Best 1187 quotes in «musician quotes» category

When the musician starts improvising, he never can go back to what he did last Sunday. That's what's frightening to a lot of people who can't let themselves go. But it's also very invigorating and very releasing because it opens you up to be yourself.

When the musical keyboard was created in the 1970's, you had electronic geeks that had no background in music created these devises and gave them to musicians that had no background in electronics. The result was some of the wierd sounds that came out in the '70s.

When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging.

When you commit to being a musician, I don't think you're really sure or care about when you're going to pay the bills. I don't think you care about that as much as you care about playing music.

When you find a waiter who is a waiter and not an actor, writer, musician or poet, you've found a jewel.

When you have the opportunity to make music with great musicians, take it. That's it. That's the only reason I need, really.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

When you're a musician and you release an album, you have to accept the criticism - and I accept it! But it's something I'll never get used to.

When you're a touring musician, you're always turning over new rocks and there's always a certain level of tension in your life. The music business, and the travel that comes with it, is stressful, challenging, redundant, exhausting, exciting, and often very depressing. After all of these years, I'm still trying to cope with aspects of it.

When you really do find a new idea or you're in and it's all working, that's the gift. It's like a musician when they hit a riff, that's when you're like all right, it's mellow. You back off and just ride it.

When you talk like an asshole and look like an asshole, you're an asshole

When you're a touring musician, you're always turning over new rocks and there's always a certain level of tension in your life.

When you're a musician and you go out onstage, and you're someone who loves attention, you are going to become a role model to some extent.

When you're making your living as a writer or an artist or a musician, you kind of live in a trance. You're sort of in the day-to-day world, you're certainly there for your day-to-day relationships with people, and so on.

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

Why do musicians give so much time to charitable causes? The most humanitarian cause that we can give our time to is the creation and performance of music itself.

Why do you judge me as a musician, John? All I'm interested in is making money.

Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.

Why the connection with musicians? I think it's because in the end we're doing very similar things - we're telling stories, we're using poetic, lyrical language, and we're distilling stories down into their simplest form. We're both telling a story in two languages - word and music for them; and word and image for me.

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn't quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.

With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard.

Whether it's an attorney or a bond trader or a journalist, or a musician or pastor, you want to do your best. You don't want to seek acclaim. You don't want to seek awards. You want to seek to do your best at what God's given you.

With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.

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

With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.

Worship the music, not the musicians.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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 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.

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'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.