Playing Music Quotes

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music ... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem. ~ Demetri Martin

Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force ... a different kind of energy. ~ Eddie Vedder

When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. ~ Bob Hope

I just thank God I can make a living doing something I enjoy as much as I do playing music. ~ Charlie Daniels

Zack leaned over to whisper in her ear. "It's true, Mollie," he said. "Everything that man said is true. Tomorrow we begin rebuilding. Playing music. Dancing. I promise you. ~ Elizabeth Camden

It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops ... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue. ~ Kim Gordon

Without (my wife) Laurie, I would never be here right now, I know that. I would either be in a coffin, or stashed away doing a life sentence some place. Or running and hiding some place, if I was still alive. I'm certain I wouldn't be playing music. She's just been perfect for me. And she's a protector also; she protects me from myself, from temptations, and bad associations. She's constantly shielding me from walking the red hot coals of existing as a game. ~ Art Pepper

I just want to keep playing music and keep recording. I feel like my best days are ahead. ~ Ricky Skaggs

It's my language, the language I speak. I've spent a lot more time playing music than talking or writing. ~ Nitin Sawhney

It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. ~ Victor De Laprade

I wouldn't even think of playing music if I was
born in these times. I wouldn't even listen to the radio. ~ Bob Dylan

Music wasn't forced on me [in my childhood]. It was something I wanted to do. And ever since, I've never stopped, I've never stopped playing music. ~ John Legend

I've been playing music all my life, from being a choir soloist at Symphony Hall as a youngster to playing in bands through high school and college at Kent State. Went in the service at 17, out before I was 21. ~ Arthur Godfrey

This girl wasn't tapping her fingers restlessly, though. Her movements were methodical. Synchronized. Sitting far enough to the left of her to study her profile, I watched her chin bob, so subtly it was almost undetectable – and at some point, I realized that when her expression was remote and her fingers were moving, she was hearing music. She was playing music.
It was the most magical thing I'd ever seen anyone do. ~ Tammara Webber

Many, many years ago, I was one of the few conductors who talked to the audience and now a lot of classical conductors have figured it out ... otherwise, you just get the back of someone's head playing music you could hear on a CD. It's not enough anymore. ~ Marvin Hamlisch

What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~ John Dryden

I like "Julie Gold's song "From a Distance". Her song reminds me of the world as seen through an observer's eye. Seen from a distance, we are people in the same band playing music for everyone. We are artists who play the most beautiful instruments in the world - life. ~ Ilchi Lee

We're slammed at work and busy at home. Throw in an occasional outing with friends or significant others, and we're ready for bed at 10:00 PM every night. Really ready for bed. There's barely enough time in a day to cover all our mandatory obligations, so optional activities like novel writing, journaling, painting or playing music
things that feel great but no one will ever take us to task for shirking
are invariably left for another day.
Which is how most of us become 'one day' novelists. As in, 'One day, I'd really like to write a novel.' The problem is that that day never seems to come, and so we're stuck. ~ Chris Baty

I'm prepared to spend the rest of my life playing clubs, if that means I'm playing music that I believe in. ~ Billy Corgan

In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history. ~ Steve Earle

When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician. ~ David Sanborn

Getting out on stage and playing music for people feels great when people are cheering for you, that's obviously really exciting. But what's most exciting is the idea that we're all experiencing something that's bigger than us. ~ Dan Mangan

I'm an all-things-in-moderation kind of person. I do eat a warm donut occasionally. I especially enjoy a cider donut when I'm apple picking. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. ~ Rachael Ray

I didn't have any intention of playing music for a living or anything like that. I was just not doing well in my head or whatever you call it and drinking too much. ~ Frank Fairfield

I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negros should write Negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies ... We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America we must develop along our own lines. ~ James Reese Europe

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy. ~ Joan Baez

The way I started playing music was sitting around with friends and singing songs. I love good ol' fashioned guitar pulls. ~ Rodney Atkins

