Instrumental Learning Quotes

I didn't touch a guitar until I was 20.

I got a guitar when I was six and, instead of learning other people's songs, started to try to write my own, even at that young age.

I started on the clarinet. I was going to a music school - my mother took me - and the guy said, 'What do you want to play?' I said the drums, and my mother said, 'No, you don't. You don't want to play the drums.' So I said, 'Maybe the trumpet would be cool.' And my mother said, 'I don't think so.' And then the clarinet was handed to me.

When I was living in New York, I had this slightly wannabe bohemian existence and took up painting, at which I'm appalling. I also bought several guitars.

When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.

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.

Learning an instrument isn't about becoming a star anymore than learning to swim means you want to become a haddock

We want to embrace the younger crowds and get them to embrace instruments.

I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument.

My father taught me to play the sitar when I was seven years old. He and his elder disciples oversaw my teaching from the beginning, looking after my scale work, the poor things.

I taught myself until I was about 16. And then I studied classical guitar with some teachers.

I took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but even before that, you're singing in the classroom and wherever. Gosh, children are always singing. But I took music lessons, some choir and things like that at school. I learned how to play the guitar when I was about 13... ancient history.

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.

I was always a visual artist my whole life, and I came to music really late - when I was 21 or 22 was the first time I ever touched a musical instrument. For me, it was always this fun side hobby.

I picked Dad's guitar up when I was 8. It hurt to play, so I put it down and picked it back up when I was 15 and dug in. The guitar helped me come out of my shell and kind of gave me an identity at school.

When I was 8 years old, there was a showcase of all the instruments you can learn at my school. This guy was playing the trumpet. I heard it and was like 'Oof I got to learn to play.' The sound - everything was amazing. I was blown away.

We get so many kids telling us that they've taken up the violin or cello. It's really special, and it wasn't really our intention in the beginning.

My good fortune was that I was born into a home where Mum and Dad encouraged me to learn the piano.

On the song 'Dangerous,' it feels like a teenager picking up a new instrument and writing something with all of that naive excitement.

I was trained completely by ear. And it was actually diving into the Bach that led me to get - there was like a Mel Bay "Teach Yourself How To Sight Read..."

Music teachers can either inspire or make you resent your instrument and parents in early years.

I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

My father bought me a little cardboard accordion, and when I was three I got this little machine.