Alan Hovhaness Quotes

If you're a musician, there's no instrument that can be withheld from you. If you're drawn to it, develop the talent for it.

I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.

I don't sing. I played guitar for a while. I'm not great, I'm not Lenny Kravitz by any means, but I do like to strum.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.

I was taught to play that way when I was in high school and even before I got to high school.

I am very musical. Am I a great singer? No. But I'm extremely musical.

But it's funny, I really was quite introverted as a child. I just liked music, so mum and dad bought me a piano when I was seven - I actually got up to Grade Seven at the London College of Music on piano.

I started piano like my sisters. After one year or two, I didn't like it anymore. Then, because I like trumpet, I played the cornet. When you are 7, you can't play trumpet - you play cornet. And something didn't go well. The teacher was too hard. Too rough. Suddenly, there was this instrument, the flute, that I could immediately play.

I keep a fiddle hooked up in the music - we've got a music room - and try to pick it up.

I can play the piano. I started off with lessons, and then, as we always had a piano in the house, I would play around and became quite good.

I would practice while listening to records or learn from musicians who were better than I was.

I had learned classical guitar when I was a kid, and I embraced it, and apparently I got good at it.

At the age of nine, playing the violin at school, and then onto the mandolin.

My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we'll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music - you know, the good stuff.

I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

I think it's important to learn instruments, whenever one has a little space. Be eager to learn and love your instrument.

I'm a struggling guitar player.

It wasn't all spent on practicing, I did do other things! but the classical guitar means a lot to me so I spend many hours building good chops and getting a good program together.

I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it.

I was always super, super musical. So my parents recognized that and put me in choirs, piano lessons, and all that.

I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.

I was pretty lucky to get into Berklee at all. I never really had any theory or music-reading capabilities; I was completely by ear.

My grade 3 teacher put on a kids' Christmas concert, and I played the kazoo, so my mother bought me a trumpet. I took lessons for eight years, was in the Kitsilano Boys Band, and I played in the Vancouver Junior Symphony for two years.

I think my first instrument was a ukulele that they gave me. I used to know how to play that pretty well.