Quotes & Sayings About Elements Of Music

[New Orleans.] Katrina changed everything. Life here is different, every face altered. Yet we feel and sense the landscape not only in its hurricane-leveled, sodden depressions but - perhaps even more so now in the strangely comforting depths of our shared history. Even in the worst hit areas, not all is dissipated. Dense intricate attachments burrow too deep to underestimate or overlook. This is no featureless town to be rubbed off the map and cast aside. Here the band plays on.

Our kindred colors speak to the values of justice, faith and power; to curious combinations of passion, openness, irreverence and loyalty, to the values of individuality, sharing and compassion. Not least, we still enjoy the sounds of music and respond to succulent foods, to the magnificent flowering gardens, to the elements of grace and dreamy escape, and to the languid Southern charm typical of faded days gone by. — T.J. Fisher

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry. — Rita Dove

She [Joni Mitchell] wanted to have that (jazz) element in her music. Of course, when she heard Jaco's [Jaco Pastorius'] music and met him, that floored her
really grabbed her. She decided that Wayne Shorter was really conducive to her music. She would speak metaphorically about things. "I want this to sound like a taxicab driver, or a taxi in New York," or "I want this to sound like a telephone ringing." She would speak to musicians like that, and we really tuned into what she would want our music to be. — Don Alias

I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better? — Shekhar Kapur

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries. — George Crumb

Music will always be a major part of my life, its my outlet, I'm in my element and I'm free. — Mandisa

I really tried to push every genre that I could into this record. I wanted every song to have this feel, where as soon as the listener tunes in, they say "That's CoJo, that's Cody right there." That being said, it is a little different. There's Americana, there's Bluegrass, there's some rock, there's some really George Jones-style stuff on it, slow-style Ray Price country elements, there's some modern country, a little of this and a little of that. We tried to push a lot for show versatility, because I grew up with a lot of versatility in my music. — Cody Johnson

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic ... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician. — David Sanborn

I had enough of a story churning in my head that combined all the elements of the day - the interview, the concert, the after-party's private session - when he put his guitar away and asked me if I had ever experimented with homosexuality. Talk about unexpected segues. Letting him know that I had not and wasn't about to, I successfully changed the subject by asking him to give me a condensed account about traveling to Mississippi in search of Bukka White. — Kenny Weissberg

In part of Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, he says that "music improves the relish of a banquet." That I deny,
any more than painting might do. They may both be additional pleasures, as well as conversation is, but are perfectly distinct notices; and cannot, with the least propriety, be said to mix or blend with the repast, as none of them serve to raise the flavor of the wine, the sauce, the meat, or help to quicken appetite. But music and painting both add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor. — Laurence Sterne

Pop comes from the word 'popular,' which means that it could be anything that appeals to any group of people. When you talk about general masses, I think there's elements in every kind of music that can reach a broad audience. — Anwar Robinson

I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing. — Dweezil Zappa

We are a band that stylistically crosses a lot of barriers and generational gaps. The heavier portion of the band, the modern music elements, the visual part of the band appeal to a younger audience. For an older audience, we have chops and great songs that are reminiscent of the things that were great about rock and roll when they enjoyed it. We're the kind of band that can cross those lines. — Andy Biersack

Art is a kind of magic. Creativity is mysterious, even to artists, who might be able to name their inspiration but can't always explain how their influences and experiences came together to create this new thing- this painting, this story, this song. If you break art down to its base elements, there's nothing miraculous about the letters of the alphabet or a drop of paint. But an artist can put those elements together to create something powerful, something that moves us and withstands the test of time. A work that no one but that artist could have imagined, let alone created. — Sarah Cross

Music is the harmonization of opposites; the conciliation of warring elements — Pythagoras

Nothing is going to stay the same; nothing's gonna sound like in 1952. There's some stuff that has some elements of back in the day, like back in the 90's, back in the 80's or whatever. Some elements, but it's not going to be the same, exactly, sounding. And I love it, I've seen the music change. I've seen the flow and the energy go from turned up to turned down to back to turned up. I like to try different stuff. I don't like to do the same old thing over and over again. I don't like to be repetitive, that gets on my nerves. — Juicy J

He knew that the very memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the elements of music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard (still almost entirely unknown) on which, here and there only, separated by the thick darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among the millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been discovered by a few great artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void. — Marcel Proust

The human element of making music is what's most important. — Dave Grohl

I think there's a reason why wine figures into so many religions. There's something transcendent about it. It's sort of the way that music is more than the sum of its parts. You have all these elements that make up the terroir that wine can communicate. — Maynard James Keenan

Despite being an amateur (or perhaps because of it), whenever I listen to music, I do so without preconceptions, simply opening my ears to the more wonderful passages and physically taking them in. When those wonderful passages are there, I feel joy, and when some parts are not so wonderful, I listen with a touch of regret. Beyond that, I might pause to think about what makes a certain passage wonderful or not so wonderful, but other musical elements are not that important to me. Basically, I believe that music exists to make people happy. In order to do so, those who make music use a wide range of techniques and methods which, in all their complexity, fascinate me in the simplest possible way. — Haruki Murakami

