Heya, I guess you could say I'm a music lover I'm a pianist and an oboist, but I'm unlike most people's preconceptions of me, being a classical musician and all, I like pretty much everything. I've just kind of grown to like everything, because it makes music so much more interesting. Also, I've just started to teach my self some audio programming with c / c++ and a few libraries like portaudio / portmidi, and it's like a dream come true.

lol my guitar skills are non-existent, although I did play around with bass a tiny bit. I would say piano's a difficult instrument, but I think it depends a lot on how your brain works. The good thing about piano is that at least it's pretty accessible and not too hard to get started, and there's loads of tutorials on youtube.

I'm a classically trained musician but classical music isn't really what I regularly listen to aha, maybe it'll grow on me, but two guys I genuinely like are Debussy and Ryuichi Sakamoto, both of which are pianists To be honest, although I'm classically trained, I'm more of a jazz guy...

Hmm, with an instrument like piano you really can't pin it to one genre. In jazz, piano tends to have more of an accompaniment role, but if you pick a random jazz recording, chances are there will be a piano in there. But if you want to see jazz with piano as a lead, check out Bill Evans his stuff's awesome. I use allmusic for reviews, and they do have a classical section btw.

When I'm looking for new artists, I usually look into the music I have already, and search for artists that collaborate on the stuff I've got, or even just find artists that the artists I like recommend. Generally, you just need a starting point. The thing is for music, there isn't a definitive guide, just LOTS of opinions.

Yeah, I have an electric Roland piano and a Nord Stage EX keyboard, which has some synth stuff too. One day hopefully I'll be able to get a really nice acoustic piano, but the sound quality of a good electric piano is more than good enough for me at the moment. Also, it's pretty useful to be able to plug in some headphones so I can play whenever I want and not make the neighbours angry.

No, usually electric pianos are designed to be self contained and look like real pianos - so there will be an amp (or lots of amps for mine) built into it. Learning the keyboard is similar to piano, but for most keyboards you won't get the same key weighting - keyboards are much springer and easier to press the keys. It depends what you want to do - if you just want a play around it probably doesn't matter that much.

Sure you'd be able to play it on a keyboard, but if you're more into serious classical stuff then an electric piano or properly weighted keyboard is most likely a better choice.