Simple question really. What made you take up the instruments that you now play?

Personally, my parents made me take up both my main instruments which is why I never really bothered about practice. :heh:

The movie Amadeus and my dad, so I took up the piano. If it was just my dad and not the movie too, I'd end up with guitar as well, or just the guitar.

:cry: My godsis did (I miss her sooo much!) When I was about 10 I went over her house for the first time and she played her piano for me. Back then, i looked up to her soo much. So, of course, I decided I wanted to play the piano as well. 6 years later tada! lol. I play the french horn because I had to pick an instrument for concert band and the clarinet because I wanted to switch from french horn but ended up stuck with both XD.

age of 5, parents and grandparents force me to play piano, now i like it :P

Well, I had played flute in the school band in fourth and fifth grade, I was inspired by another school band that had played at my school when I was in kindergarten. Then I wanted to play guitar, my dad decided that I couldn't play guitar without playing the piano first, so I took piano and finally I play both piano and guitar now. But my guitar teacher got fired... Well my dad decided not to take me anymore because of complications. >.> Yeah, Let's just keep it at that. So my music teacher from school is supposed to teach me over the summer, I got ahold of her a few times before camp and vacation. Now I can't reach her to set up a date for guitar. x.x She doesn't call back and won't answer the phone...

My uncle who had an acoustic guitar at his house and taught me how to play some chords and some basic strumming. Then the inspiration kept coming from the punk bands, until I discovered there was better; so then it was from Led Zeppelin and AC/DC... still is today, except that I have an other kind of inspiration coming from guys like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen.

I remember it like it was yesterday, actually. It was in third grade, I believe, and they were introducing us to the band and orchestra. They brought in some instruments and let us see how they worked, and some kids even got to play them. I didn't get a chance to play any of the stringed instruments, or the violin - which I really wanted to learn - so I ended up learning the violin because of that. I've greatly improved since then. I can't remember how I got into the piano, though - I think my parents signed me up for that, because I have… (cough)uber-long "piano fingers" as my mother has dubbed them xD.

Oops. I confused the font size with another forum. Sorry!

XD my fingers are long and bony. That's what my dad calls them too. Uber-long-piano-fingers. ._.

me fingers are long and sorta-chubby....

Well, in first grade my mom got this mini piano (with like 4 keys...) and I smashed it like crazzy, yet I still played music on it somehow, then my mom asked if I wanted to take lessons for real pianos, and I said yes...quit 2 years later and tought me self.

Bugs Bunny, yeah kind of a wierd insperation I was small and I watched the one called "Rapsody Rabbit" and That is what made me want to play the piano...I wanted to be like him. :blush:

depends which instrument i'm talking about XD

anyway, clarinet was a friend who convinced me to play, then quit (lazy bugger). Bass Clarinet, I liked someone, and I wanted to play for a while, so I used it as an excuse... umm, thats about it. there are others, but they is boring

age of 5, parents and grandparents force me to play piano, now i like it :P
Lol, don't you love that? :P

I was forced to play piano at the age of 5 (or whenever kindergarten starts), and violin at 6.
Wasn't until the age of 12 when I heard music which started the change on my whole outlook on piano: Madoka's Piano Files.
I mean it's so pretty and enlivening. ^_^

As for violin.. uhh, never appreciated until two years ago. Mainly its use in soundtracks (heed OSTs from KGNE, Tsukihime, .hack etc etc etc).. you get the idea. Perfect. :stoned:

I when I was in the fourth grade, a girl I had a crush on suffered a terrible tragedy. Soon after, she left my school. About six months after she left, I dreamed that she was playing this beautiful piece of music on a violin. Once I moved to intemediate school, I learned they had an excellent music program and I juped at the chance(now I'm at the top of my class). Funny thing though. 3 months ago, the girl I liked came back to my school and she was playing the violin.

I did piano 'cause, *cough*, I wanted to annoy my brother by being better at it than he was - not the best reason, I know!

And I took up violin 'cause I fell in love with it - such a wonderful instrument :D

@Neerolyte and Zero - go us! XD

Some interesting stories so far!

Well I started piano because my friend used to play some songs for me and it was always so beautiful....so I decided to try to learn too ^^. As for the violin....it's because in grade 4 an orchestra from another school came to my school and I saw all these people playing the violin. I kept telling myself one day I'll be playing it too. I wasn't until last year I actually started to learn. In grade 5 I had to choose an instrument for band class and I decided to play the flute becauseit sounds nice too.

