One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.
Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.
The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.
But if you listen to great piano players, both classical and jazz, there's a huge range of dynamics and colors and emotional expression that's possible with the instrument.
I'll just sit at the piano a lot an play like through different chord exercises and kind of just throwing my hands down on the piano from one chord to the next to see what happens.
So, I really don't consider myself a fabulous keyboard player.
I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.
The thing with the piano is, the piano is like percussion almost - well, it is. You have to... not beat on it, but there is more work involved than a Hammond. With a Hammond, you just lay your hands on the keys, man, and you're gone.
It's not too hard to play Fender Rhodes keyboard if you get the right one, with some good action on the keys. If you got an old one that ain't been touched up, it could be kind of difficult to get real loose on it.
I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.
No two composers were more totally at home in front of the piano than Debussy and Chopin, hands to keys to strings to sound waves to pen and paper in one perfect gesture of inspiration.
I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note.
I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
With the help of modern technology, I can compose intricate keyboard parts and then I have to go back and learn them in order to perform them properly.
Scarlatti [Kirkpatrick] started writing sonatas when he was 66 and the idea that he ran off 500 or so after he was 66 was just too much for me to resist. It's just great.
