What song turned you into a keyboard player?

[Keyboardwizz]

You remember the first time you heard a song and was thinking: I wanna play THAT?

Mine was "43" by Level 42 features a great minimoog solo by Mike Lindup

[Discotheque]

Hoedown by ELP. Bad... ASS.

[bloodyMary]

Deep Purple. I don't really know which song. I guess the entire Mashine head album.

[Tusker]

Chopstix.

[nursers]

'New Song' by Howard Jones

[dalpozlead]

Sleepers, Wake, from an old guy called J.S. Bach.

[Joe Muscara]

Believe it or not (you probably will), Jump by Van Halen. At least I was basing it on the original record and not

.

 

I'm also thankful that my interest in playing keyboards/piano/organ have moved on from that material.

[Dave Bryce]

Switched on Bach, Pictures at an Exhibition and Tarkus.

 

dB

[Al Coda]

"When the music´s over" by the Doors released in the late 60th.

My 1st keyboard was a Vox Jaguar by Jennings then. Before, I started w/ drums.

 

A.C.

[retrokeys]

I can't believe I'm admitting to something so sappy...but watching my Mom play. Don't even remember the tunes, just the sound of the piano. The B3 on the other hand...that's easy, the Jimmy Smith version of 'I've Got My Mojo Workin'" It came up on the jukebox at Tommy's T burger one Saturday afternoon and life was never the same thereafter.

[eric]

When I was a young kid <5 years old, my dad would play through the entire Brubeck Time Out charts while I rode my rocking horse. I decided then that I would like to be a piano player like my dad and those songs still evoke strong childhood memories. Also, hearing Schroeder playing "Fur Elise" on the Peanuts Christmas special was inspiring to me and I set a goal when I started lessons that I was working towards "Fur Elise." So I'll often cite Schroeder as an early influence (loved the Guaraldi stuff too, but that was purely aspirational when I was in early grade school).

 

As for pop music that did it for me, I'd have to say it was Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" that really opened my ears to piano's role in rock music and I instantly wanted to learn the song.

[Outkaster]

A lot of different music for me. I remember the first few songs I learned outside of classical music. The theme to Officer and a Gentleman, Theme to Arthur, Hill Street Blues. I was pretty young and then I discovered playing Springsteen tunes and Eagles tunes so it was not just one song I guess.

[synthdogg]

I'll fess up.

[Tonysounds]

When I was around 5 years old, we used to go to my grandmothers house and do yardwork and dinner, and I used to go upstairs and bang on her baby grand every week. When she passed and that piano came into our home when I was 10, I asked for lessons. By the time I was 12, I was playing Scott Joplins The Entertainer. But hearing and teaching myself Eltons version of Pinball Wizard cemented the deal; after that it was Hoedown and Take A Pebble by ELP, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Wakeman (which I used to do at our gigs when I was in high school). Pink Floyds Sheep and Rush Xanadu, then the entire Trick of the Tail album. I aint been right since.

[dv8.Maker]

Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata. I remember my mom playing it was I was a youngin. Still my favorite piece to this day.

[Dave Bryce]

Take A Pebble by ELP

One of my signature pieces in High School as well, right down to the strummed strings.

 

the entire Trick of the Tail album.

Cool! One of the groups I played with in HS used to open with Squonk and close with side four of Seconds Out.

 

What did you use for a rig?

 

I aint been right since.

Were you right before?

 

dB

[cnegrad]

Stevie Wonder's entire Innervisons album.

[Dave Ferris]

The organ lick on "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees.

[gliderproarc]

Steve Winwood's tune "Finer things", from back in the high life. It convinced me I wanted my main Ax to be a synth. I was so disappointed when I saw a youtube clip of Steve playing the solo line on a DX-7, I had always thought it was done on a Memory Moog.

[Blue JC]

That wailing organ line on Bob Seger's "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"

 

 

[kanker.]

The organ lick on "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees.

And have you learned that lick yet?

[B3_borne]

Listening to my mom play piano and B3 .... but the one song that did it for me was Green Onions - Booker T. & the MG's in 1962 ... mom never played the B3 like that.