We were friends for a year before we started playing music together. We both think it's pretty important. Tyler's my friend before he's a guy in my band, and when we talk to each other about things, it comes from a friend standpoint, not just a business standpoint. ~ Josh Dun

We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money. ~ Ville Valo

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace. ~ Daniel Barenboim

Death is never more than a breath away from the act of playing music. Each note on a guitar represents a small curve: birth, life, and death-and then you start over. ~ Andy Summers

Though the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black: no hands in your pockets, no playing music, no sudden movements, no driving your car, no walking at night, no walking in the day, no turning onto this street, no entering this building, no standing your ground, no standing here, no standing there, no talking back, no playing with toy guns, no living while black. Eleven ~ Jesmyn Ward

Albert Einstein was an avid violinist. He believed that working with his hands in this way and playing music helped his thinking process as well. In ~ Robert Greene

When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff. ~ Niklas Zennstrom

People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that. ~ Damien Chazelle

I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring. ~ Carrie Brownstein

I listen mostly to live music, and mostly my musical experience was playing music with other people. ~ Linda Ronstadt

When you're playing music, say for instance, you're playing a part of the band and you're looking at your music, your horn is down into the stand. This way, it's up and it goes right on out to the audience, you know? ~ Billy Eckstine

Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~ Arnold Bennett

I started playing music at a pretty young age. ~ Duncan Sheik

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music. ~ Van Morrison

As a music listener, I'm becoming more and more ADD - like, "Eh, I'm bored with this". So who knows how long I'll be playing music. ~ Chaz Bundick

My family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons.It wasn't forced on me. It was something I wanted to do. And ever since, I've never stopped, I've never stopped playing music. I never went through a period where I didn't want to do it. ~ John Legend

I'm actually a pretty upbeat person outside of playing music. ~ Ryan Adams

I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid. ~ Mose Allison

I see a lot of parents now who are really supporting their kids playing music. ~ Jonny Lang

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name. ~ Samuel R. Delany

I'm definitely an athlete who has a hobby playing music. I've been doing baseball since I was 5 or 6. It's the only thing I've ever thought of really my whole life, and music came into my life actually in '99, playing and singing. It's definitely been the only hobby I've had that I can't put down. ~ Bronson Arroyo

I have never stopped playing music. ~ Jason Schwartzman

The No. 1 thing the people I have spent time with in my life have done for fun is playing music. ~ Ezra Miller

Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me. ~ Ryan Adams

Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it. ~ Kate Bush

The piano is the social instrument par excellence ... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment. ~ Jacques Barzun

My job is to entertain people by playing my music well. You shouldn't really be upset because people like you, should you? ~ Oliver

I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water. What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding element. Waves don't care who you are. ~ Eddie Vedder

I just like playing music and doing it with people that I care about. It doesn't really matter where. It's like, 'Why don't we just play piano in a small bar? Why do we want to make an arena full of people happy?' ~ Josh Klinghoffer

When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp. ~ Nick Offerman

He signed his work .. you could always tell when it was Herb Ellis playing ~ Barney Kessel

I had a radio show at the local college and I got kicked off the air and banished forever for playing music from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie because (quote-unquote) "They were gay." So, things have changed quite a bit. ~ Anne Boleyn

I've been surfing almost as long as I've been playing music. ~ Jackson Guthy

When I was playing with synth players, I was still within a conceptual framework of playing music. When I started playing solo, I became much more aware of the acoustic phenomena that the instruments were producing. ~ Z'EV

The moment you start to talk about playing music, you destroy music. It cannot be talked about. It can only be played, enjoyed and listened to. ~ John McLaughlin

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

I went to engineering school, I went to physics class. I said, 'Screw this, I don't want to be here. I'd much rather be at a club playing music.' ~ Huey Lewis

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you. ~ Randy Owen

Every James Brown cut makes a party get crazy. He's the god of all music. I always play different wild remixes of his songs because people start bugging out when they realise what I'm playing. ~ Afrika Bambaataa

