Percussion Quotes

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion. ~ Paul Weller

I played in the percussion section 4th grade through high school - snare and timpani mostly. ~ Suzy Bogguss

The thing with the piano is, the piano is like percussion almost - well, it is. You have to ... not beat on it, but there is more work involved than a Hammond. With a Hammond, you just lay your hands on the keys, man, and you're gone. ~ Gregg Allman

I like to listen to my iPod and also play music. I've been doing percussion since I was eight or nine. Rhythm is crucial in long jump but also in life. ~ Bob Beamon

There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart's chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood. This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world's percussion instruments combined. That sweet sound of love. ~ Michael Jackson

The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients. ~ Oliver Sacks

No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album? ~ Milan Kundera

I mean, I can sit down with a guitar, and in fact, we do two, three songs with just guitar and percussion. ~ Jackie DeShannon

The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined. ~ Evelyn Glennie

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion ~ Leonard Cohen

Symmetria by the Uccello Project is a gorgeous, instrumental and largely unclassifiable record. Best thought of as 'cinematic', each of the tracks conjures up a range of emotions and images, taking the listener on a beautiful journey. The layers of basses, guitars and percussion ebb and flow, drawing on jazz, folk, blues and African music, blending all the elements into one lovely album. Recommended. ~ Steve Lawson

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil") ~ Julian Hawthorne

Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way ... What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent. ~ John Cage

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. ~ Quincy Jones

Well, I've heard a lot of people, but I think I would say a Brazilian musician named Hermeto Pascoal was one of my biggest influences. Through the years he mastered the keyboards. He use to play the organ Hammond B3, flute, saxophone, percussion and guitar. He is one of the most complete musicians that I ever met. Not too long after we came to the United States, Airto Moreira introduced him to Miles Davis, who recorded three of Hermeto's compositions on his album Live Evil. ~ Flora Purim

I adore storms. I love the raw power of the spectacle: Hydraulics! Voltage! Percussion! Mother Nature has dominion and everyone awaits her whim. ~ Kathy Reichs

When I was 12, I happened to see a schoolmate playing percussion, and it looked interesting. I asked for lessons, and it felt right. ~ Evelyn Glennie

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized ~ Charles Ives

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. ~ Karen Russell

I've been down there 6 times and there's nothing like Brazilian percussion. ~ Les Baxter

I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer. ~ Pharoah Sanders

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: "Is it genuwyne?" Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before. ~ Mark Twain

We don't just have equipment to set up, we have a whole stage set: TVs tuned to static, a busted old Moog synthesizer (also tuned to static - it basically just sits onstage, drooling, like a demented robot friend), an ironing board we use as a percussion stand, lamps (because we prefer mood lighting to rock-show lighting), various car parts and kitchen utensils (for hitting), a movie screen we project slides onto and a pair of mannequin legs in a gold lamé miniskirt with a TV for a torso. All this may sound arty, but really, it's just overenthusiastic. ~ Kristin Hersh

A volley of hailstones began abruptly, filled the woods with a frenzied percussion & ended on the sudden. ~ David Mitchell

I identify more as a musician than as a singer, because I play piano and percussion, and I engineer and produce everything that I do. ~ Janina Gavankar

My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds. ~ Wallace Shawn

The wind plays the world like an instrument. Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won't grow in cement. And as heart beats bring percussion fallen trees bring repercussions. Cities play upon our souls like broken drums. ~ Saul Williams

I'd finally reached the end of myself, all my self-reliance and denial and pride unraveling into nothingness, leaving only a blank Alison-shaped space behind. It was finished. I was done.
But just as I felt myself dissolving on the tide of my own self-condemnation, the dark waves receded, and I floated into a celestial calm.
I saw the whole universe laid out before me, a vast shining machine of indescribable beauty and complexity. Its design was too intricate for me to understand, and I knew I could never begin to grasp more than the smallest idea of its purpose. But I sensed that every part of it, from quark to quasar, was unique and - in some mysterious way - significant.
I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a peircing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase - nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it.
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a bli ~ R.J. Anderson

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer. ~ Bruno Mars

Say it's true: It is what it is. We're social, tribal, musical animals, walking percussion instruments. Most of us do the best we can. We show up. We strive for gratitude, and try not to be such babies. ~ Anne Lamott

'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' is a kind of expansion of chamber music. ~ Pierre Boulez

Noel ducked to the lower cabinets – a percussion of pots and pans clanged into each other.

"Are you intentionally trying not to listen to me?"

His head popped above the counter. "I resent that. I'm a great listener. Just ask the TV."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Alright. I had…"

Noel heard her swallow and he suddenly wanted to knock himself out with the frying pan.

"…relations…with a mortal, Tommy."

