Ottmar Liebert famous quotes

If you read about a tree, and there is a description, you have to grow that tree in your mind. So that's an active way of looking at media, whereas a movie or a TV will be passive, because they are showing you the tree. In the same way, when somebody sings a song for you, those words get so much in the foreground, that even if you take a minor key of music and then put like happy lyrics to it and people think it's a happy song. So, in a song, you are told what to feel, whereas, in an instrumental music, you get as much out of it as you are willing to put into it.
-- Ottmar Liebert

#Song #Thinking #People

There was a show in Germany called Beat Club, and they had a lot of bands playing live. And I had this master plan, at 11 years old, I wanted to play electric guitar, but I knew... We lived in a small apartment, there was no way that was going to happen. I told my parents I wanted a classical guitar and I wanted to start studying classical guitar. So then a few years later, I think around 16 or so, I started playing electric. But that was my, my plan as an 11 year old. I thought I was so crafty.
-- Ottmar Liebert

#Thinking #Parent #Study

You grow the fastest by getting... adopting ideas and technologies from other cultures. And that has been proven in history, time and time again. Whether you go back to the ancient Persians, or the Romans, or the Ottomans. It's how a culture grows, by incorporating other ideas and going, wow, how did they do this? Oh, I bet you this works with this, and then you can improve it again. So I think any culture that sort of says, no no no, it's just us, nobody gets in anymore, it's the beginning of atrophy, and the rest of the world will just pass you.
-- Ottmar Liebert

#Technology #Thinking #World

Flamenco is Arabic music and rhythms filtered through centuries of gypsies making music. The gypsies themselves came originally from India. And then there is the Caribbean influences... This whole idea that there is any such thing in music that "purity" is bunk, it just doesn't exist. I love that I am playing these rhythms to people. And the next time they hear something that's maybe a little more exotic, I have created a little bridge, and they are going, "Oh, this actually sounds really cool. It reminds me a little bit of that, but it's something different."
-- Ottmar Liebert

#People #Different #Gypsy

I am not really thinking, I am just, working with the music. And people have asked me, why don't you say more, or why do you not have singers, or why don't you sing? I think it's because, if I would have words for what I am doing, I I could write. But I really don't. It's a whole different thing. And I think it's one of the beauty of instrumental music is that it can be background. It can be what people call "easy listening." But it's really one of those things where it's as much as you are willing to give it.
-- Ottmar Liebert

#Writing #Thinking #Giving

When I came to the States, I still wanted to be an electric guitar player. But moved to Santa Fe in '86. And just decided that nylon string guitar is really what I wanted to do... And that really change my life totally as well... And Santa Fe is one of those really unusual places that is such an interesting mix of culture. There is a lot of from restaurants to music... I remember one of the first groups I saw playing there in the back of a restaurant, was a banjo player, a classical violinist, and a flamenco guitarist. And I thought to myself, "What? You know, this is great."
-- Ottmar Liebert

#Player #Interesting #Culture

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

I wanted to be different and original but still have it be something my fans could get into. There also are some big, beautiful ballads. I told my producers that I wanted tracks that are going to blow up in the clubs, but I also wanted songs that were very melodic and with a lot of instrumentation.

Anyone who's got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some '50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That's it, really - I'm not a musician, I'm not a singer.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs.

Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.

God does not so much want us to do things as to let people see what He can do.

Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.

The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people"- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.