Music Quotes

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

The future is unwritten.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

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

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

What we play is life.

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same.

If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

..my music isn't just music- its medicine.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision.

Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play.

Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.

Music is the silence between the notes.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I don't deal in technique. I deal in emotions.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

If you've lost your faith in love and music then the end won't be long.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

This will be our reply to violence:to make music more intensely,more beautifully,more devotedly than ever before.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.

My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.

The hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try.

The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music.

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Don't be afraid, just play the music.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

Music is more than just listening to it. People use the music for them protection at times.

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.

It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.

Good music always defeats bad luck

Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

Music is only love looking for words.

All In All Is All We Are

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are.

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe?

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.

Music begins where the possibilities of language end.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn't play like Wynton.

Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.

I'm a musician at heart, I know I'm not really a singer. I couldn't compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.

There's people making babies to my music. That's nice.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood.

The song is ended, but the melody lingers on...

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

Our music has depth, and attempts philosophical thought and meaning with discussions of infinity, eternity and mortality. There is a line which people cross that turns it into some magical, mystical realm, for which I dont claim responsibility and dont hold any great truck with.

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had!

The reason we're successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Life is one grand sweet song so start the music

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

I'm always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I've been.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

i dont want to be compared to britney,ashlee,hilary or lindsay. i want to be compared to me.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.

Music is the soundtrack of your life.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.

Without Elvis none of us could have made it.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts.

A musician's or artist's responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth,

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Rock n' Roll came from the slaves singing gospel in the fields. Their lives were hell and they used music to lift out of it, to take them away. That's what rock n' roll should do - take you to a better place.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

My first wife said, 'It's either thatguitar or me,' you know — and I giveyou three guesses which one went.

I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.

Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.

I'm gonna put a curse on you and all your kids will be born completely naked.

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

A song without music is a lot like H2 without the O.

What I like best about music is when time goes away.

The way I feel about music is that there is no right and wrong. Only true and false.

I'll make music, whether or not anyone is listening, for the rest of my life. It's a natural form of expression for me, the same way I draw and write and sing.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable.

If a guy's got it, let him give it. I'm selling music, not prejudice.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild.

The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin-not sounding like them, but "playing" the voice like those instrumentalists.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

This is so nice, it must be illegal.

Talent is only the starting point.

Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.

If I am not making music, I have no reason for existing.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other

I have always kept one end in view, namely ... to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honour of God.

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.

It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.

There was a time when the music fell silent. Both within me and around me.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.

Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.

The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

Mozart is sweet sunshine.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.

Music is the last true voice of the human spirit. It can go beyond language, beyond age, and beyond color straight to the mind and heart of all people.

A name doesn't make the music. It's just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

I've never missed a gig yet. Music makes people happy, and that's why I go on doing it - I like to see everybody smile.

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling.

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make.

Music is something that always lifts my spirits and makes me happy, and when I make music I always hope it will have the same effect on whoever listens to it.

Death is very often referred to as a good career move.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.

There is only one real happiness in life, and that is the happiness of creating.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

For me, music and life are all about style.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

Music connects with the soul. I think it's the quickest art form to the soul.

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.

Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

If there is one thing that is constant in this world, it is the power of music.

We do this for the art, not the adulation. I'd rather our music get liked and we get ignored. I don't want to be adored for anything other than the music.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

Music before all else, and for that choose the irregular, which is vaguer and melts better into the air...

Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it's music, not words, that provides power.

Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off.

I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.

In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.

I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away - but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me.

Music is like making love: either all or nothing.

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

Be honest with yourself and the way you act when you hear music. That way, when people watch, they'll see something from your heart and soul, and as a result will communicate your feeling and thought much better.

Once you become predictable, no one's interested anymore.

I have a responsibility to pass on to the next generation what I learned from my teachers, ... It keeps me young and reminds me where I came from. Teaching young artists is like giving water to a flower.

I should think that being my old lady would be all the satisfaction or career any woman needs

Some things get better with age. Like me.

Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year.

I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.

Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

I asked my daughter when she was 16, What's the buzz on the street with the kids? She's going, to be honest, Dad, most of my friends aren't into Kiss. But they've all been told that it's the greatest show on Earth.

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

My craziest ideas come from cartoons. I approach music by taking that cartoon extreme and the real life extreme and finding somewhere in the middle. The animated element lures people in, but the real-life substance puts the nail in the coffin.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop.' Don't tell him 'rock 'n' roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel.

