Charlie Haden Quotes

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.

My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I'm a natural musician.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

I can sit down at the piano and make you think I know how to play the piano because I know, like, the beginnings of four songs.

I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it.

When you sit down and see someone play at a piano, you don't think, 'Wow - what a fantastic machine.'

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

I grew up with a piano, and my aunt taught me chords. I played with bands in high school and I could do like, C chord, G chord, D chord; really simple, rhythm piano.

I started playing piano when I was around four; that's my first passion.

The real architecture happens within the works themselves, and that was done by the composer. That's where the real skill is. In putting together a program, you're more a curator, but that's important as well. And then the interpreting of it is where our big job is.

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.

I remember learning how to play 'The Fool On The Hill' on piano when I was in maybe fifth grade.

As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.

I am an interpreter of music rather than a composer of it.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion.

I think musically.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

I can't even read music. All I know is whether I think it sounds good and if I like what I'm doing.

The piano is the instrument I can play the most.

I love Mozart, but I often make a terrible hash of it.

I don't think you can have a calculated approach towards learning music.

One of the features of being a piano player is playing as an accompanist for other people.