saw me seated at the piano at that first rehearsal, he shouted: 'What's that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let's get started.' — Mary Lou Williams

I'm not particularly good at anything. I'm not an incredible guitarist or piano player or songwriter. I think what I do is, when I notice someone is really good at something, I try to get that out of them. — Benny Blanco

I'd like to be a piano player. — Chris Daughtry

Vonnegut's earliest novels hint strongly at his familiarity with Wiener's work, The Human Use of Human Beings, especially his first novel, Player Piano (1952), which shows his concern for the social implications of automation, the replacement of human beings with machines. — David Porush

I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good keyboard player. People think I think I'm good. I think I'm a very poor piano player. — Ray Manzarek

He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge! — Kurt Vonnegut

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C — Kurt Vonnegut

If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house. — Harry S. Truman

Ted has a friend that owns a club. They're looking for a piano player on Thursday nights. I was thinking about it ... " Blake trailed off.
"I think that sounds wonderful," Livia said immediately. "You'll be terrific, and I'll be front and center, every Thursday night." She smiled again, wondering if he could feel it. — Debra Anastasia

In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice. — Nellie McKay

You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play in the goddam closet. — J.D. Salinger

I was a piano player. I love piano playing. I just love all music. — Maceo Parker

Bob Erlendson, a local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to [pianists] Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in [saxophonist] John Coltrane. — Lenny Breau

When we'd gone to Disneyland, the tree house had been my favorite thing in the whole park. If only I'd had no parents watching my every move, if only I'd been a happy, carefree orphan, I'd have hidden under the player piano until everything closed, and then taken up residence there. — Karen Joy Fowler

My father shared the ethos of many of the beat writers and was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. Probably for 25 years of my father's life, He had been an itinerant piano player and so traveled the road with bands and that sort of thing. — Anne Waldman

11. I am inclined to say: I 'point' in different senses to this body, to its shape, to its colour, etc.
What does that mean?
What does it mean to say I 'hear' in a different sense the piano, its sound, the piece, the player, his fluency? I 'marry', in one sense a woman, in another her money. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In general, we like to play as a band - guitar, piano, and voice. We also tour with a bass player, a drummer, and somebody who plays keyboard and guitar. We try to play all of our parts and flesh it out to get a lush sound, while also keeping the energy of a three-piece punk act. We want to be the best of all possible worlds. — Andrew Dost

On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. From that, we might conclude that she was equally dumb about jazz. — Tom Robbins

My wife is a classically trained piano player, and she also orchestrates. — Atticus Ross

Rugby players are either piano shifters or piano movers. Fortunately, I am one of those who can play a tune. — Pierre Danos

I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I'm an emotional player. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying. — Tori Amos

The interesting thing is that, well, here's what I think about songwriters and songs. Sometimes people sit down and say, "I gotta write a song today, I have a title" and all of that, and sometimes inspiration just happens, almost like "Sugar, Sugar" and a couple of the other songs. But basically, I just started playing the piano, and I'm not a great piano player. — Andy Kim

Ah, I understand", murmured the imperial scapegrace. Turning to the room: "When Franz Ferdinand drinks", he cried, "everybody drinks!"
Which helped restore a level of civility in the room, and soon even of cheer, as smart neckties were soaked in suds, the piano player came back from under the bar, and people in the room resumed dancing syncopated two-steps. After a while someone started singing "All Pimps Look Alike to Me", and half the room joined in. Lew, however, noticing the way the Archduke seemed to keep inching stealthily but unmistakably toward the street door, thought it wise to do the same. Sure enough, just before sliding out the door, Der F. F., with a demonic grin, screamed: "And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!" whereupon he disappeared, and it was a near thing that Lew got out with his keester intact. — Thomas Pynchon

And I've played piano since I was little, so I was originally the piano player in the band. — Caroline Corr

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break. — Elton John

I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another. — Billy Joel

I think I'm a songwriter. I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano. — P.J. Harvey

Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what. — Kurt Vonnegut

The piano is a divinely inspired instrument, a mirror held up to its player's soul that captures the light and shadow of the performer and reflects them back to the listener. — David Lanz

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it. — Richie Havens

I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll. — John C. Reilly

I was a piano player before I was a poet. — Gil Scott-Heron

The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it. — Edgar Bronfman Jr.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano. — James Whistler

My dad was a self-taught stride piano player. The myth is - I don't whether it's true or not - that he taught himself to play by watching a player piano. — Mose Allison

I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band. — Daniel Rossen

Fonny and I just sat there ... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy ... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock. — James A. Baldwin

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody. — Robert Pinsky

If I had spent a quarter of the time that I spent manipulating my sexuality in front of a piano instead, I would be the most gifted piano player of my lifetime. — Ricky Martin

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge. — William Gaddis

I know a flute player is technically called a "flautist," but something about it sounds a little sketchy, as does "pianist," so I will refrain. — Julie Halpern

I'm not a great piano player. — Norah Jones

My life has been guided by an unseen piano player, who is actually typing this now. — John Lennon

Playboys' was an authentic junkie record. Art Pepper was just out of jail, Chet was arrested a week after the session, and piano player Carl Perkins would die two years later. When the record was recorded I was behind bars myself. In 1955 I was caught with narcotics and had to serve almost five years. Luckily, I was allowed to keep my saxophone in the cell, and I composed a lot during the time. They had to come fetch the music for Playboys from jail. — Jimmy Heath

The mark of genius is consistency. Do we hear of naive genius piano players? If anyone knows of one, try listening to it for an hour. — David Luiz

I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream. — Paul Haslinger