It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening.
The harp was so much more gestural and physical for me than the piano - something about bringing this instrument into your body.
I grew up sitting beside my grandmother playing the piano and singing.
I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.
It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.
Then, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox.
But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano act paint write a decent play?" Yes. . . the same age you will be if you don't.
Eric's performance is an awesome and entirely honest expression of the pain and beauty of his music. To watch him play is like riding on the tail of a dragon, but he is so gentle with his rider, you forget how high up you are or how intense the ride is. He is perhaps the most generous performer I have ever watched, every bit of himself is given to the audience. He's like a Marina Abramovic with a piano, completely and deeply committed, regardless of that pain.
A piano store looks like a funeral parlor for music.
I don't like piano solos.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
'The Piano' ended up on television. Everything ends up there anyway.
If anyone can show me. . . that there is any reason - other than fear - to believe in any version of an afterlife, I'll give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.
Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.
Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.
The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music.
Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.
I stay glued to my piano and my work. I don't look up. I write, I produce, I do the next project, I do my job. I don't look up, and I try to be kind. I try to be kind to people. That's what I do.
As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.
The same way that some people can play the piano, I can do plots! They just come!