Music Making Quotes

There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say. ~ Charles Hazlewood

For me, music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

I approach my music-making as an art-form
something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth. ~ Brian Wilson

The final new elements in music making (as opposed to listening, considered in the next section) were introduced by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826). Weber had a diseased hip and walked with a limp but he was a virtuoso of the guitar and an excellent singer, until he damaged his voice by accidentally drinking a glass of nitric acid. ~ Peter Watson

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. ~ John Holt

His performance was also intensely visual, with his volatile movements in front of the piano, and his cries and wild vocal accompaniment to his playing, all of which spoke eloquently of his extraordinary passion for the instrument and the music he coaxed, tickled and sometimes pounded out of him. Many critics were put off by all this, thinking it was a mere outward show- and therefore insincere. In fact it is an essential part of music-making for Jarrett, his way of achieving his state of grace… the ecstasy of inspiration. Miles Davis understood that immediately, and so did most other musicians. Jack DeJohonette says: "The one thing that struck me about Keith, that made him stand out from other players, was that he really has a love affair with the piano, it's a relationship with that instrument… Keith's hands are actually quire small but because of that he can do things that a person like myself, or other pianists with normal hand spans, can't do… it enables him to overlap certain chord sequences and do rhythmic things and contrapuntal lines and get these effects of like, four people playing the piano… But I've never seen anybody just have such a rapport with their instrument and know its limitations but also push them to the limits, transcend the instrument – which is what I try and do with the drums as well. ~ Ian Carr

If you ask me about music and how things should be played, I believe that music-making is the combination of having learned how to do something right, what one feels is right to do in the moment, and the way the audience is listening. ~ Michala Petri

I can't imagine ever not making music, making albums, writing songs, doing shows. That's all I really know, and that's all I really do. ~ Pixie Lott

Even then, I could still appreciate the moment of simply making sounds with a group of people. There is another place you go to in those instances, and it feels vast, refreshing, like you're creating your own air to breathe. And even though it's never going to happen again and there's a palpable sense of mediocrity, there's still a connection that you wouldn't have otherwise, to the sound, to the people. ~ Carrie Brownstein

Music-making as a means of getting money is hell ~ Gustav Holst

If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale. ~ Nicholas Sparks

My intention always has been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority. A musician, after all, is not a mili- tary officer. What matters most is human contact. The great mys- tery of music making requires real friendship among those who work together. Every member of the orchestra knows I am with him and her in my heart. ~ Carlo Maria Giulini

What people really should be able to be confident in is that the standards of music- making that classically trained musicians present is elite, it is the best and all of us as artists should be committed to that. ~ Lesley Garrett

The most unique thing about music making is sharing. ~ Igor Levit

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation. ~ John Burnside

For a long time in the 1970s, I was experimenting to build musical instruments and use them. I did a lot of ethnic music studies and other things, like electronic music. Making homemade musical instruments and performing was my major activity from the time. ~ Yoshi Wada

It was a natural thing for me to go become a musician, and then to start writing music. I don't even really remember making a decision to go into music, it was just there for me, always. If I weren't making a living at it, I'd still be writing music. ~ Geoff Zanelli

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now. ~ Edward Norton

Free improvisation, in addition to being a highly skilled musical craft, is open to use by almost anyone-beginners, children, and non-musicians. The skill and intellect required is whatever is available. Its accessibility to the performer is, in fact, something which appears to offend both its supporters and detractors ... And as regards method, the improvisor employs the oldest in music-making ... Mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation. ~ Derek Bailey

Also, painting and animation are really solitary pursuits, so the collaborative aspects of music making and acting are pretty welcome sometimes. ~ Tunde Adebimpe

I don't live for the accolades. I'm more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings. ~ J. Cole

I am equally excited about the possibilities that music making holds for all people and it's ability to heal what seems to me a chronic imbalance in modern life. ~ Paul Winter

There's always the syndrome of the parent-child relationship: when someone has known you since you were very young, it doesn't matter how much more independent, how much older or more mature you get - there is still that element, the dynamic of the relationship that is very hard to successfully transform, and that has nothing to do with the music-making, in the end. ~ Helene Grimaud

I think that what I'm interested with is the creative side of music-making, rather than all the travelling. ~ Michael Giles

What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing. ~ Will Oldham

Both men and women are conceived as merely capable of response to a situation that their society has already defined for them as sexual, and so the Arapesh feel that it is necessary to chaperon betrothed couples who are too young ... with their definition of sex as a response to an external situation rather than as spontaneous desire, both men and women are regarded as helpless in the face of seduction. Parents warn their sons even more than they warn their daughters against permitting themselves to get into situations in which someone can make love to them. ~ Margaret Mead

He glanced at me, then chuckled. "Sprezzatura's an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy. ~ Joseph Finder

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music. ~ Luciano Berio

Rock & roll is dying. It's frightening to think about the music scene 20 years from now. ~ Kurt Cobain

I have a theory that there's almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you're beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn't know I'd end up making my living from low-budget, independent films. ~ Marcia Gay Harden

The business of music. You know, it's an oxymoron in a sense. It's like the two things. Although we both need each other, they really don't go together. ~ Kelis

The iPod is a proprietary integrated product, although that is becoming quite modular. You can download your music from Amazon as easily as you can from iTunes. You also see modularity organized around the Android operating system that is growing much faster than the iPhone. So I worry that modularity will do its work on Apple. ~ Clayton Christensen