I know [canned music] makes chickens lay more eggs and factory workers produce more. But how much more can they get out of you on an elevator?

You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church.

If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth."

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'

I am severely distracted these days. It's hard to sit in front of the computer, uploading bad music for hours, when you have a wonderful boyfriend who treats you like a Goddess.

Music-making as a means of getting money is hell

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

The function of pop music is to be consumed.

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl.

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle. I have adopted the technique of living life miracle to miracle.

The laws of morals and the laws of music are the same

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast."

The high note is not the only thing.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

I'm from the Bob Wills and the Little Richard school of music. Bob Wills did what the hell he thought, Little Richard did what he thought, and those were my big influences.

Music is the art of thinking with sounds.

I never completed high school and I am very rich and very successful.

History, we can confidently assert, is useful in the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers, religion and philosophy are useful. Without it - as with these - life would be poorer and meaner; without it we should be denied some of those intellectual and moral experiences which give meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no accident that the study of history has been the solace of many of the noblest minds of every generation.

If you take the creation of music and the creation of your own life values as your overall goal, then living becomes a musical process.

Music is another planet.

The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music... The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.

Yes, there are times when I get extremely depressed and how I sublimate those feelings is through music.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Rests always sound well.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

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

Music and the arts feed our souls, but a decent wage puts food on the table. Musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations are a potent force to fight for social justice.

The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.

Music has the power to bring people together like no other art form.

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.

When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out.

Jazz will endure as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains

Fieldes have eies and woods have eares.

Mathematics is the music of reason.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.

I think the future looks great for music, musicians, bass players, and all we love about music.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

I think I infuse the music with a new passion. Part of this is because I have fallen in love: I am in love with the New York Philharmonic. The chemistry has just been right. Beyond expectation.

I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world.

It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what Kind of Blue did.

It's very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he's creating, the fact that he's experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we're in a brotherhood of some kind we're in it together.

Napster hijacked our music without asking. They never sought our permission. Our catalog of music simply became available as free downloads on the Napster system.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

I listen'd, motionless and still;And, as I mounted up the hill,The music in my heart I bore,Long after it was heard no more.

There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening.

Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.

The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.

When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

All of the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater, must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

I danced with passion to spite the music.

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

The mountain music... is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities.

Music, the mosaic of the air.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

I have always loved the process of making the music, reading the letters from the fans who get married to my music, have children to my music and play my music at their funerals.

The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose.

People listen to the music and sense what it is about. Sometimes they know exactly what the songs are about, sometimes they interpret their own meaning to the music, and thats great when this happens because it shows its striking a chord.

We wanted to establish a new fan base over here. And second, we wanted to challenge ourselves. We wanted to bring what is ostensibly new music to fresh ears and see what lights them up.

If you don't know what it is, don't mess with it.

As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.

Music should never be harmless.

I'm so happy to be able to give kids the opportunity to learn about amazing world of dance and music that I've have been lucky enough to make such a big part of my own life.

I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere... Being a human being is what truly counts. That's where you'll find me.

Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.

I enjoy all aspects of singing and I'm luckily given the choice to be part of different styles of music.

It was Chinese music. I couldnt understand it, but it had a good beat to it.

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don't always come.

Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.

I never have a realistic sense of self. I either think everything I do is terrible and I'm the worst guy on the planet, or from time to time I'll think I'm the greatest gift to music and the coolest guy who ever lived, but that happens maybe an hour out of the week. Some days I'm more concerned with how my hair looks than what my guitar sounds like.

I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.

The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?

Music is the medicine of the mind.

I am the eggman They are the eggmen! I am the walrus!

There is a great correlation between music and images.

There is a long history in country music of songs celebrating drinking and lamenting drinking. Country songs for the most part have always been heavily rooted in reality. The first artists were the people next door. They would sing on their porch or in their living room or at a barn dance. They sang about what they knew, and a lot of that was drinking.

I don't know why it is, but I just love soul music and all that old country stuff. I guess somehow my heart mixed them both together as I made my albums.

Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

In the beginning, I was searching for myself in my music. My music was for me. I didn't have the mental room to be conscious of the listener; I wrote to save myself.

Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.

