Quotes About Music

You have a history of art-music that you equate with music. That's what I love about that term art-music. It separates itself from music-music, the music people have always made.

I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things.

I don't know why people have to categorize things in music under music. It's music and it's music and it's music. When you start putting genres on things, I think it's completely ridiculous, and I hate that.

I listen to everything from, you know, Buddha Bar groove music to international music, Italian music, like Eros. I like very sexy, funky music like Maxwell, Angie Stone, R&B...In my CD player, I've probably got Maxwell, Beyonce, Enrique Iglesias, and kid music...maybe some AC/DC. I mean a little bit of everything. It depends on what I'm doing.

You're not just making music for your personal use no more, just making music for your homies around you; you're making music for people around the world. Kids in Alaska - like, you're making music for everybody. When I make music, I just think on a larger scale.

I've always identified people's taste in music as being kind of hetero and/or homo - there's music people like because they feel like they have aesthetic similarity to it and the music they wish to create, and then there's music that represents the other, that they listen to because it represents an escape from the music that they have to make.

People ask me if I'm influenced by British music, and I suppose I grew up listening to mostly British music - from new wave stuff through to heavy metal. Like, when I got into metal, it was Black Sabbath. I never really got into a lot of American rock. I appreciate some of it, but not much! Most of the great new wave music was coming out of Britain, and Germany. So maybe those influences have made their way into my music, and perhaps that's why I have this connection with people in Europe. But maybe it's something cosmic.

I realized a lot of my friends were going to nightclubs and listening to house music. I was hanging out with them and going to clubs as well but I didn't really understand that kind of music. I was listening to country music and was heavily into Hank Williams, bluegrass, and Bob Dylan. So I just decided I really needed to understand what this music I was hearing in the clubs was all about.

I've always loved the music... My favorite kind of music is Christmas music and the only thing I love better music is my wife and daughters. So, hanging out with my wife and daughters and cuddling them will be pretty cool.

I have always loved David Bowie. When he began to experiment with pop music in the 80's, I really thought there was a really fascinating reverence for it. A lot of people looked at pop music as just idiot music, or dance music, and with this he was giving it a lot of respect.

If 5000 people bought my record, I would appreciate those 5000 people. I make music for them because music isn't supposed to be so money driven. I didn't get into the music game because I wanted to make money. I sing because that's a God given talent of mine and it's something I love to do. If it's 10,000 or a million people, I'm going to give people the music they like from me. That's what being an artist is. Whoever likes your work, that's who you do it for.

The white music was melodic and pretty, and you had beautiful women's voices like Gogi Grant and even the Andrews Sisters. Then I went directly to rhythm and blues, which had beautiful voices but not much melody in particular and pretty much the same chord pattern. I loved it, I was entrenched in it, but then folk music came in the middle of that for me, and made its own path. And it was part of the rebellion against bubblegum music, or music that is pretty but doesn't say anything.

Every work is completely different. Sometimes the music is first, sometimes it's parallel, and sometimes the music is after. There's no rule. Music goes differently to your emotions. With music you can create different spaces and feelings easier than you can with the visual - maybe not easier, but in a way, it's more seductive.

I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much.

I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.

I don't fake my music. If I want to be known for anything it's for creating honest music. Noting is fake or will ever be fake about the lyrics and pain in my music. My music I live it.

Some cultures don't have a separate word for music and dance. To my knowledge, this notion of listening to music without dancing is a Western creation. I can't think of any artist that I love that doesn't inspire movement in some form or another. I guess Tangerine Dream or early Vangelis or something like that, you're not really going to dance. But on the whole, I feel like dancing and music are so naturally intertwined. I feel like subconsciously, that's the goal whenever I'm working on music. It's kind of the defining thing: Does it got some funk to it, basically?

Music TV in the U.K. is disappearing. 'Top Of The Pops,' 'CD:UK' and shows like that have gone, and it's bringing down the music industry. We should do as much as we can to keep our music TV and producers need to be more willing to accommodate live music.

I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music.

I love '80s happy music. I love Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, and the idea of making music that's about people celebrating fun. I spent my late adolescence in New York and I used to go to a lot of gay clubs. The music there was always just about love and connection and celebrating life. I think, for people going through something really hard, to go to a place where you can let loose and listen to music as a distraction, that's about a better place, a better way of life - that's where all the attraction lies.