A lot of the music, and especially rap, I don't understand. ~ Patti Page

A tapping foot isn't the best a listener can get from a song: A good song makes a listener dance. A great song makes him think. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

This is not a call for working faster or doing more overtime or making do with fewer people," he said in one town hall forum. ~ Ed Catmull

By 2000, the rate of GIS development had risen above the normal growth trend of institutional management skills. This means that systems are now more capable than people, and the ordinary incremental growth rate in skills within an organization does not keep up with developments in technology. Recently, the relative curve of GIS development has leveled off somewhat, but management still has a lot of institutional learning to do before truly making use of the full capabilities of GIS. ~ Roger Tomlinson

If a man has wealth, he has to make a choice, because there is the money heaping up. He can keep it together in a bunch, and then leave it for others to administer after he is dead. Or he can get it into action and have fun, while he is still alive. I prefer getting it into action and adapting it to human needs, and making the plan work. ~ George Eastman

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most extensive and sustained exploration of the world, and the mightiest monument of collective wondering, is, of course, science. Richard Dawkins speaks of 'the feeling of awed wonder' that science can give us and asserts that 'it is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest music and poetry can deliver'. Anyone who is not acquainted with science - its questions, its answers, the limits to its answers, and honesty about those limits, the brilliance of its methodologies and instruments, its sense of the unanswerable - is denying herself a great opening, a dormer window, in conciousness. ~ Raymond Tallis

I'm not an anti-online person. I get what the modern world's about and I understand that that's the nature of music dissemination. ~ Tim Hecker

I probably won't play a song the same way tomorrow as I play it today. Only a pitchman says the same thing the same way twice, without varying a word. If music is a language, why don't people use it with the same subtlety, nuance, and facility as they do the spoken language? Probably because they don't verbalize with the same vocabulary and tone they once did. It has been said that a people's character is reflected in their music. Our culture is a perfect example. If people here walk around using one-syllable words with no color, no variety, no shading, how can we expect our musical language to be any different? It's like the emperor's new clothes – sure they can sit and make wild noises on their synthesizers and call it music – who questions? But ask them to pull up a chair and play 'Gal in Calico' or Temptation,' or even a straight dramatic version of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and they can't do it. They're too pretentious. They can't just play songs. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college. ~ Colson Whitehead

That night they made love, the kind of love-making that is another country, a country of its own, not yours or mine. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes. ~ Kathleen Hanna

Something snapped inside her. "Of course I'm afraid! Relationships do bad things to me." He started to respond, but the pain had gone on long enough, and she didn't want to hear it. "You know what I want? I want peace. I want a good job and a decent place to live. I want to read books and listen to music and have time to make some female friendships that are going to last. When I wake up in the morning, I want to know that I have a decent shot at being happy. And here's what's really sad. Until I met you, I was almost there. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I don't really listen to music. ~ Phil Collins

For a parent, it's hard to recognize the significance of your work when you're immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, "I'm making my contribution to the future of the planet." But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent. ~ Joyce Maynard

Music is language itself. It should not have any barriers of caste, creed, language or anything. Music is one, only cultures are different. Music is the language of languages. It is the ultimate mother of languages. ~ A.R. Rahman

With all the decision making in my life, I often have to pause, look up and remember God is the One working behind the scenes. I say to myself, He is able to work all things out for good. I just need to submit to Him and His ways. I can rest. ~ K.P. Yohannan

My wife grew up loving country music, so I always run songs by her whether I wrote it or if somebody pitched it to me. ~ Rodney Atkins

Occasionally, in each age and in different lands, a Buddha is born, that is to say, an enlightened person ... they re-codify the ways, the practices, they make changes that are just intelligent changes that adapt to a new century, a new culture. ~ Frederick Lenz

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music ... ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I'm a big online everything. But for me, shopping online started with music, obviously, then it went onto books, meditation CDs, and I just recently bought these electronic cigarettes. My husband is trying to quit smoking, so I went online and I bought those BluCigs cigarettes in every flavor for him. ~ Fergie

I have never had a great love of the music business, I never have. ~ Ginger Baker

It seems like all the time people are making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true visions when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self. ~ Elizabeth Berg

Pleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation. ~ Voltaire

The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within. ~ Alice Coltrane

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one's self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one's place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done ~ William Graham Sumner

And love? I am still in love with her. Not a day breaks but that I think of her, and when the dogwood turns red in winter I stretch out my hands and imagine her hair.

I am in love with her; not a fantasy or a myth or a creature of my own making.

Her. A person who is not me. I invented Bonaparte as much as he invented himself.

My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love.

The one is about you, the other about someone else. ~ Jeanette Winterson

I lose myself in music because I can't be bothered explaining what I feel to anyone else around me. ~ Robert Smith

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance. ~ Aldous Huxley

I know, when I look into the eyes of my own children, the look of wonder when I speak of life back in the '60s. That's why the Rolling Stones are such a hit even in their 60s, why Dennis Hopper is so compelling, even when he's making pitches for something unhip as long-term financial planning. ~ Chris Matthews

Everything we (the Grateful Dead) ever did was a demonstration of the value of cross-fertilization, It was unconscious at first, but when we started looking at each other, we had all these different influences ... Bobby Weir used to call it electric Dixieland. ~ Phil Lesh