 

[Tonysounds]

My rig at the time was a Yamaha CP30 (which was great for the RMI stuff), Hammond M3 (no leslie, into an MXR Phase 100, just like Tony Banks!) and Arp Pro Soloist into a little Blue Boss CE2 chorus and Roland Space Echo, and Roland RS09 string/organ machine into an Ibanez Parametric EQ, for my "polyphonic synth" needs, all plugged into a Biamp 12 mixer, Peavey monitor amplifier into an EV SH1502 cabinet (with the white horn).

[stepay]

For me it was Elton John. I grew up in a family where my parents ONLY listened to classical music, and while I started taking classical piano lessons at a very early age, when I entered the second grade I became a gymnast, and while at the gym, they would play lots of pop music that I just never heard before. I couldn't believe there was music as great as this.

 

The very first Elton John song I remember hearing was Your Song. I soon taught myself to play it on our old piano, but of course I was playing Smoke On The Water too!

[Legatoboy]

I think it was a waltz or Lady of Spain or something like that on the accordion. I loved playing waltzes on the accordion in 1962! I love 3/4 time! Everything else comes from there! My accordion lessons were Pre-Beatles!

 

I listened to jazz even then, Earl Gardner and Nat & Louie from the 50's tv shows w/ my folks who didn't play but my grandfather played guitar. I originally wanted to play trumpet but couldn't get a sound out of the horn in lessons in the 2nd grade though. My 7 year old lips just couldn't handle the mouthpiece yet. My grandparents had gone to Italy in 1959 and brought back a trumpet and an accordion. My bro hated the accordion and eventfully became a drummer, I got the accordion after the aperture lip failure w/trumpet. My aunt had a piano downstairs in their apartment. After 3 years of accordion lessons and watching my cousins develop on piano (they later dropped it), I wanted desperately to play piano. I didn't want to push buttons with my LH, I wanted to play the real deal!

I wouldn't start piano lessons until i was 20(+) and had gigged out on organ (hammond m3) and EP (rmi) from 14-20 playing all those HS dances and some clubs. A mistake (and then again, not!), I had a great time in my teens gigging constantly to my parents chagrin!

 

 

[Bill H.]

Showing my age here... "Whole Lotta Lovin'" Fats Domino. I drove the family nuts banging that piano break over and over on the family piano in the living room when I was growing up.

 

For you young 'uns... and older players too 'cause it's pretty cool... here's a Youtube link to the master playing this live...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yzy-jGbsTA

[Legatoboy]

Bill,

 

You were lucky to have the piano there, very nice!

Nothing like an Old Folks Boogie!

 

lb

 

Showing my age here... "Whole Lotta Lovin'" Fats Domino. I drove the family nuts banging that piano break over and over on the family piano in the living room when I was growing up.

 

For you young 'uns... and older players too 'cause it's pretty cool... here's a Youtube link to the master playing this live...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yzy-jGbsTA

[SK]

No one song made me start playing. I played piano at home. One day, some kids in a neighborhood garage band heard me from outside, rang the door bell and asked if I wanted to be in their "band". So I had to buy a keyboard.

 

Later, I decided to learn a jazz song, and I wanted something contemporary. So the first jazz tune I learned was an early 'out' Chick Corea tune called "The Brain." Then I tried to sit in with different bands to play it, ("You guys know The Brain?") and of course, NOBODY knew it. It was the only actual jazz song I knew.

[Moonglow]

My dad played tenor sax in a popular wedding/dance band here in Northwest Indiana and as a young kid I would occasionally tag along with him to gigs. His band had a rather charismatic accordion player (oxymoron?) so I became aware of the "essence" of keyboards in music at a very young age. I recall hearing "Joy" by Apollo when I was in elementary school and immediately recognizing that it was a keyboard playing the lead line, which I thought was cool. But in high school when I got my hands on an 8-track tape of "Santana's Greatest Hits" and heard "Evil Ways" (a song my dad's band also performed....by then with an organ player!) my fate was sealed.

[Dana.]

I think my initial inspiration was a Howard Jones video--maybe "Things Can Only Get Better"?--but "The Way It Is" by Bruce Hornsby and the Range was the clincher.