Quotes & Sayings About Instrumental Music

The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself. — John Zorn

True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public ... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential
will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra. — Richard Wagner

After all my years of doing instrumental music I still like just a simple instrumental song with a nice catchy melody and an opportunity to play a solo over a harmonic structure. — Stanley Clarke

When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female. — Charles Darwin

I just started as a part of the public school music program. I took lessons at the school every Friday and was a part of the school band. I was just a normal kid taking instrumental lessons at school, nothing special. — Kenny G

The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's playing a million notes and it's about playing fast. That's not what we do. — Chad Smith

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock. — Chris Cornell

I am an old man, and I here declare that I never knew them to be productive of any good in the worship of God, and have reason to believe that they are productive of much evil. Music as a science I esteem and admire, but instrumental music in the house of God I abominate and abhor. This is the abuse of music, and I here register my protest against all such corruption of the worship of the author of Christianity. — Adam Clarke

I spent a lot of time in Tower Records. I'm a huge music nerd, and Tower was instrumental to me when I was growing up. — Colin Hanks

I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision. — Lydia Lunch

That's always attractive to me, to work with music whose form is a big question mark. Even many of my favorite bands growing up, when I was just a kid learning to play drums and guitar and everything, were bands like Pink Floyd, where the arrangement, the number of bars in each section is unconventional and often lopsided, and there will be small little instrumental interludes and that sort of thing. So those odd forms, as well as dark content, are the things that I think are continuous through all the type of projects that I've been attracted to. — Charlie Clouser

I really feel instrumental music can speak - can contain tremendous amounts of information - but it's speaking to your subconscious. — Glenn Branca

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media. — David Sanborn

Jazz is musical humor. The noun jazz describes a modern American technique for the playing of any music, accompanied by noise called harmony, and interpolated instrumental effects. It also describes music exhibiting influence of that technique which has as its traditional object to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest sense, humor. — Bix Beiderbecke

When I was a teenager, I got into four track recorders, drum machines, and synthesizers, and I started producing instrumental music. — Duncan Sheik

Instrumental music was only tolerated, on account of the times and of the people. But in gospel times, we must not have recourse to these, unless we wish to destroy the evangelical perfection, and to obscure the meridian light, which we enjoy in Christ our Lord. — John Calvin

With instrumental music, it is traditionally hard to get exposure. — Yanni

The church, although lapsing more and more into deflection from the truth and into a corrupting of apostolic practice, had not instrumental music for 1200 years (that is, it was not in general use before this time); The Calvinistic Reform Church ejected it from its service as an element of popery, even the church of England having come very nigh its extrusion from her worship. It is heresy in the sphere of worship. — John Lafayette Girardeau

I'm inspired by the music, always have been, always will be, it's only what a track or instrumental interpretation from a producer can do that will excite my pen into making magic for someone else to enjoy..Only the music inspires me.. — Truth Hurts

It's hard to put my music in a specific genre, but if you had to, "instrumental cyber metal" would be an accurate one. — Paul Wardingham

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education. — David Cook

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time. — Carlos Santana

Wonderful is the power of instrumental music, absolute music without words, that may convey impressions, deep and lasting, no words could give. — Aubertine Woodward Moore

I usually start with a guitar riff or some little pattern of chords, and then I kind of go from there. Usually my lyrics are the last thing to go onto a song. For years and years I only ever did instrumental, so I'm still trying to get confidant with my lyrics and find the right balance. I'll generally get inspired from the music. I'll have a guitar line, and then I'll have a melody line, and I hook the lyrics up to fit that rhythm. So, my lyrics to tend be very rhythmic as well. They work with the music rather than the music works around them. — Butterfly Boucher

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too." — Wynton Marsalis

You look back, and it was important to bring back instrumental music, and it was great to be a part of that wave of instrumental rock music. And clearly it was something I was destined to do. — Stuart Hamm

I write a lot of more instrumental music than I do vocal music. It's because I come out of a background of playing piano and then playing sax for a number of years. I kind of got into rock backwards. A lot of guys go into rock and then get sick of it and then go into something else. I came the other way, so I've always just had a lot more stuff lying around. — Tom Verlaine

Of all the early breakthrough rock and roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. — Cub Koda

I always liked instrumental music, and I think there's a vehicle out there for it. I think a true artist not only records, but you have to perform and you have to have some kind of consistent output. You can't just put out an album every ten years and never play - that's not an artist, that's something else. But I find there's always been a vehicle for what I've done, because I get out there and play all the time. I say 12 hundred shows on my website just in case, because we can't verify it, but it's more like 15 hundred! — Michelangelo

I did record a bunch of stuff, but the thing that usually stops me from doing that is that I'm a terrible singer. I made a bunch of instrumental music, and it feels really good, but just as a singer, I'm not good. — Flea

Haida preferred to listen to instrumental music, chamber music, and vocal recordings. Music where the orchestral component was loud and prominent wasn't to his liking. — Haruki Murakami

Lord, save the Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, or instrumental music, and a congregational ministry, like other heathen Churches around them! — Peter Cartwright

There was a time when hip-hop was its own musical principle, aside from sampling. Like the entire Wild Style break is instrumental. Kurtis Blow's earliest stuff was studio musicians playing. Whodini had a real clear sound, things like "five minutes of funk," stuff that you could write really beautiful, lush string and horn arrangements around, stuff that was just music. — Mos Def

The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music. — George Crumb

Instrumental music is nonverbal and thus radically ambiguous. It doesn't lend itself to what might be called content-oriented analysis, though plenty of intellectuals have tried to analyze it in precisely that way. — Terry Teachout

With Bruford, the album was One Of A Kind. All-instrumental, it possessed the kind of focused vision that allowed for no ifs or buts. With the unnerving confidence of youth, it had This Is What We Do And This Is How We Do It stamped all over it. — Bill Bruford

I was trying to actively get away from music, I guess. But I recorded a whole bunch of instrumental piano songs. — Jens Lekman

It's always made me feel odd when I'd get a Dove Award for an instrumental album that has nothing to do with gospel. When I think of gospel music, I think of spreading the Good News with words. But maybe it's just because I was heralded once upon a time as one of theirs. The category of instrumental music seems sort of important to the big picture, but I felt a little embarrassed at the same time. — Phil Keaggy

The music of this opera (Madame Butterfly) was dictated to me by God. I was merely instrumental in getting it on paper and communicating it to the public. — Giacomo Puccini

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces. — Alan Moore

When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting. — Daniel Alarcon

The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words. — Richard Wagner

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

Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way. — Stephen Malkmus

While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument. — Yanni

Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument ... actually, you are singing inside. — Ali Akbar Khan

How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry ... As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.' — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The character of instrumental music ... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations. — Franz Liszt

When you're talking about your own music every day, listening to bands, going to festivals, you can kind of lose sight of your initial connection with music. Instrumental music - especially jazz - helps me refocus. — Jenny Lewis

Instrumental music can spread the international language. — Herb Alpert

I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic. — Yanni

I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words. — Rosanne Cash

Most of the music I've listened to or grew up listening to - a lot of it at least - is instrumental stuff. — Flume

I probably listen to more instrumental music than music with lyrics, but at the same time I do love both. — Flume

When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to ! — Richard Betts

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz. — John Hughes