I used to play piano by ear. I thought it was totally lame and fought tooth and nail to keep my parents from enrolling me in piano lessons. :smack: If only I knew…
Check this out while you guys are at it.
*<hides accordion and guitar - I don’t want *Weirddave ** to hate me…>
He hates us most of all. He knocked me up so that I had to quit my singing job.
I feel I must pedantically point out here as well that Dave, unlike his wife, has never even been to a concert of mine… 
Well just keep him away from me and my piano! :eek:
I can compose and write music – on computer, using softsynths and samplers. I’m not half bad either; once upon a time, had the company not gone under because the console it was writing for went under, I would have been been the musician for an RPG released by Electronic Arts back in the mid-90s. (They were the ones who reviewed and approved of my skills, so I have at least that validation) But I am face-burningly jealous of people who can sing well. I’d love nothing more than to be able to sing well. I can pass myself off as a subset of Bernard Sumner circa 1981 sometimes – I’m hardly tone-deaf, I just don’t have much control. I may not be featured on a segment of American Idol’s worst-of-the-worst, but I’d be tossed in under 30 seconds flat just the same.
I’d also love – I mean desperately, passionately, creepy-stalkeringly love – to play piano. Because I can’t. I can probably mange chopsticks, and have been known to tinkle out the synth-lines from Axel F or Jump within a few attempts, but for the most part I’m a 3-year-old banging on random keys: Tons of enthusiasm but absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
sigh
It doesn’t bother me if someone can sing. I can carry a tune mostly; that’s about it and I’m just… not interested in singing myself. The same goes for most instuments. Though, if you can play the piano; I hate you. I hate you SO much. Like, I want you in a box, in the ground. Now.
I’ve always wanted to learn, but my parents couldn’t afford the lessons when I was a child and I’m way too old to start now. Ugh. If the devil suddenly appeared and offered me the ability and talent to play the piano in exchange for my eternal soul, I’d actually consider it. Maybe…
Oh, how I hate those who can. They never seem to appreciate it, either.
Seriously-- if I can’t play the piano, no one should. 
I’m a multi-instrumentalist, so you probably hate me already. But I can’t read music to save my life. The people of whom I’m jealous are natural-born singers. You’ve heard them. They just open their mouths and it falls out, the way singing is supposed to sound. It seems as if there’s no effort involved, it’s just perfect, all the time. They have expression, and passion, and when they sing, they really mean it. I can’t do that. I can carry a tune pretty well, and sing harmony, even arrange harmony by demonstrating what to sing. But I am not a lead singer, and I never will be. It doesn’t help that I’m a baritone, either. All the singers I envy are tenors.
Weirddave
Well, I’ve been playing electric guitar for 40 years (and boy are my arms tired).
Anyway, I take it that your “hatred” of musicians is 100% facetious otherwise you wouldn’t have the link to the Taco Bell guy. 
ArchitectChore
Well it’s good to see there’s another John McLaughlin fan on the SDMB.
Small nitpick weirddave - the thread topic should be “You know whom I hate?”
He doesn’t want to knock up pianos, or we’d have baby Baldwins sprouting forth from our console.
The hardest thing about starting lessons when you’re not a child is having access to a piano for practicing. Figure that out, though, and you can learn at any age: there’s no such thing as “too old” to start piano lessons. There’s “too old” to start lessons with the goal of being a child prodigy, or concert pianist (maybe), but saying you’re too old to start taking lessons is saying that you’re too old to learn anything new. My officemate started taking piano lessons when she was 35, I started taking guitar lessons when I was 32, etc. IIRC you’re not even 20 yet, so think of all the things you can still learn to do! 
One of the very few things in my life that has caused people to be envious is that I taught myself to play piano when I was 5 or 6 after listening to my mother play “Für Elise.” I’m a good classical pianist, but I would rather be a jazz pianist and I just don’t have “it.”
I refused to take lessons. In hindsight, that was a mistake, but I thought that since I never met a piece of classical music I wanted to play but couldn’t, I didn’t have anything to learn. I was a stupid kid.
“Way too old”, Clockwork and Candy? IIRC you can’t even vote yet. Of course you can start piano lessons.
You know who else I hate? Grammar nazis.
Hell, when I outgrew my group lessons after about 9 years of playing, I decided to try an advanced class at the local JC (I was in high school and had taken classes there before). My grandma, who had always paid for my lessons, didn’t like me being at college alone, so she took the beginning class taught in the same room at the same time. Her kids had taken lessons too, and she had never learned to play; she got a kick out of it.
Moral of the story: You’re never too old to learn something that you enjoy.
Or, in some cases, doesn’t. Something about the visual stimulus in my case; it will only make me play a note so quickly, and no quicker. Anything more is overload and just brings me to a stop.
Oh. Very funny.
I was in basically the same boat. Lessons cost too much. I could have gotten some basic start in on it in grade and junior high school but when it came time to pick an instrument I was always too late at everyone else got the good instruments. What did I end up with?
Fucking tuba.
I’m 5’5" and back then could have been blown over with a sneeze and they give me the damn tuba.
Not that I’m bitter. much.
A few years back I had a Yamaha DX7-II on loan from a friend. The plan was to get some good MIDI stuff happening. I was still stuck on tracking and, at the time, those new-fangled softsynths so I never got around to it - and besides I didn’t have the money to take lessons anyway.
Now I do, but the DX7 is long gone so I have nothing to practise on. Meh. Someday.
Better your piano than my organ… runs
Oh stop it - you know he’s just your type. 