My Very First Piano

[EscapeRocks]

You may remember the picture I posted last week of my mom (rip) holding me at the piano when I was 9 months old.   I mentioned that 62 year old Story & Clark is still in the family, at my brother's house in Tucson where my mom lived up to the end.

 

While going thru the TONS of picture albums of my mother, he found one of me sitting at that same piano when I was about 4...a few years before lessons began.  He set the picture on the Piano and got a picture.

 

9 Months Old

 

About 3.5 to 4 years old... in my winter jammies

 

Again, this was my parent's first piano purchased new in 1960, 2 years before I came along.  It's the piano I started lessons on.   I'm glad we still have it.

[WheelHead]

Reminds me of the John Lewis 2018 advert featuring Elton John.  At the end of the video it depicts elton as a child getting a piano for a christmas present

 

 

 

 

[Jose EB5AGV]

Lovely pictures and memories. Now the best valued gift for most children is a device with display, used to spend countless hours doing basically nothing productive. I miss good old simpler times (and I will turn 54 on 14th, so not that old 😅)

 

My parents bought or first (toy electronic) piano when I was about 6 or so. Then, at about 12, they bought a 49 keys italian electronic piano (Fesma Granada 49, still have it!). But, unfortunately, I was not hooked to it and preferred dealing with electronics and computers, which later decided my career. It took several decades to really begin to play, just 4 years ago (February 2018). But, interestingly, it was the Fesma organ which triggered my renewed interest on keys, as I was about to sell it to make some space for an aquarium on the living room, where it sit unused for years, and then I found it didn't work. I fixed it and then the spark ignited!

 

All in all, that Fesma did the trick, even if decades later 🤩

 

Jose

[CyberGene]

Lovely memories!

 

I grew up with my mom's upright piano too and have very fond memories of it. My grandparents bought it when she was in her early teens in the 1960-s and it costed them the entire year's salary of my granddad who was a neurosurgeon (well, we're Bulgarian, so a neurosurgeon in the Eastern Bloc wasn't paid much more than a janitor in the same hospital...). And since we were a poor country, according to my mom they had to live on a very tight budget for a few years to afford that piano. When you take in mind she wasn't a musician (she would later become a civil engineer) and they didn't intend to make her a musician, it's fascinating how people of that generation were ready to spend their last pennies on something like a piano! People were made of different dough back then.

[Lindaru]

We never had a piano, but I would tinker around on one if alone at school, and even the church pipe organ (I recall waiting for the minister to take classes and playing "Inagaddadavida" on it) at 16 years of age.  My mother had two very interesting instruments, one a Stylophone and one an autoharp.  Much later in 1985 I would happen on a Farfisa combo organ and that was my first keys I owned which would lead to a variety of various synths afterwards.  My first piano belonged to the school, however, and I accompanied the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders for their Christmas play on it at 16 and will always remember that as where I actually started.

 

[Rod S]

Awesome memory David.

 

My earliest memory was moving to another country and staying in a hotel for a few months until we got settled (1980).   My dad taught me some simple melodies on a piano (he even made some notecards) and the hotel staff would let me sneak into the bar lounge in the morning (which wasn't opened then IIRC) and let me tinker away at the piano.