The elements of a good story are most definitely details, little bitty details. That does it, especially when you're describing, when you're setting the scene and everything. It's like you're painting a picture, so details are very important. Also, the music gotta be right. The music can really set the tone for the story and let you know what the story is gonna be about, but definitely, it's the vibe in the place where you at and the detail. — Big Boi

Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies. — George Santayana

Ambient means the natural center or atmosphere of a space. All music has that in it- a space or center. I think it just means the atmosphere or what defines the environment of sound and maybe removing the more destructive, harsh elements and harder rhythmic elements and you get down to the stillness that's inherent. There's an ambient quality in every sound. You may have to enhance that to hear it or bring it out in a different way but there is that in every environmental sound. — Bill Laswell

Throughout hip-hop people have been putting different elements with different types of music. — Girl Talk

The resulting amalgam - an exotic mixture of European, Caribbean, African, and American elements - made Louisiana into perhaps the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world could produce. This cultural gumbo would serve as breeding ground for many of the great hybrid musics of modern times; not just jazz, but also cajun, zydeco, blues, and other new styles flourished as a result of this laissez-faire environment. In this warm, moist atmosphere, sharp delineations between cultures gradually softened and ultimately disappeared. — Ted Gioia

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony — James Whistler

Though I consider The Chronology of Water to be an anti-memoir for very precise reasons, it is an art form, and thus as open to "critique" as any other art form. Memoir has a form, formal strategies, issues of composition and craft, style, structure, all the elements of fiction or nonfiction or painting or music or what have you. — Lidia Yuknavitch

As for the symphonic activities ... when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, I became exposed to a lot more musical forms, elements, opportunities, and I fell in love with strings and their uses. — Chuck Mangione

The 'Muppets' were a very big part of my childhood, and 'Flight of the Conchords' definitely has elements of the 'Muppets' in it, specifically the way we mixed music and comedy. — Bret McKenzie

The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling. There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. Could Sinfonietta actually be giving me this weird feeling? — Haruki Murakami

Hip-hop is the streets. Hip-hop is a couple of elements that it comes from back in the days ... that feel of music with urgency that speaks to you. It speaks to your livelihood and it's not compromised. It's blunt. It's raw, straight off the street - from the beat to the voice to the words. — Nas

I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts. — Chris Stapleton

Without Al, Mary Frances discovered what she did alone. She liked to cook for herself, to assemble a meal of things he would never consider worth a mealtime - shad roe and toast, soft-set eggs, hearts of celery and palm with a quick yellow mayonnaise, a glass of wine, an open book in her lap and the radio on. The elements that mattered most were the simple ones: butter, salt, a thick plate of white chine and a delicate glass, the music faint, the feel of paper in her hand, and the knowledge that there was more, always more book to read, more wine if she liked it, some cold fruit in the refrigerator when she was hungry again... — Ashley Warlick

Beginning in the sixties, but getting strong during the seventies and eighties, everybody was sort of Miles Davis and Chick Corea and the jazz guys on the west coast and east coast in America, and then in Switzerland and lots of groups in England and elsewhere, like here in Brazil. We were all under a heavy influence of technological gadgets and changes that we used as elements to produce and create music. — Gilberto Gil

That's the sound design. I watched it sixty times because we were constantly tweaking. The same thing comes twice, right? Once it comes in the beginning when he's about to discover that he needs to come out and one is the dream where he's flattered (??) and then he comes out. The last one, instead of going bigger, we made it smaller. We removed elements and thinned it out. So it doesn't drive him. He drives the music rather than the other way around. — A.R. Rahman

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever. — David Sanborn

The art of the colorist has in some ways elements of mathematics and music. — Paul Signac

The pull of music, literature or painting on us is like the plucking of a string. Literally, in the case of music. Sometimes gently, sometimes vigorously, but it always causes a reaction. Our innate response brings us in synchronized harmony with the elements in nature - from the smallest atomic particle to the largest heavenly body. We're connected through these vibrations to nature and to each other. So, really, everything's connected — Marilyn Brant

Prose is an art form, movies and acting in general are art forms, so is music, painting, graphics, sculpture, and so on. Some might even consider classic games like chess to be an art form. Video games use elements of all of these to create something new. Why wouldn't video games be an art form? — Sam Lake

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.
These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

The landscape affects the human psyche - the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations - like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom ... — Nikos Kazantzakis

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

I like adding little elements into the final mix. I'm more fond of the '70s glam than '80s. I have that style of vocals ... there are a lot of pop artists who are using the glam vibe in their music. I'm part of that wave. — Adam Lambert

I always want to make people dance so there'll always be an element of dance in my music. — Dizzee Rascal

And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end. — Ethan Hawke

Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that there, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly. — Paul Klee

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. — Khalil Gibran

I don't really deal with the attention I receive to be honest. I build up a fantasy world around me that I inhabit. I cherry pick elements of literature, music, film, history and art, then weave them together to construct a fantasy reality to live in. It doesn't always work out though, I got evicted from my own fantasy once, which was quite embarrassing. — Pete Doherty

I am looking at him, I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse. — Vladimir Nabokov

Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose. — Floyd Skloot

I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song. — Deborah Cox

There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so ... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something". — Tom Verlaine

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE — Robert Louis Stevenson

There have been a lot of people involved in the growth of EDM's support in the U.S., from DJ/producers like David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Skrillex, to major festival organisers and pop artists of EDM integrating elements of dance music into their music. — Tiesto

I want to change things with everything I do, not for the sake of changing things, but for the sake of taking greater and greater risks, or how minimalist I might be able to be, or how I can involve elements or ingredients in music videos that are not musical, for instance. — Jonathan Glazer

The elements of voice and style are braided together like twine, consisting of these attempts to copy other artists, or an instrument, or even the sound of a bird or passing train. Added to these characteristics are emotions and thoughts that register as various vocal quirks, like hiccups, sighs, growls, warbles - a practically limitless assortment of choices. Most of these choices are made at the speed of sound on a subconscious level, or one would be completely overwhelmed by the task. — Linda Ronstadt

It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed ... To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition ... Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves-not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with. — Morton Feldman

What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself. — Richard Wagner

A fine poem combines the elements of meaning, music, and a form like a living frame that holds it together. — Arnold Adoff

I personally don't think of the music as being particularly dark, though many seem to disagree as I often have to answer that question. I try and make the Lustmord sound have a real mass and a tangible presence, which some choose to interpret as dark. It's an interesting distinction. Although there are dark elements interwoven within the whole, it's only one of many textures. — Brian Williams

In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous. — Albert Einstein

The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery.
Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream. — Anais Nin

There's the added element of adrenaline if you're performing. You're aware of spatial relationships and the music. — Kim Gordon

There's nothing but spirit in music. That's all it is. Yeah, there's a lot of intellectual elements to it, but no matter how you approach it, it's all spirit. — Amos Lee

I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music. — Laura Bell Bundy

My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass. — Afrika Bambaataa

You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account — Jerry Goldsmith

Symmetria by the Uccello Project is a gorgeous, instrumental and largely unclassifiable record. Best thought of as 'cinematic', each of the tracks conjures up a range of emotions and images, taking the listener on a beautiful journey. The layers of basses, guitars and percussion ebb and flow, drawing on jazz, folk, blues and African music, blending all the elements into one lovely album. Recommended. — Steve Lawson

Time and rhythm are the most important elements in music. If both aren't well conceived, organized, and executed, no amount of notes will make the piece a meaningful artistic experience. — Anthony Davis

I love Mix Tape. It combines three great elements - magic, music and a natural way of performing. I know that every time you perform Mix Tape you will feel like you're presenting someone with a very special gift. I've never come across a routine so natural and so strong. Use this and you will be the wonder worker they talk about long after you have left. — Luke Jermay

We're passionate musicians, but we felt classical concerts were more like a funeral because nobody talked and everybody was dressed so conservatively. We thought that's kind of strange, because music is full of life! We thought we could break through that barrier with theater and comedy elements. — Aleksey Igudesman

Sometimes a piece of music in the score isn't effective. When a score is too well finished with too many elements, sometimes it's too much. — Alejandro Amenabar

The Peruvian flute music is ... cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed. — Kate Braverman

While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read. — Richard R. Nelson

Perhaps of all the most basic elements of music, rhythm most directly affects our central nervous system. — George Crumb

Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all. — George Clooney

But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements - alimony and acrimony - the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, as if they had not only conjured her but then dismissed her, as if she had been entirely their illusion. He listened to the old songs again, years later on that same dark promenade, when every CD he had ever owned sat nestled in that greatest of all human inventions, the iPod, dialed up and yielding to his fingertip's tap. The songs now offered him, in exchange for all he had lost, the sensation that there was something still to long for, still, something still approaching, and all that had gone before was merely prologue to an unimaginably profound love yet to seize him. If there was any difference now, it was only that his hunger for music had become more urgent, less a daily pleasure than a daily craving. — Arthur Phillips

I want any kid who listens to my music to see that I am confident with all elements of my personality that I can't change. — Halsey

As far as politically how country music goes, it's true that it's regarded from a distance as a genre of music that at different times, the more right elements of the political spectrum have claimed for their own. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Some of my favorite music is incredibly repetitive, or on the surface has an element of repetition. But once you go beneath the surface, you realize in the repetition is constant variation. — John Dieterich

Skiffle was blues featuring a washboard and acoustic instruments. It encompassed blues, with elements of folk, jazz, and, at times, American country-and-western music. — Van Morrison

I was a big fan of Middle Eastern elements of music and experimental electronic and tribal sounds. — Adam Lambert

The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time. — Paul Weller

All musicians practice ear training constantly, whether or not they are cognizant of it. If, when listening to a piece of music, a musician is envisioning how to play it or is trying to play along, that musician is using his or her 'ear' - the understanding and recognition of musical elements - for guidance. — Steve Vai

I don't know why, but there's a certain element of panic in writing lyrics that I'm not sure I enjoy. I don't write lyrics first, ever. I've never done that. So, in a sense, the lyrics are a bit of an afterthought - it's music first. — Mike Patton