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. ~ Duke Ellington

In his writings, Patton was shameless about his ambition to woo Lena to be his bride. He detailed the gradual progress he made, playing music for her on his violin, writing her poems, beguiling her with stories, engaging her in conversation. It was clear that he obsessed over her. He knew what he wanted and never relented until she was his. ~ Brandon Mull

You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn't work out like that. ~ John Corbett

My only real hobby is playing music. I write a lot of music on guitar and keyboards and hope one day to make a record or maybe even write the score for a film. ~ Graeme Base

When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head. ~ Jack Johnson

Mom did not want me to have anything to do with playing music. Being from a middle-class Black family in that particular era, everybody wanted you to have a profession
a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. So she sent me to school to study medicine. ~ Don Alias

I spend a lot of time doing watercolors and playing music in my apartment. ~ Lola Kirke

Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way. ~ Steven Rinella

Being that attuned to each other's inner emotional lives was the sometimes unfortunate side effect of playing music together. ~ Aja Gabel

This is sad. I just think it's a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It's a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I'm so proud to be one of you and I don't care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it's up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN! ~ Hayley Williams

America, I think, is about poor people playing music and poor people sharing food and poor people dancing, even when everything else in their life is so desperate, and so dismal that it doesn't seem there should be any room for any music, any extra food, or any extra energy for dancing. And people can say that I'm wrong, that we're a puritanical people, an evangelical people, a selfish people, but I don't believe that. I don't want to believe that. ~ Nickolas Butler

I play piano all the time. I'm always at my piano, playing music. ~ Brian Wilson

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you. ~ Paul Weller

You can leave your place you are sitting at without leaving that place either by playing music or by listening to music! Music is a migration to the unknown! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I just always knew that my career would be playing music. ~ Jonny Lang

After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music. ~ Joshua Bell

Doing things like playing music, something that's so natural and basic to human function, running around in nature, eating delicious food. These things are intrinsic in basic, primordial to human beings, so that's sort of a way to return to a blank canvas, allowing my true personality to return. ~ Ezra Miller

Usually, I'll just sit down at a piano or with a guitar, and I'll just be relaxed and playing music. Because that's what relaxes your subconscious. That's why everyone from animals to humans love music. ~ Cat Power

I didn't think we would ever make enough money to pay rent by playing music. ~ Gregg Allman

Basically, radio hasn't changed over the years. Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues - communicating with an audience. ~ Casey Kasem

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me ... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud ... You cannot fool an audience. ~ Henry Rollins

The experience of playing music at a young age really opens up one's mind to different melody in life itself, literally - like, when you've even played a recorder, or whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hear the beauty in a bird's song, or the quiet tune in a gentle rustle of the wind. ~ Dave Smalley

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~ Billy Connolly

I hadn't seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians can use to treat each other or, like, the way that you can see it dehumanize and the way that it can feel like boot camp. ~ Damien Chazelle

Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.' ~ Herbie Hancock

I really love music, and I definitely love playing music and getting to be a part of music. ~ Tift Merritt

Playing music to me is as close to having super powers as you can have. ~ John Mayer

I didn't start playing music really until I was 18/19, so it was a relatively new thing. I didn't play much music in school. ~ James Vincent McMorrow

The thing is, my education was music. I knew I'd be playing music no matter what. That's all I thought about, I was obsessed with it. I'm still obsessed with it. It gets the best of me sometimes. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

I think what we took away from first hearing about the punk stuff in England and then the early American punk stuff was a sense of self-definition and also sort of playing music for music's sake and being part of a family for family's sake. ~ Ian MacKaye

Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money. ~ Ian MacKaye

As I'm getting older a lot of my friends I used to go out and party with, they're all dead. The fact that I've been through that, I'm not proud of the fact that I've been through all that, but it's part of my journey. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to be playing music. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I mean, playing music at home and writing and hanging out with my guitar is kind of medicinal for me, but when I bring the songs to people on stage, it's very joyous. ~ Ani DiFranco