How Great Music Is Quotes & Sayings

That's the great thing about music. If you played it, it's correct. The worst musical train wreck hurts absolutely no one. It's all part of the show. In fact it's how we get to the great stuff. There is no penalty for skating on the edge or throwing ourselves off the cliff. So we do. — Stewart Copeland

Reagan to son: how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. — H.W. Brands

I never liked hearing anyone say I was the new George Gershwin, because I knew I could have never even carried that man's music case. If George Gershwin hadn't died when he was thirty-nine years old, there is no knowing how much more great music he would have written. — Burt Bacharach

I feel like that's a way people can change the way music is - to be guided by someone they believe in and trust. Larson and I really believed in each other. It was like brother/sister, father/daughter, we were laughing and yelling, that's how it is when you make an album! Essentially the trust was there and I got something great. — Laura Bell Bundy

I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original. — Stone Gossard

It is a tough city to live in (Detroit) but a great city to be around. There is so much promise. There just needs to be a movement to help push the city beyond the automobile industry. The music business needs to learn how to support itself. — MC Serch

To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Well, one is inspired by the whole of life, one's own and somebody else's. You know how sometimes you hear great music, and music is completely untranslatable into words, into any words. A certain tension that is born when one listens to music could aid you in expressing something absolutely different. — Wislawa Szymborska

You don't have to have a terrific voice or know how to read music. The only requirement is that you enjoy singing, fun and fellowship. And, this is a great hobby for fathers and sons to share. — Dick Miller

Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap, that's how it was with "Hotel California".. a leased beach house in Malibu ... all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day probably in 1975 ... soaking wet ... thinking the world is a wonderful place to be ... with an acoustic 12 string ... those chords just oozed out. — Don Felder

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I think what's cool about Slayer is no matter how old their albums are, it's the one band to me that their sound is immortal. It never sounds corny to me. You can go back and listen to some Pantera and Metallica albums, and you're like, 'OK, great music.' But Slayer, you go back, and they always sound fresh and hard as hell. — Blake Anderson

I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have. — Denis Leary

Jamaican reggae is the style of music I always reach for when ranting to friends about how you could listen to one style of music exclusively for the rest of your life - and it would all be great and varied and worth hearing. — Jonny Greenwood

You know what, the drummer is my manager. He's busy. And I'm busy. I don't need the dough, though. But having said that, there's a limit to how much bad music I wanna play. I did it when I was young, and some of the music was OK, but it wasn't great. — Aimee Mann

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it
even of my own music
with the same nuances forever. — Aaron Copland

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note; and the music is produced by each note coming in just at the right moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people's minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds - why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you may get some result - some music from your horns! A — Arthur Schopenhauer

I am always hearing ... the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.'
'No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.'
'But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries ... It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest. — George MacDonald

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die. — Charles Bukowski

You should be making music primarily because you love it. Most everything else is a bonus. If you have fans at all, great. If you can play around your home town, or maybe throughout your country, fantastic. Recording your music should please you first and foremost -- how else could you expect anyone else to get into it? If you do start to become really successful, your troubles will truly begin. — Bruce Duff

Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.' ... Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall - all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be. — Bram Stoker

Boston was a great city to grow up in, and it probably still is. We were surrounded by two very important elements: academia and the arts. I was surrounded by theater, music, dance, museums. And I learned how to sail on the Charles River. So I had a great childhood in Boston. It was wonderful. — Leonard Nimoy

Rock 'n' roll music, in the end, is a source of religious and mystical power. Your playing can suck, your singing can be barely viable, but if when you get together with your pals in front of your audience and make the noise, the one that is drawn from the center of your being, from your godhead, from your gutter, from the universe's infinitesimal genesis point... you're rockin' and you're a rock 'n' roll star in every sense of the word. The punks instinctively knew this and created a third revolution out of it, but it is an essential element in the equation of every great musical unit and rock 'n' roll band, no matter how down-to-earth their presentation. — Bruce Springsteen

How wonderful it is to celebrate a 27 years career! When you moved from basket ball to music, the world of sports lost a great player, but music won a great singer. You transmit good vibrations, a wonderful energy on the stage. — Simone Bittencourt De Oliveira

It's sad really, trying to appreciate all of the great events in our lives and all the amazingly good days. Sometimes it seems like we take them for granted, until something bad comes along to put us back into perspective. Are these bad events catalysts for change, which bring out the resiliency and best in us? A cosmic wakeup call that reminds us to enjoy the good times, because they can be taken away so easily.
How messed up and ironic would that be?
Is it even possible for us to remember what goodness we're truly capable of on a daily basis, not just when things cause us to react out of necessity. A base line of beautiful acts and thoughts that are not brought out only by holiday music or someone else's misfortune, but remain at the surface of who we really are. Wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that be something to strive for? — Matthew Alan

I remember how people used to bitch about those crazy tapes of the Beatles at Shea Stadium, about how you couldn't hear the music, that all you could hear was the screaming, the screaming of all those thousands of girls. But I've always loved that din especially - that vast, unrelenting din of screaming girls that almost completely overwhelms the sad, beautiful voices of John and Paul. That's great. That whole thing for me is the real music. — Mark Leyner

