Make Music Quotes & Sayings

I'm not really interested in the audience's enjoyment,' Cave mumbles once he has changed into clean pants. 'It doesn't bother me one way or another. I just don't give a shit. People feel more and more disappointed with each concert because less and less happens. It's really easy to suck an audience in. Like, I can wiggle my bum and back-flip on my head and they love it. I could make an audience love me until the end of my days. There's just no point in it any more. I wish they'd just ... die. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians. — Horace Walpole

When we cannot see, we don't judge. Small wonder when we kiss, cry, laugh, make love, are in pain, pray and listen to music, we close our eyes. — Sabine Shah

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name. — Samuel R. Delany

Sometimes the music just has to tell the story without you trying to tell the story. It depends on the type of music you want to make. If it makes you feel good and party then you go with that. If it makes you feel like speaking on something real and doing a story then it's the beat just has to have the story. — Tyga

I want to continue to produce film, television, and theater, and to make the most amazing music that I've made in my life. — Alicia Keys

I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums. — Talib Kweli

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind. — Leonard Bernstein

Music can make a difference. There is a global nature to music, which has the potential to bring all people together. Music is truly an international language, and I hope to contribute by widening communication as much as I can. — Marvin Hamlisch

We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music. — Barbara Sher

I was introduced to lots of great music through my local record store. It was a place where people knew music and they knew me, and could make great suggestions and discoveries. Whether it is in the physical world or on-line, the value of a great and knowledgeable record store has not gone away — Peter Gabriel

It's hard to make a living in music, so a lot of times in the arts it's safer to kind of fit into a box. — Michael Gungor

The Heavenly Spheres make music for us,
The Holy Twelve dance with us,
All things join in the dance!
Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing. — Gustav Holst

Music is the one thing on this earth that allows us to be truly free.
Music has no boundaries or rules and never asks for anything in return, only that you listen to it.
It can make you cry tears that you thought you never had.
It can also inspire you to fight on, when all hope is lost.
For that, I am forever in your debt — Harry

Not all artists have a responsibility to be socially or politically aware, but they do have a responsibility to make great art. They have to find some truth and put that in their music. — Michael Franti

Because ... most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.'
'Too stupid.'
'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?'
'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.'
'Exactly.'
'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought.
'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food. — Nick Hornby

When you make music, you're forming these invisible vibrations in the air into different shapes and consistencies and speeds in order to create music, and understanding how the math of that works just gives you more colors to paint with, and allows you to get to what you want quicker. — Flea

That's what I care about is the people I work with and representing them and helping to make their music apparent for the rest of the world. — Diplo

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life. — Franz Liszt

Live performances make music important. Recording is cool and fun, and it's nice to document the thing you made, but the goal in my mind is to perform. — Dan Deacon

I just want to make art that connects with people and moves them on an emotional level. Any time I can put out music and place a story behind it and have people watch it and go, 'Wow, I was affected by that,' to me, feels like I've done my job. — Hayley Kiyoko

I don't think my music's as traditional as people make it out. — George Strait

Everyone was saved once by music. So I decided to REALLY work on my songs and not just "play" - to make something really good, more "professional." Something which makes you feel better; a song who says: "I know how much you're sad, and you're not alone, this is a song made for you." I really wanted to help with my music. — Marilou

If you were a country," I said, "what would your national anthem be?"
I meant a pre-existing song
"What a Wonderful World" or "Que Sera, Sera" or something to make it a joke, like "Hey Ya!" ("I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.") — David Levithan

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. — Pete Seeger

For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated suspension the whole hot day. We lived for music, we lived for Beauty, and we were poor. But we didn't care where we were living, or what we had to do during the day to make it possible; eventually, if you waited long enough, you were finally standing before the mirror in that cheap room, looking at your face one last time, like an actor going onstage, before rushing out to walk in the door of that discotheque and see someone like Malone. — Andrew Holleran

The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music. — Igor Stravinsky

Well, I've been recording myself on a computer since I was about 13 or 14. So it's completely entwined with my creative process. Essentially, it allows you to make music that's better and smarter than you are, by using your ears to lead the way. — St. Vincent

True Music, like all true Art, is an experience to be shared, not judged, for praise cannot make it better, as blame cannot make it worse — Pat Martino

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion.
"Why not?" I pursued.
"Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder. — Philip Glass

I don't really look at the charts at all. If anything, I try to out-do what I've done before. I try to make music that I like and I trust my own judgement with what will work with a wider audience. If you compare yourself to the charts, you lose perspective on what you're doing and why you're doing it. — Avicii

