Brian Wilson

With only having had a few weeks of music instruction on a toy accordion, Brian was essentially self-taught on piano but was said to play it obsessively after school, which rapidly honed his skills.

His late brother Carl once said that by age ten “Brian could play great boogie-woogie piano”

Fascinated with vocal harmonies, Brian would spend countless hours after school figuring out the harmonies of the Four Freshman, a vocal group from the 1950’s and applying them to voicings on the piano. It was during this time that he absorbed the rich and sometimes sophisticated vocals of The Four Freshmen. He would teach these harmonies to his brothers, and the early sounds of Beach Boy harmony began to take shape.

He studied music in both high school and college. The first complete song he ever learned to play on piano was “You Stepped Out Of A Dream”, by The Four Freshman. Brian was 18 years old at the time. Brian can read and write music. While he taught many of his harmonies by demonstrating on the piano, he would also write out his parts on manuscript paper.

He prefers writing on synthesizer now rather than piano, as he feels the synth sounds are primo. He was so inspired by the great sounds on his Yamaha synth, he wrote 18 songs in one month on it!.