I took up the violin and oboe at the age of 7 because my friends were also learning them. Then i gave up and went onto the flute because my mum's friend who's son was in my class taught it.

With the piano, i started on keyboard to annoy my sister because she started first and i picked it up quicker than her. i then thought it was a silly instrument that wasnt real and just imitations of other instruments (this was 3 years ago and my mind has changed so no offense to keyboard players, my mind has changed since then), so i moved onto piano and have pretty much just taught myself.

I first played flute because I just wanted to be in band...I have no reason why I chose the flute...Well in 5th grade band, sometimes a middle schooler would come and listen to us. Our band teacher told us that she played the flute in 5th grade then she switched to french horn. Then I went to my first year of middle school and I skipped a band level. Then yadda yadda, next year I was in the same level as the girl that played flute, but now plays horn. She played it and I just loved the sound of it! I love how it can be a solo instrument and a loud kind of instrument. So I guess I'm following in her foot steps. Sadly, she left to go to high school. Bwahaha! I will try to be section leader of the horns...

my middle school teacher needed violists in our orchestra. so i switched. i really didn't want to because i wanted to be concert mistress... but i became that anyways in my last year of middle school. made me jump with joy ^^

eh?? i dunno what made me take up an instrument ...i started playing piano when i was 7 >_< no reason ...but just pureee interest ^_^ but it seems that music is in my talent......but im not sure if i can pass my music GCSE since im always nervous on performances...-_- i wanna play flute but my parents said:' wait till you finish all the grades on the piano.'

yay! another person from england! You should be good enough for gcse as long as you're grade 5. As for that reason your parents gave, you won't have enough time when you're older to learn because you'll be too stressed with the workload. Doing grades take a long time, so you should do both on the go in my opinion.

Well, I started piano because I thought piano would be one of the most basic instrument. So if I learned piano, I would have a better advantage on learning other instruments later on. Then my second instrument was Alto Saxophone, and I chose it because the school had to make us learn a band instrument, and I thought that Alto Sax would be interesting so I started... I started 'gu zheng' because I thought that if I learn a rather obsolette instrument, I thought there might be a bigger advantage in my later music study, and because it was special. Finally, my most recent instrument, the oboe, was chosen because I just like the sound of it, and people say that it has the most complex fingering out of all woodwind instrument, so I took it as a challenge.

When I was four, I think, I asked my mom if I could play the violin. She said no. I was sad.

In first grade, I couldn't do simple addition. Seriously, my brain is so completely dumb when it comes to math... I worked my darned bottom off for a D in algebra II. It's sad. Anyway, my mom put me in piano to improve my math. I learned to read music from a very early age and It's easier sometimes than reading English for me... that's the only good thing that came out of piano.
Then in sixth grade, my dream came true: orchestra was an elective in middle school. I swear to god, the first day in class this girl had her own violin, and I picked it up and played a near-perfect G major scale. (Of course, it was only D major because I'd never played the instrument before and started on G... and it sort of ended on A instead of G... but still! :P ) Anyway, I got private lessons for my fourteenth birthday, and I'm actually within sight of obtaining my lifelong dream to be a professional violinist... my best friend was so much better than me in eigth grade; she's been playing since she was four. And freshman year, she was like three orchestras above me. Sophomore year, just this year past, she was my stand partner all year. *Is proud/full of myself*



Bugs Bunny, yeah kind of a wierd insperation I was small and I watched the one called "Rapsody Rabbit" and That is what made me want to play the piano...I wanted to be like him. :blush:
I love that cartoon! Really I do. It's the only cartoon I actually like. ^_^

First, i started playing flute because in gr.5 we had to pick an instrument for music class. My teacher said that flute is one of the harder instruments to play with so i decided to challenge myself, and plus the brass instruments never appealed to me. For piano, i've always wanted to play the piano because it just sounds so nice. ^_^

violin: i just thought it was cool and my mom was offering to enroll me to a music school
flute: anime - fushigi yuugi ^^
piano: we couldn't find any good violin teachers so i just took up the piano (we moved)
pic: i played the flute and was first chair so why not?
glock/marimba/xylo: joined beginning band and didn't feel like playing the flute
bodhran: a friend asked me to learn it

Basically, I wanted to play Yakusoku Love Hina so badly, I got off my lazy butt and decided to teach myself to play the piano. I still can't play all of Yakusoku but I can play other harder pieces. :bleh:

When I was young I always wanted to play flute since the first time I heard one and last year I chose Music in my options and I started playing flute.

