Robert Fripp Quotes

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.

Use your ears to record and your eyes to video.

We begin where we are.

The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

That certain feeling happened to me in a big way quite often with the first King Crimson. Amazing things would happen-I mean, telepathy, qualities of energy, things that I had never experienced before with music. You can't tell whether the music is playing the musician or the musician is playing the music.

Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.

But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.

The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable.
The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen.

Purely by hard work, one can become an artist.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.

I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening.

Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.

My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.

I continue to explain that plot inconsistencies in B movies are consistent, and should not be allowed to undermine one's enjoyment of the action, nor the fundamental credibility of the storyline: the good & bad guys are clearly delineated & easily recognizable, the hero duffs over the baddies, things blow up loudly & spectacularly, the good guy wins. Entirely credible.

Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.

Beginner's luck is great for beginners.

I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.

The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal.

When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.

In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.

The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

Music never goes away. It is always available, but we are not always available to music.

Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.