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I play the piano because I need to, it’s been an integral part of me since early childhood. I’ve had a turbulent relationship with the instrument throughout my life, because it was something other people chose for me and chose to define me by. But these last few years when I haven’t been playing I have felt like a part of me is missing. Now I am playing again and I’m playing just for me. Not to win prizes, not to impress friends & family with virtuosic sounding pieces, just for me. And now I love it.

Great reason!

Joe "Fingers" Carr. When I was a kid my parents got a record of him playing rags and boogie. I tried to play the piano and my sister danced to him. She became a ballet dancer and finally started to serious learn the piano after I retired.

I started in 2005 because I have always loved classical piano, wanted to play at some level, defragment my internet-afflicted attention span, and possibly try chamber music. It is 2019 and I've made progress and learned a bunch of pieces although my fundamentals continue to be weak and my sight reading dismal. I keep playing because there are stretches where I can feel the improvement in sound and in the ability to take a phrase where I want it to go. It's nice when I can get it even though is just focused repetition and playing from memory. When I move to a new piece, I start almost from square one. In the long lulls between those stretches of progress, cussedness comes into it - I've sunk time and effort into the instrument and weekly lessons. Although I know deep down I will quit some day, I don't want today to be that day.

(As far as the loftier goals, I've punted on ever playing chamber music, I just don't have the rhythm or the sheer processing ability required. Similarly expecting piano to help with attention span was just plain backwards. I'm not happy about giving up either but by letting go, I can direct my limited energies and talent to areas where I can make some bursty progress.)

I've been compulsive about romantic piano pieces, and some late classical, for a few years. I just started to learning to gain a better understanding of the compositions, emotion, and expression.

I hope to learn the keyboard because this is a skill I will like to acquire.

I mostly picked up learning the piano, because I wanted to learn something related to hand-eye co-ordination. I might as well have picked juggling, or card tricks. But I happened to have a mini keyboard in my home.. Didn’t know then, that this could get addictive!

Started in 1st grade and while at first my mom had to sit with me 1/2 hour, every night to make me practice, I came to love playing within a couple of years. Since then, it's always been a part of my life. Later, starting in my late 40s, advanced cancer and the treatments for it left my body in such a wreck, that now it's about the only thing left that I can still do half decently.

It's really wonderful that you developed such a love for piano and that it seems to have had a role in your long-term recovery! However, that phrase about your mom was both admirable and scary at the same time. I mentally substitute "make me practice" with one pertinent for my mother regarding "sleeping," and it give me straight up shivers! But regardless, it seems it worked and no hard was done And perhaps, in the end, it was how your mom helped you through your activity that made it different from my own mother.

As I mentioned in when you first intro'ed yourself on PW, I find your story inspirational!

I did some piano as a kid and I quit after two years of skipping lessons.
Three years ago - I am now almost 60 - I found out DP's . I did not know they had weighted keys and that you could buy one at a reasonable price. So I bought one and started playing. I thought I was going to play J.S.Bach Wohltemperiertes Klavier in a couple of years, but seeing where I am now - pianistically - I think it will take me a couple of lives to arrive there.
In any way, what I wanted is to prepare for retirement and arrive there with some piano knowledge.
I am now going around a mountain - playing piano - and I do not know how to climb it. I am a little stuck at the moment.

The good thing is that I enjoy every note.

Thanks Tyrone. My mother was so amazingly patient. At one point, she sat with each of us three brothers sequentially for 1/2 hour apiece, every night. My brothers never caught fire with it, but at least I did, which made her very happy. The S&S B will be here Friday morning, which will certainly be inspirational for me.

Totally an accidental discovery. At 72 and being a guitarist all my life (62 yrs), I saw the movie La LANd . Movie my wife wanted to see. I was watching the hands of Ryan Gossling when he played Mia and Sebastian’s theme. It really didn’t look fake. Sure enough Ryan studied w a master from Toyko and for 3 months he learned those parts you see him play in the movie. I know it’s rite but still commendable. Fascinated me cause I was 72 thinking about playing.
I told my wife I wanted to try piano because as a young 11 yr old guitar student, I was learning how to read treble clef and teacher introduced me to piano. When I realized on piano you have to look at identical note but different for bass clef , I ran for the hills.Stayed w guitar —but now I’m all piano!
Totally obsessed so much that I had to seek some help as that is all I did for first year. I still practice 4-6 hrs a day but have no delusions as I have learned to accept I will never play piano like I play guitar.
I love piano so much that I draw joy from even those hanon exercises. And I don’t even have a real piano, just a Kawai es110.
I get to play on my teachers 9 foot grand at my weekly lessons and it’s sure got me thinking about selling some of my guitars. Wife will likely leave me w an acoustic in the house.
Digital can’t be holding me back too bad because I do ok on his grand. However I feel a difference.
I guess I play piano because it makes me feel like those people who die and come back but don’t wanna come back because they saw heaven. Sometime I sit under my Beyerdynamic headphones , feel like I’m in a tomb , look up, and 3 hrs went by.
Finally I love piano because I can apply years and years of music chord theory. Having 5 fingers is an incredible discovery for a guitarist as I often can color chords instantly and w 5 fingers, I can really spruce up chords . Sure occasionally guitar players might creep their thumb around neck for bass notes but I’m loving the potential for altering chords.

I didn't realize guitarists were limited in their chords as now when I think guitars, I think chords. Like guitar is the official chord instrument. But it makes sense! And the mental picture of the thumb creeping around the neck of the guitar to snag a bass string made me chuckle!

Sounds like you got bit by the piano bug badly. I have a similar starter piano as you - a Roland FP30 in my case - but am plotting my soon upgrade. Enjoy!

I play the piano in an effort to drown out my girlfriend.

Classical guitarists don’t fret a bass string with the thumb, for that will freeze the hand on the fretboard. That thumb trick worked for Richie Havens singing Freedom at Woodstock, love him. Classical guitarists don’t tend to fret chords and strum either. Yes, the whole measure may represent a chord but we tend to play the notes individually and hold when we can, and let go when we must. Classical guitar playing is kind of balletic and much more difficult than playing chords on a steel stringed acoustic guitar.

That's interesting. Does that mean that in classical guitar, true chords don't exist if they are always arpeggiated? Hmmm, I didn't think of this before, but it seems that classical guitar is focused on melody, and non-classical guitar is focused on harmony.

EDIT: Or maybe I just don't understand harmony well enough, but I've always thought of single note at a time instruments, like trombone, to be more melodic than harmonic.

Pianos in a band or orchestra are really the rhythm and percussion section. If you’re playing in a band, you can “lose the right hand” and just keep the left hand going keeping rhythm, and the band can keep playing the piece without losing the tempo. Music theory is easer to understand on a keyboard. It’s easier to see and understand chord changes and relationships. The downside is you have to read two clefs simultaneously.

Why do I play piano? No idea and even less idea as to when I'll find out. In the meantime, I seem to enjoy it. That's good enough for now.

I don't think there was any particular thing that spurred me to learn how to play the piano, but I do remember watching The Pianist several months ago, and just being enthralled by the emotion of the scene of the protagonist (spoilers ahead) playing Chopin's Ballad No. 1 in G Minor for the SS officer towards the end of the movie. The ending of that piece has so much emotion built into it that I can only imagine what Chopin was feeling when he composed it. Pieces like that are probably why I play, and what I strive towards playing. I'm still very much a beginner, but I love playing the piano and making music with my own hands, and I eagerly await the day that I can play advanced pieces like the one mentioned above.