Basically, I wanted to play Yakusoku Love Hina so badly, I got off my lazy butt and decided to teach myself to play the piano. I still can't play all of Yakusoku but I can play other harder pieces. :bleh:

It took me quite a while to memorise the whole of that piece so I considered it quite difficult to play so don't worry. I find a lot of pieces hard though :heh:

I thought the saxaphone looked sexy on me lol. Just kiddin I've always had a thing for that deep jazz

I took up the piano, because one day I had this little tune in my head, and I asked my school's music teacher to try to find it out by ear (it took me a while to get my Language Arts teacher to let me go).

In the Piano Lab, I heard everyone play and some kid was playing "The Hall of the Mountain King" with a really complex left hand, so I wanted to do the same. :)

A few years ago, when I was still a little kid, I just wanted a piano/keyboard, I dunno why, but I didn't get it.
A few weeks ago, I went to a summer camp, and there were a lot of people who could play an instrument, and I just stood there also wanting to play, but I couldn't.
So when I got back, and after my father got back, we bought a keyboard.

piano: well.. iv always loved the sound of the piano... but i think it was my friend 'jackie' who got me fully into it.. she taught me to play 'chopsticks' XD so i told me parents i wanted a piano.. and yeah...

bass guitar: never really wanted to play it... i was meant to sing in the band dag'nammit... but the person said that she was gonna put me in the actual band.. so i said 'fine, ill play piano!" but nope.. someone else wanted to play the piano... so it was either him or me... and he didn wanna play the bass.. so i said "fine fine.. ill play the bass"

I think it was when my second cousin played "Fur Elise" on piano that inspired me to take up piano, many, many years ago. I really liked that song when I was young, so I said to myself, "I want to be able to play that song too!" And that's basically it... I think.

uhmm. i started pLaying the piano right now but what inspired me to play it is Scarlet of Ayashi no Ceres. God. If you have ever heard that song. Lol. Oh and my first instrument is the flute. Haha. My teacher says I'm pretty good at it. Natural. That's what he called me. Lol. that was when I was 7 yrs oLd. hahaha ^^. Haven't picked it up for three years in a row. A "bit" busy. Anyway. But nothing actually inspired me to play the flute. I just learned to because it was required. Lol. I'm 17 now and in college. I stopped playing coz it isn't really the instrument that I would like to play. I wanna learn how to play the piano but I can't read notes. I just play and try picking up the keys. LoL. ^^.

i first started playing the piano at about eight. i didn't like it too much then maybe because i didn't see it's potential [now i wish i had liked it sooner]. after listening to beethoven's piece at about 14-15 [i think it was his ninth sonata] i began to see how moving music could be. i took up music anew [with a new motivation] and have been looking forward to composing. i'm 18 now [and in college].

i'm also a percussionist [of all sorts] and a cellist

took up cello in high school because we were allowed to sit down :sweat:
i'm a self-taught drummer since [12]? and i used to play for my church band, now i have like 4 students, two of which fill in my spot now :> i feel like i'm getting a little rusty tho. still saving up money for those electric drums... i've been playing on upside down buckets and foam tops ever since >.<
but foam tops are awesome and simple.

i'd like to one day be fluent with all three of my instruments [to a higher extent] and compose my own music, by combining the three elements XD
it'll probably be jazz or blues-like

when I was 3 years old, my parents bought an electric keyborard and I loved to fiddle around with it, my mom eventually realized that I started playing simple songs by ear, things I heard from tv, nursery songs, I just somehow learned to play them.

I went to hungary when I was 4 years old to live there for a few years and my mum put me into one of the best music schools (that was because it was down the street from our house) My music teacher at the time was an evily strict person and by the end of third grade she made me hate music, it was because I never understood it then.

after then I moved backto Canadaland (long story), I never considered to take music until the 7th grade and somehow I had a lady at our house one day to audition me, and she noticed my playing by ear, so I started piano. I was re-taught all the theory I failed to learn as a child... it was just really hard for me to grasp at the time.