I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies. — Lana Del Rey

All I knew when I moved to Nashville was that I wanted to make music in whatever shape and form I could. — Hunter Hayes

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

I have to make music. If I don't do it, I go crazy. — Tom DeLonge

Music began playing and a woman walked into the room and stood beside a small band. She was dressed in a red Irish costume that hung to her ankles and it was laced at the bodice with a black cord. After giving a nod to the band, she sang a few Irish songs. But one song seemed to stand out to Rick and he stopped eating and listened.
Sure a little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day and it nestled on the ocean in a spot so far away. When the angels found it, sure it looked so sweet and fair, they said, "Suppose we leave it for it looks so peaceful there."
So they sprinkled it with stardust just to make the shamrocks grow. 'Tis the only place you'll find them no matter where you go. Then they dotted it with silver to make its lakes so grand and when they had it finished, sure they called it Ireland. — Linda Weaver Clarke

Today, with a recording, he can hear the thing enough times until he really gets acquainted with the language, and then he can begin to make an estimate of the intrinsic, aesthetic value of that piece of music. — Leo Ornstein

When the music is physically demanding, I want to make sure that the effort involved is put across to the audience through physical gesture. — Leila Josefowicz

Having problems with people don't get me paid. So, that ain't me. I support those that support me. Gucci, Rocko, Nicki, Rick Ross, Drake, Tyga, whoever you want to put in the list, I'm working with them and they are all down with me. I just make good music. — Drumma Boy

I'm not sure I ever try to make a case for the music. I mean, sometimes the music isn't even that good. I just tell the band's stories; if I describe the music, it's to explain how it moved the overall story along. — Michael Azerrad

The blues echoes right through into soul, R&B and hip hop. It's part of the make-up of modern music. You can't turn your back on the blues. — Ronnie Wood

Anything I do has to have integrity, so if you just want to make music, it's not difficult finding support. The hard part for a publicist or manager is making a star. — Esperanza Spalding

Gauri laughed when he stumbled through the movements of the dance.
"You are a discredit to your title, Vikram. Fox Prince, indeed," she said. "I've never seen a clumsier fox."
"What I lack in skill, I make up for in enthusiasm."
"Do you even know how to dance?"
"Not at all," he said, spinning her in a circle.
"I can tell. Were you lulled by the music?"
"The company."
"Now you're just trying to be sly and charming."
"I am a credit to my title, after all. — Roshani Chokshi

I never had the feeling I ever had to make a dime doing anything. — Rick Rubin

I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people. — Chick Corea

It is music and dancing that make me at peace with the world. — Nelson Mandela

People don't like what I represent, and they think I'm trying to represent the whole gay community just because I'm a gay person and I make music. By default I'm supposed to represent a whole community? I think that's ridiculous. — Steve Grand

A lot of people I make music with are really talented and it doesn't stop at one instrument. — Abbie Cornish

I think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there. — Cody Johnson

When I first saw Destiny's Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music, and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours; it was just so cool to me. — Lizzo

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

Let no one persuade you of a single thing. Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera. Write in the cadences of first love, of second chances, of air raids, of outrage, of the hideous and the hilarious, of headlong acceptance or curt refusal. Make the bitter music of bumdom, the sad shanties of landlessness, cool at the equator and fluid at the pole. Set the sounds that angels make after an all-night orgy. Whatever lengthens the day, whatever gets you through the night. Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough. Let your progressions predict time's end and recollect the dead as if they're all still her. Because they are. — Richard Powers

A song can be a song where somebody thinks you're crazy. A song that gets released has got to be something that everyone can relate to. Most of the songs that I keep are un-relateable for most people - some of the music I make only for myself and the homies. — Schoolboy Q

With no faith, purely as a scientific experiment, I started meditating and watched if it changed my music. It did, but it didn't make it more mellow. It made it easier to get into the flow of creativity. — Rivers Cuomo

She had a way of moving that moved him as much as music, which was what moved him most of all. Surely the spirit animating that pearless body must be unusual too? Why would nature make a vessel like that, if not to contain something still more valuable? — J.K. Rowling

I never knew she liked country music," Smitty said in awe.
Yeah, that must make her prime mate material for a Smith. She'll fit right in at one of your hootenannies."
-Mitch to Smitty — Shelly Laurenston

Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as 'A Great Big World,' and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as 'our music on steroids.' — Ian Axel

You've got to be happy, you have to do this thing [music] for the love. It's not like you go into music because it's going to make a lot of money. It's something you do ... that's the thing. You got to accept all that hard work with it, too. And enjoy it, and love it. — Creed Bratton