I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

My love is new music, I tend to go and see a lot of bands, while [co-producer] Mark Cooper spends his time reading the press. It's often the new acts that strike a chord, because they aren't seen on other shows.

My dad's music was a great inspiration to me.

You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed?

I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women, but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.

I write music with an exclamation point!

Music is a form of prayer.

One of the great things about rap music... it leaves a lot to be desired, as far as I'm concerned, musically, but I do recognize the very important place that it has in music and in creating role models for younger kids to emulate, giving them the dream that they can make it out of whatever situation they're in.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

You're surrounded by electronic music in New York. I mean New York is one of the few places in North America where electronic music is the prevalent form.

[Commercial radio] is owned by one or two corporations now, and they're not in the music business. They're in the advertising business.... So let's not kid ourselves. If you want to hear music, go buy a guitar.

Sport is an international phenomenon, like science or music.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

Music will save the world.

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.

I loved music, but I found myself at the point where I wanted to die. I didn't care about life.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

The history of a people are found in its songs.

I've always been a fan of music where you can hear new things each time you listen.

That song, for me, is about drugs and alcohol and loss and love. It's about being proud of who you are, being proud of your situation and just being stoked that things are always going to get better or always gonna get worse and that's such a great thing. Every day is a new surprise.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.

What passions cannot music raise or quell?

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.

Music fathoms the sky.

Do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid.

I've always felt that rock & roll was very, very wholesome.

I could have a degree in music and come on the show, and Simon could still say 'You stink'.

Anytime I get to be around the fans it's always a good time, especially during Music Fest. CMA puts together an event that allows artists to make that personal connection with the fans and it's wonderful. I look at it as our chance to give back to them and let them know we appreciate their support.

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better.

Suffering is the price of being alive, and it is music and singing and art that has helped me live through some of the most difficult things that have happened to me.

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.

If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.

I'm inspired by music. Sometimes more than I want to be.

I'm saddest when I sing.

This was work (music industry) but it was the awakening to what was to become a life's passion.

It is desirable that people make music on the breath, with the breath.

For me, the backdrop of half the experiences of life includes music.

Music is the vernacular of the human soul

On the one hand it is said that the aim and object of music is to excite emotions, i.e., pleasurable emotions; on the other hand, the emotions are said to be the subject matter which musical works are intended to illustrate. Both propositions are alike in this, that one is as false as the other.

To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

Music springs from and is replenished by a hidden source which lies outside the world or reality. Music ever spoke to me of a mysterious world beyond, which moved my heart deeply and eloquently intimated its transcendental nature.

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead.

If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will because it is good.

I was listening to music long before rock 'n roll.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.

Music is the balm that heals the forlorn ache of a distant star.

When I was a little kid, I took tap and ballet. I've always loved to dance. I'm a rhythm machine.

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

Music inflames temperament.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

I don't believe in having bands for solo records.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

Punk is just as much a form of folk music as anything is!

Making music should not be left to the professionals.

It's not music, it's a disease. (on rock'n'roll)

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.

Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.

There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

I always like to get local music when I'm in another country.

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.

I think all the boys that write the screaming stuff would write the best love songs... because they have the most to hide. The guys that are in the most pain are usually the ones with the biggest hearts.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

If you can't create physical life, you find a life force. If that's in music, that's in music. I started to find this deep, primitive rhythm, and I started to move to it. And I held hands with sorrow, and I danced with her, and we giggled a bit.

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.

Pop is actually my least favorite kind of music, because it lacks real depth.

Music is always a commentary on society.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Oh my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June; Oh my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly played in tune.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

All the sounds of the earth are like music.

For me to be able to reach out to other people throughout all this has been great, people want to hear from me and hear my music right now so it keeps me happy. I cherish every moment. I have a different perspective on everything now. In the end, I think it will make me a better person.

Jazz is the music of the body.

I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

I am moved by music, and certain things just make my day.

That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying.

I still have a lot to learn - about the business, about music, and about myself. Its exciting.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings

Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.

[Rubinstein was] a fountain from which music spouted, not a recitalist.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Piracy is important to talk about. It's harming the music industry. It hurts all of us. The public needs to understand every time they buy a pirated CD, they hurt the industry. The only ones who can change that are the fans and the people that buy CDs. It's everybody's responsibility to prevent it.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn't always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I'm interested in now, particularly at my age.

When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.