Music famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done.
-- A. R. Rahman -
It's fun to be creative and innovative and come up with something crazy. So I need people to work with who are not going to be afraid to take it to the left a bit.
-- Aaliyah -
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.
-- Aaliyah -
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.
-- Aaron Carter -
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
-- Aaron Copland -
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."
-- Aaron Copland -
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.
-- Aaron Copland -
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.
-- Aaron Copland -
Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.
-- Aaron Copland -
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.
-- Aaron Copland -
I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn't expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw Max Roach again and he told me I didn't have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I'm a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn't know how.
-- Abbey Lincoln -
I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow.
-- Abbey Lincoln -
I am the first instrument. I am the voice. I do not imitate other instruments. Other instruments imitate me.
-- Abbey Lincoln -
If you don't have sex and you don't do drugs, your rock 'n' roll better be awfully good.
-- Abbie Hoffman -
Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose, To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave, To Saturn's string a touch more sore and grave. The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow, And short and long, were mixt and woven so, Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall, As made this decent measur'd dance of all. And this is Musick.
-- Abraham Cowley -
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
-- Abraham Maslow -
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.
-- Ace Frehley -
I don't make music for eyes. I make music for ears.
-- Adele -
The focus on my appearance has really surprised me. I've always been a size 14 to 16, I don't care about clothes, I'd rather spend my money on cigarettes and booze.
-- Adele -
What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?
-- Agnes Repplier -
Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world.
-- Ahmad Alaadeen -
I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.
-- Ahmad Jamal -
Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.
-- Ahmad Jamal -
The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.
-- Ahmad Jamal -
Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.
-- Ahmad Jamal -
There's a lot of music that sounds like it's literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.
-- Aimee Mann -
The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.
-- Al Capp -
You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues.
-- Al Jarreau -
Once you discover that you can, then you must.
-- Al Jarreau -
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
-- Alan Watts -
Music helps you find the truths you must bring into the rest of your life.
-- Alanis Morissette -
I am what I am Are you what you are or What?
-- Alanis Morissette -
I am proud that [I was] , , , enabled to guide this great talent . . . towards the superb fulfillment of its individual potentialities, towards the greatest independence.
-- Alban Berg -
I think I'll give them another chance. Americans deserve another chance with my music.
-- Albert Ayler -
If people don't like my music now, they will.
-- Albert Ayler -
Bebop was like humming along to Mitch Miller to me.
-- Albert Ayler -
Trane was the father. Pharoah was the son. I was the holy ghost.
-- Albert Ayler -
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.
-- Albert Camus -
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
-- Albert Einstein -
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
-- Albert Einstein -
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
-- Albert Einstein -
... all of the great sounds that James Burton and Jimmy Bryant were getting, came out of Telecasters
-- Albert Lee -
I first met Jimmy Page in London in 1961, and he was listening to James Burton, Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent, as was I ... these were the rock and roll guys who really sparked our interest in the guitar, and later we delved into other things and went different directions ... during my time with Eric Clapton, we talked about what we'd listened to early on, and he was a huge fan of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis
-- Albert Lee -
... Jimmy Page bought a Les Paul because he liked mine, but it was stolen, so he bought a Standard everybody raved about .. that's what he's famous for, but his first Les Paul was a Custom like mine ... I can remember he played a Gretsch before that
-- Albert Lee -
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.
-- Aldous Huxley -
To help with knowing if you're good or not, you need a mentor.
-- Alex Day -
Music is a pastime, a relaxation from more serious occupations.
-- Alexander Borodin -
Let heart and voice, like bells of silver, ring, the comfort that this day doth bring.
-- Alexander Moody Stuart -
Music the fiercest grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm. Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above.
-- Alexander Pope -
By music minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. . . . . Warriors she fires with animated sounds. Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.
-- Alexander Pope -
As some to Church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.
-- Alexander Pope -
In a sadly pleasing strain, let the warbling lute complain.
-- Alexander Pope -
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav'n.
-- Alexander Pope -
That's why I'm so passionate about making music for movies because you dive in and find the best ideas to bring tolife a collective piece of art. ... [Composing] is not a job for me. And that explains why I never stop. Even though it's tough on your body and your brain and the sacrifices you have to make, what can I do? I'm passionate about it so I never stop.
-- Alexandre Desplat -
Music stays in the air. / It travels at the speed of breath / at the sound of light. / It is never not heard. / It can wait centuries if it has to.
-- Alexis De Veaux -
We should get into the habit of reading inspirational books, looking at inspirational pictures, hearing inspirational music, associating with inspirational friends.
-- Alfred Armand Montapert -
The city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built forever.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
It was so interesting, when [John Coltrane] created A Love Supreme. He had meditated that week. I almost didn't see him downstairs. And it was so quiet! There was no sound, no practice! He was up there meditating, and when he came down he said, "I have a whole new music!" He said, "There is a new recording that I will do, I have it all, everything." And it was so beautiful! He was like Moses coming down from the mountain. And when he recorded it, he knew everything, everything. He said this was the first time that he had all the music in his head at once to record.
-- Alice Coltrane -
...I got a call from a record company offering me a contract, I did not want to take it because the Lord had pointed me in the direction of spiritual activity...And then it was disclosed to me that I could do both spiritual and musical work. So for five years I executed that contract, and when it was finished, after I made the album Transfiguration, I didn't make another album until twenty-six years later. This new album, Translinear Light, came out of the pleading and constant appealing from my son Ravi Coltrane: 'Ma, please make a CD.' So I eventually agreed.
-- Alice Coltrane -
Music was our food... When we can play, it can't be so terrible. The music, the music!
-- Alice Herz-Sommer -
But when I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.
-- Alicia Keys -
I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.
-- Alicia Witt -
Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.
-- Allan Bloom -
Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
Improvisation is the art of becoming sound. It is the only art in which a human being can and must become the music he or she is making. Improvisation is the only musical art which predicated entirely on human trust and love.
-- Alvin Curran -
LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
notes fly so much farther than words. There is no other way to reach the infinite.
-- Anais Nin -
jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.
-- Anais Nin -
Writing more and more to the sound of music, writing more and more like music. Sitting in my studio tonight, playing record after record, writing, music a stimulant of the highest order, far more potent than wine.
-- Anais Nin -
In music I feel most deeply the passing of things.
-- Anais Nin -
The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.
-- Andre Previn -
Even in the most beautiful music, there are some silences, which are there so we can witness the importance of silence. Silence is more important than ever, as life today is full of noise. We speak a lot about environmental pollution but not enough about noise pollution.
-- Andrea Bocelli -
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.
-- Andres Segovia -
When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices...
-- Andres Segovia -
I was talented but crazy, semi-autistic and eccentric.
-- Andrew Hill -
I'm trying to make music a sensual expression, not an academic experiment.
-- Andrew Hill -
I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing.
-- Andrew Hill -
These magic moments when rhythms and harmonies extend themselves and jell together and the people become another instrument. These things are priceless and they can't be learned; they can only be felt.
-- Andrew Hill -
Jazz has the ability to absorb & transform influences from diverse musical styles.
-- Andrew S. Gilbert -
The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.
-- Andy Rooney -
Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-- Ani DiFranco -
You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
-- Anita Baker -
Everything you ever had, everything you ever lost. It's all there in the trumpet--pain and hate and trouble and peace and quiet and love.
-- Ann Petry -
Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.
-- Ann Wilson -
Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.
-- Anne Lamott