He ducked again, this time from embarrassment. He groaned silently, wishing she'd turn and walk away before she said what he knew was coming.

"It wasn't quite the same as it was when I was human. It didn't - "

"Please you, yeah I got it," he blurted. "Please, for the love of God, stop. ~ Devon Ashley

Music is the art that comes closest to Dionysian beauty in the sense of intoxication. No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's Ninth, Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, or the Beatles' White album? ~ Milan Kundera

High school marching band was its own little microcosm of the world. More a study in sociology than in woodwinds and brass: There were the band geeks, pimply and a tad too greasy, making out with one another every chance they got. There were the no-nonsense go-getters, eager to fill a line on their college applications, marching without rhythm or passion. There was the percussion section, hipsters-to-be whose arms would be full of tattoos in a few years' time. And there were the tuba players, chunky and asexual, as if they were slowly morphing into their instrument of choice. ~ Leah Konen

After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument. ~ Quincy Jones

I've figured out what to do with my hands ... onstage. I'm a percussion player, so I grab a tambourine as much as I can. ~ Taylor Hanson

Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument. ~ Charles Petzold

The walls and windows popped in staccato percussion as they relinquished the heat of the day. The soft chimes of the mantle clock supplied a beckoning melody. ~ Laura Rudacille

I studied classical percussion for ten years. At one point I was thinking about going to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but then I realized it's actually not what I wanted to do. ~ Alycia Debnam Carey

With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise. Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through. ~ Steven Price

The strident chimes of prayer bells from the distant temple resonated in the night air with ritual insistence, and nudged Kamala from her repose. What had once sounded to her like a sharp and persistent call to prayer now, with ceaseless repetition, mellowed to become plaintive and wistful, like one's favourite recording playing in the background to the syncopated percussion of lovemaking. (From the novel Blood & Nemesis by Ben Antao). ~ Ben Antao

That moment, the music screeched to a halt. There was an ungodly collision of brass, reed, and percussion - trombones and piccolos skidded into cacophony, a tuba farted, and the hollow clang of a cymbal wavered out of the big top, over our heads and into oblivion. ~ Sara Gruen

Percussion is physical, as most instruments are. The body must function well in order to play the instruments well. Last year I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. ~ Charles Bukowski

I have to have the reasons to make the record. There are just too many records out there, especially when it's something as audacious as a solo percussion record with solo drumming music on it. There better be a reason behind it. ~ Glenn Kotche

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion. ~ Janina Gavankar

Denny and McDaniel go into the percussion room and grab a bizarre metal contraption. Denny lifts it over his head and I give him a strange look, to which he responds like I'm a five year old, "Carr-i-er. ~ Courtney Brandt

Quentin had told Spike that inking 'percussion' across your
knuckles was kind of lame. It takes more than ten letters to make
a badass knuckle tattoo. That was the problem with drummers.
They didn't listen. But they always seemed to get laid anyway. ~ Ros Baxter

No one can get reall drunk on a novle or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's night, Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and percussion or the Beatles' White Album? He loved mozart as much as rock.
He considered music a liberating force, it liberated him from lonliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of hi body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends, He loved to dance an regretted that Sabina did not share his passion
pg 92-93 ~ Milan Kundera

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such. ~ Paul Lansky

My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he's also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion. ~ Lee Ritenour

You repay the debt," he said. "That should be more than enough."

"What if I disagree? And what if, after all your trouble, I still say no?"

"I have ways to insist."

"I have ways to decline."

"You'll pay one way or the other," he said.

"In euros? Dollars? How much do I owe you?"

If he registered the sarcasm, he didn't react to it. "You pay in the only currency that holds value to you," he said. "You pay in innocent life."


The words stung like a hard smack across the face and her eyes smarted as if she'd been physically struck. He should not know these things.


Casual indifference remained plastered on her face while deep below, in that hollow crevice where madness had lain dormant these last nine months, the slow, steady percussion of war tapped out, faint but perceptible.


"Which innocents?" she said.

He waved his hand with that dismissive gesture. "Innocents are innocents," he said.
"Is one life really valued higher than another?"


From the fear bubbling to the surface, she instinctively knew. Knew that the only way a man in his position could gloat as if he owned her was if he held what she deemed most priceless. ~ Taylor Stevens

I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a piercing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase
nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it. ~ R. J. Anderson

Remember the last show you saw that got a standing ovation? Now try to think of one that had the audience on its feet at intermission. They stepped, strutted, stomped, romped, ran rung, hung, flung, flew, threw and played their way through 16 numbers (17 if you count the percussion encore in the lobby that stopped the departing crowd in its collective tracks). It was Blast! and it was fantastic. That said, the show is a cacophony of color and creativity a musical montage offering nearly two hours of stimuli. ~ Jan Perry

Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in. ~ Dan Aykroyd