How To Play Piano For Beginners?

Is it legitimate for a musician to claim they can play various instruments, when their competency is limited to plonking a few chords on a piano, or playing others at a basic beginners standard?

• I have seen professional musicians of the highest caliber list on Wikipedia an unlikely number of instruments they play, when it is clear from recordings that they play these instruments at a rudimentary level. Why the compulsion to do this?  They are world class on the guitar, but plonk on the piano.  You'd think they'd want to keep their dignity intact rather than claim instruments they play at schoolboy competency.

• Answer:

  Sometimes it is. I remember ending up in a rather big and well equipped studio to record bass-guitar tracks for a commercial CD-production. After I was done, it turned out I was supposed to do the keyboard tracks as well. Somewhere in the pre-production phase I had most probably told the guy who was running the project that I could play some keyboards as well (or he had simply heard some of my own stuff lending to the thought I'm probably a keyboard player). Anyhow. I did do and finish the keyboard parts for this particular CD in about 4 hours. So I could play the right notes in the right rhythm without too many mistakes. This sort of makes me a keyboard player, I suppose. On the other hand: I would never attempt to sell myself as a 'keyboard player' or 'pianist', because I'm simply not sufficiently interested in the sonic capabilities of the instruments one can unlock with a keyboard. I'm a guy whom likes a piece of wood with strings on top. But, in the end. My producer guy was helped out a lot by me being capable of a decent rendition of the keyboard parts he had envisioned.