How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark Autumn evenings come,
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!
I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose! — Robert Browning

Everyone is aware of the fact that visual and auditive perspective are identical; the only difference being that they are created and perceived by two physically different organs, the eye and the ear. How often the playing of a great master makes us think of a picture with a deep background and varying planes; the figures in the foreground almost leap out of the frame whereas in the background the mountains and clouds are lost in a blue haze. — Heinrich Neuhaus

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different. — Chuck Israels

It is captivating, isn't it? England has such a great scene of electronic music, and I think that was very prominent in Pusher, and the nightlife was the beat of the film. I feel what is really great about Pusher is that it wasn't about drugs and guns and strippers. That was just all circumstantial. I felt like it was really about people and how decisions and circumstances can change relationships. Something just happens. Everything changes for a reason. — Agyness Deyn

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind
the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake
the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism
how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings. — Albert Einstein

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. — Wynton Marsalis

Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me. — Jackson Browne

God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God. Music is a language more profound than words. How often have you heard a great piece of music and felt that? Great music does not just make you feel good; great music suggests some profound truth or mysterious meaning that is objectively true but not translatable into words. — Peter Kreeft

I had no idea how much music and singing really means to people, and in my own tiny way to be a part of that is very humbling and very sweet, and and I feel very honored ... I have a great appreciation for this, in every ways and a new understanding, and I'm just as amazed as anyone else. — Ysabella Brave

The sands are the children's great resort. They cluster there, like ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows the realities of their after lives. — Charles Dickens

I'd have to say that "Mr. Crowley" in my most memorable solo ... I had spent hours trying to figure out a solo for the song ... Ozzy came in and said "it's crap - everything you're playing is crap" .. he told me to get in there and just play how I felt. He made me really nervous, so I just played anything. When I came back to listen to it, he said it was great.. — Randy Rhoads

Everybody is born with the capacity to enjoy, but not with the art. People think just because they are alive and they breathe and they exist, they know how to enjoy. That is sheer stupidity. Enjoyment is a great art, it is a great discipline. It is as subtle a discipline as music or poetry or painting. It is the greatest creativity. — Rajneesh

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — Charles Bukowski

All I can hope to do is instill great morality in my son and trust him along the way. The music he listens to or how he chooses to wear his hair doesn't define his moral compass, and if he wants to listen to country music and wear a cowboy hat too, that's fine. — Mark Hoppus

I set a Google Alert for myself, and now I'm seeing people say my music influenced them and how great it is all the time. Sometimes I listen to this stuff that's supposed to be influenced by me, and I can't hear myself in it. But I'd rather they say it than not. — Giorgio Moroder

I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it. — David McCullough

The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo. But it's no longer necessary for teachers and parents to build these circuits. Now there are professionally produced shows with great actors, very convincing sets, sound, music. Now there's the information highway. We don't need the circuits any more than we need to know how to ride horses. Those of us who had imagination circuits built can look in someone's face and see stories there; to everyone else, a face will just be a face. — Kurt Vonnegut

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles. — Ahmet Ertegun

The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over. — Maynard Ferguson

A good rock band is like a great lover. Their rhythms simultaneously jolt and calm you. They know when and where to tease you to make it feel the best, how to draw from you the ultimate pleasure. — Tom Leveen

Kalkbrenner has made me an offer; that I should study with him for three years, and he will make something really - really out of me. I answered that I know how much I lack; but that I cannot exploit him, and three years is too much. But he has convinced me that I can play admirably when I am in the mood, and badly when I am not; a thing which never happens to him. After close examination he told me that I have no school; that I am on an excellent road, but can slip off the track. That after his death, or when he finally stops playing, there will be no representative of the great piano-forte school. That even if I wish it, I cannot build up a new school without knowing the old one; in a word : that I am not a perfected machine, and that this hampers the flow of my thoughts. That I have a mark in composition; that it would be a pity not to become what I have the promise of being ... — Frederic Chopin

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL.
Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sound travels great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not because it is there
But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit.
Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished. — Dalai Lama XIV

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it. — Dmitri Shostakovich

There is such a cool vibe in Nashville. It is has the excitement of a big city, but also has this amazing small town feel. I have definitely come to call it my home, and have my favorite go-to spots. But most of all it's the people. The southern charm, and hospitality. And some great shopping never hurts. As fun as Music City is during the day, the real magic happens at night ... The lights, the energy, the music, how could you not love this town? — Hayden Panettiere

I've met a lot of people and happened to inspire a lot of people who I'm in conversation with about business. It's just how things are going for me and it's great, but music is always going to be number one for me. — Nas

Mick Jagger has produced some great films and brought us stories about the music industry that have changed the way we think about how music is made. — Olivia Wilde

We're slammed at work and busy at home. Throw in an occasional outing with friends or significant others, and we're ready for bed at 10:00 PM every night. Really ready for bed. There's barely enough time in a day to cover all our mandatory obligations, so optional activities like novel writing, journaling, painting or playing music
things that feel great but no one will ever take us to task for shirking
are invariably left for another day.
Which is how most of us become 'one day' novelists. As in, 'One day, I'd really like to write a novel.' The problem is that that day never seems to come, and so we're stuck. — Chris Baty