I soon had to quit because we moved ._.;;

I didn't go back into music until grade 10 vocal class... theory went one ear in one ear out... but that was the year I realized I had a really wide range ^_^

the next year I had a new music teacher, and my vocal range got higher... but my school isn't too big on music, our vocal class was 10 people. I wanted a challenge. I felt empty, and I saw a friend of mine play the flute. I loved it's sound... and then I bugged my teacher before the end of term that I want to learn... he was pretty useless at that and I taught myself to play in 2 weeks ^_^.

by the end of this year I was top in my class, I got teh grad award ^_^

I want to go to university for music. I can't wait ^_^

When I was little, around 4, my big sister got a tiny keyboard for christmas... She didn't play it, so I just messed around on it. Didn't really make anything of it...

I never got any lessons, but my 2 inspirations to learn how to play my piano is the girl I've liked for 5 years, who plays piano very well btw, and the song "To Zanarkand" from final fantasy x... I vowed to myself that I will master that song for her... :blush:

I was Inspired to play the guitar by both my father, and folk/rock singer Gordon Lightfoot. A few years ago I learned that before I was born, my father passed on a contract for Nashville.

Either two things sparked it: Legend of Zelda: OoT's ocarica melodies, or "To Zanarkand" from Final Fantasy X. Either way, I've been hooked on playing piano. I'm self-taught, so I'm obviously lacking. But I can play To Zanarkand and any Zelda melody like it's my job! B)

i actually wanted to play the drums when i was young... but the idea slowly dissapeared, i think because its noisy and me dad doesnt like that much noise XD

and then the idea of violin came up.. but i never mentioned it to me parents
then i liked the piano.. and since me mum knew a little bit about piano and me dad loves the piano, that they bought it and yeah
first song i learnt was fur elise.. learnt it for me dad.. coz thats his fav song...

The Great Yo Yo Ma. Need I say more?

Me... I started to want to play piano when I heard November Rain by Guns n' Roses, and I fell in love with playing it and now that's all I pretty much ever do. heh-heh ^_^

yes, YoYoMa is a great aspiration o-o
the first time i heard his name i thought it was some kind of toy XD

I have to say Nirvana and Sods (Danish punk abnd from the 70's.) X=

I have to say Nirvana and Sods (Danish punk abnd from the 70's.) X=
And I forgot to say that I'm playing the bass. >__>

Actually, I'm not very sure. I guess I just liked the way the piano and the flute sounded.

I played the trombone back when i was 10.. coz i just accompanied my friend to join the band since he wanted to.. and so yea.. got stuck playing it for about 7 years being neither good nor bad at it.
Am currently playing the oboe now.. coz I was so mesmerized by it's beautiful sound and all.. and it was convenient that my girlfriend at that time played the oboe too.. everyone tried to discourage me from playing it but i went ahead anyway.. Haha.. so here i am still playing the oboe now.. Complex fingering and all but its a really fine and fantastic instrument to play on.

My sisters both played the piano, so I decided to carry on the tradition. Didn't want to be the odd-one out. Then the violin and flute, since they one played each, but I dropped the flute because I can't breathe out for very long, and... ah... that's something you need in flute.

I took up the Clarinet in the 4th grade because I wanted to play an instrument and my mother had her clarinet from when she was in band. My own knack for music then became my downfall because in a few months I was good enough for the intermediate group with kids all older than me. Then almost everyone in there went to advanced and I was held off another 6 months from that since I was so young... but I was left alone with a drummer and I didn't have the lung capacity to hit all the low notes so it left me very nervous in class and I eventually quit. Fortunately, in my last few months in Clarinet at school I had taken up private lessons with an eccentric piano teacher (since we owned a piano that was getting no use) and I soon realize how I felt far more at ease with the piano anyhow.. I think being a good note-reader and liking Classical music at a young age made me really stick with it... plus I'm a perfectionist. And now I'm in my 5th year of teaching piano so I suppose I do enjoy it. :P

My grandma had this old, not tuned piano and I liked pushing all the keys. I learned notes and how to play the recorder in elementary school because my music teacher made sure we all knew how. I put two and two together and began playing :D

I had to take a music class for high school, I figured "What the hell, why not piano?"

And now I'm in love with it :D