Best 1187 quotes in «musician quotes» category

Worship the music, not the musicians.

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.

Writing songs is cheaper than going to therapy.

Yes, for me audio-visual performance has its roots in my experience working as an improvising musician and composer.

You are in a state of mixing, and you just live with it. There is not one musician who is completely happy with a mix.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

You can never rely on musicians. I quit high school at one point to make a go of it with this band and we kept breaking up. So I went back to school.

You can't teach a young musician to compose any more than you can teach a delicate plant to grow, but you can guide him a little by planting a stick in here and a stick in there.

You don't decide you're hip. It just happens that way.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.

You might have asked [about skill] of an artist or a musician or whatever... but with me it just happens.

You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

You know, when you're an actor, you want to go to Hollywood. When you're a musician, you want to go to Nashville.

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

You know as I started as a shy young conductor, I always wanted to cooperate. To build up the musicians. To help them to be better than without a conductor. And sometimes young talented musicians have to be encouraged.

You listen to Bob Dylan and you can't help but think of the 60s, it's very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn't come from them, it comes from the universe and it's to be shared. At best, we're skilled presenters, and I say that at best.

You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.

You probably became a musicians because you're into it so stay that way. Don't believe that someone else has the golden ticket for you because they don't.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste.

Your body is merely a machine made to express the thoughts that flow through you and nothing more. It is but an instrument for you to express your imagings just as a piano is an instrument for a musician to express his imagings. Just as the piano is not the musician, so, likewise, your body is not you.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

You're collaborating with people you don't even know, when you're making a film. You're collaborating with people you've never seen. So, the collaborative process is very, very different than when you're collaborating on a record with the musicians you've worked with all your life.

You're a musician and you live and die by people responding to your music. It's a business just like anything else and if people don't like your music, that's kind of your problem.

You saw a lot of guys, especially in the early '90s, whose acts were a pitch for a sitcom. A lot of them were very funny, but there's nothing worse than watching comedians or musicians who are up there and are doing something they're not interested in.

You should play with real musicians; the best music comes from real people interacting with each other.

You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.

You've got to believe in yourself. ..it really is true, because that's one thing about the Beatles...Man, we believed in ourselves. We knew we were good.

You've got certain guys that just want to be famous and then you've got the real musicians that just love playing music.

YouTube is an amazing platform for young musicians - although its harder to get noticed now that everyone is on it.

A composer who can lift the spirit of a million people with a song, is a definite force for good.

And if the day I die they ask me just how heaven was, I'll be glad I spent it with you.

All people are musicians" Wit countered. "The question is whether or not they share their songs.

And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.

And I understood why he didn’t need friends or to be accepted at our shitty racist high school, because he had his music, and that was so much better than anything we had to offer.

An entrepreneur without funding is a musician without an instrument.

And then he - Tchaikovsky - turned towards the little lectern that was on the stage, picked up his baton and held it in the air. He paused a moment. It was like watching an old wizard with a wand, summoning the energy needed to cast the spell. The hall fell silent. I had never heard a silence like it. The whole hall seemed to be holding its breath. It felt civilised and modern. It felt refined and tantalising all at once, like a polite collective pre-orgasm.

An illusionist can make himself disappear; a musician can do the same thing: When he plays a piano, after a while we start seeing only the music, not the man!

Anger is energy: If you hold on to it, it’ll infect you. But if you channel it into something positive — great things are possible.

A real musician ain’t gonna choose his own guitar like an evil master choosing his slave. The guitar will choose his master and when he does, you’ll know it.

Bands perform songs. DJs perform records.

As Branford Marsalis said in a beautiful essay he write upon Clarence's death, C was blessed with 'the power of musical intent.

Asking to hold a musician's instrument is roughly similar to asking to kiss a man's wife. Nonmusicians don't understand. An instrument is like a companion and a lover.

As with dreams, the vibration of strings walks us towards places we've never seen.

Billie Holiday Her imperfect life led to her becoming a legendary performer with a continuing influence on American music. Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1015 she became a songwriter and jazz singer with an unmistakable vocal style. Although she had a limited range her delivery, tempo and natural skills, held the attention of a devoted following. Influenced by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith her success as a pop singer with the Benny Goodman Band started with "Riffin' the Scotch", which sold 5,000 copies. She continued with Count Basie and Artie Shaw and was recognized throughout the 1930s and the 1940s with songs such as “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “God Bless the Child.” Plagued with abusive relationships, drug and alcohol addiction, and even a short prison sentence she still rose to the top of the charts. Her predictable deterioration and eventual death on July 17, 1959 was caused by cirrholis of the liver.

Democracy is only as moral and just as those in power, and only as wise as the citizens who elect them.

Broken pencils still write beautiful songs.

Controversy is a last resort for the talentless.