Music is music and I think music people are the delivers, the actors, when they put their music out they want to insert their character in it. So they call it such and such so you know how they live so to speak.

I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream.

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

Regarding gay and music, I don't actually think my music is particularly gay at all, because my music doesn't have sex with men. My music does not have a gender, I don't see it as being gay.

I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me.

Rock & roll seemed to just come to us, on the radio and in the record stores. It became our music. . . But then we uncovered another, deeper level, the history behind rock and R&B, the music behind our music. All roads led to the source, which was the blues.

What good is music? None ... and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, 'You are irrelevant'; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, 'Listen.' For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

I think that music is still a mystery to most people. It kind of goes through most people without a specific thought. They feel the music, which is what's supposed to happen. They're not supposed to be curious about who wrote the music; they're supposed to feel what the show is trying to get them to feel. So if I help get that feeling across, that's good enough for me.

I think we listen to music because we want to be changed. Music is not solely for our entertainment. Music has such tremendous power to bring joy. To me, that's our job as artists. Not happiness, not a groove, whatever. You must bring joy. I think that's the assignment. I have no doubt about it.

However, I have a lot of greed. The types of music I want to show are on this side and on that side. Conclusively, if I'm able to make good music and people continue to look for my music, won't this kind of controversy get better... is my thought.

For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.

I've been spinning dance music since 1990, and genres always come and go. I think as technology becomes more accessible and it's easier for people to make music, they come and go quicker now, but it just comes with the territory. You come up with something new, something hot, and it rocks for a year. It's nothing different from any other genre of music. I mean, name one genre that's sounded the same for its entire existence. It doesn't happen.

'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.

A good dancer is one who listens to the musicWe dance the music not the steps. Anyone who aspires to dance never thinks about what he is going to do. What he cares about is that he follows the music. You see, we are painters. We paint the music with our feet.

I had composed songs, I sang, and played the vina. Practising this music I arrived at a stage where I touched the music of the spheres. Then every soul became a musical note, and all life became music. Inspired by it I spoke to the people, and those who were attracted by my words listened to them instead of listening to my songs.

I think the most important thing is that I'm making music that the people enjoy. So the fans, the people that are out there listening to music and consuming music, I want them to enjoy it and love it. And so that's more important to me than Grammys.

I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.

Music is a plane of wisdom, because music is a universal language, it is a language of honor, it is a noble precept, a gift of the Airy Kingdom, music is air, a universal existence common to all the living.

I think the world is very much embracing this whole concept of musicians going out and playing their instruments and playing music for music as opposed to music that has something to do with some form of image or imagery.

Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem.

Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.

I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

I grew up in New York. We were all diversified, as far as music was concerned. I grew up liking just about everything. So I tried to incorporate that into my playing, although the original school where I came from was Afro-Cuban music. But I liked all kinds of music -- I tried to bring that into everything.

I didn't know if it would be a successful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter...I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along...I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't...The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

Electronic music was just discovery about sound, all our sound options. The core percussions and melodies, they forget about it, they didn't think about those those for a good four, five years, because they were just discovering the new tools and what they could do with them, you know? The big folk revival, I think is a backlash against that. And now, I think they'll probably try to find somewhere in the middle. It's interesting. It's like push-and-pull. It's always like that, you know? Music history is always like that, this repeating evolution of music.

I'm happy to say that I have not been fired off a film. The score is usually the last thing to be done. So a lot lands on the scores shoulders. A lot of problems that seem to have nothing to do with the music gets blamed on the music , because it's relatively cheap to change, where as a reshoot etc is not. Music is often expected to help or fix bad cuts, bad acting, bad filming, bad timing, you name it.

In my opinion, there is a huge lack of imaginative, unconventional music being created by artists today and what little there is, goes widely unappreciated by the masses. 'Port Blue' is my attempt at re-creating the music I want to hear and the emotions I want to feel." "If by chance you ever feel as though you’ve come to know these songs, please consider yourself a friend because in a manner of speaking, you know me. This music is my heart and soul. This is who I am." (Adam R. Young, 2006)

Make the kind of music you love even if you never hear it on the air. This was the basic lesson I'd gotten from Alan [Lomax]. Alan said, Pete, look at all this great music around. You never hear it on the radio, but it's right there, great music.