I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous. — Ice-T

I've gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I'll go and put on something different to shake myself awake. — Kelly Link

I didn't want to call and schedule shows or call and make people listen to my music. Luckily, my friends and family really stayed on me and made me put myself out there. — Colbie Caillat

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. — Arca

Music is a handshake where I, as a songwriter, am only part of the equation. I love that, the fact that you can make the song your own. — Jon Foreman

A music director cannot and should not be chosen on the basis of a first date. It is not so difficult to make a good impression with a single appearance, usually containing some of a conductor's party pieces, works they have performed successfully many times before. — Leonard Slatkin

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times ... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes! — Lester Bowie

Our music doesn't make many compromises, but we take it into a venue that's larger than people expect. — Ian Williams

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask. — David Byrne

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact. — Mike Leigh

I started in the late 70s, beginning of the 80s, and I think I started to sing and make music as a therapy for myself; I never planned to be an artist; sometimes when I think about it it's crazy that I'm here, and I'm touring, and I'm doing what I'm doing. — Mari Boine

Make your own music. It can be done. — Michelle Shocked

I write incessantly, I'm very productive, I write for a dozen publications and blogs and websites. A lot of very hardcore political stuff. I write a weekly feature. I express myself. But when time comes to make music [with the] same absolutely unleashing of total honesty zero inhibitions, it just flows like a stream of conscientiousness because I will not be silenced no matter what my point might be. — Ted Nugent

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that.
I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. — Peter Shaffer

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine. — Beth Ditto

If Barbra Steisand wants to make a picture called 'My Pink Fingernail,' the studios will go, 'Gee, Barbra, what a wonderful idea! Money is no object! Take two years in preproduction and write the music, and you'll direct.' — Mickey Rooney

For our ancestors music was something that you sat down to listen to, or which you made for yourself. It was a ceremonial event, in which you participated, either as a passive listener or as an active performer. Either way you were giving and receiving life, sharing in something of great social significance.
With the advent of the gramophone, the radio and now the iPod, music is no longer something that you must make for yourself, nor is it something that you sit down to listen to. It follows you about wherever you go, and you switch it on as a background. It is not so much listened to as overheard. — Roger Scruton

A love song must respect the canons of music beauty, entering the fibers of those who are listening. It must make them dream and pleasantly introduce them to the universe of love. — Andrea Bocelli

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

One of the things nobody tells you about the glamorous job of chaperoning teenage dances is that the shaps are the ones who have to make sure everything's picked up and locked away once the music ends. — Stephen King

My music, I feel, has always been experimental, but it had got to a point where I felt disconnected from it completely. I didn't want to be a Clark Kent/Superman: I couldn't really say, 'Well, B.o.B's the old me, and Bobby Ray's the new me.' I had to just make a point. — B.o.B

We want our music to reach everybody, so we're using the Internet. Every kid today is online, and we want to make sure our songs reach every one of them. — Kailash Kher

At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. We know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular frequencies, its singing. Before we make music, music makes us. — Joachim-Ernst Berendt

Because wanton or venal lips has murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity. — Gustave Flaubert

So for me the creative world isn't what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it's something that IS a job. Perhaps that's why I'm not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I've seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I've seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: "Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved."

I'm glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me. — Jamie Freveletti

A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level. — Jay-Z

Music is worth doing just because. It doesn't have to be justified by some political point of view, and it's kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else. — Elliott Smith

It's a funny line when you're walking - the creativity, the subjectivity versus the objectivity, creativity versus the business, and recognizing that you are in the music business, so there are certain things that you have to acquiesce to on the business side and certain creative decisions that you have to make for the purposes of serving the business side of it. — Lupe Fiasco

It's the first time I have returned to my roots - like going back to be a trio. The fans really wanted me to go back on stage and do the Supremes music, so I went about trying to make it happen. We'll go on tour in the summer. — Diana Ross

I don't really listen to rock music anymore. But were I to write a song that sounded like it could be a rock song, I'd probably give it to the Pornographers, and I'd be excited to try to make it work. — Dan Bejar

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music. — Lenny Kravitz

I didn't want to make a record that's just drones or completely experimental. A lot of the time bands that make this psychedelic style of music are just a bunch of dudes hanging out together and jamming. — Tamaryn

I need one, Momma, how come I don't have a baby sister?"

Rachel smiled. "You're so perfect. There was no need to ask for another."

Sophie cocked her head to the side like a puppy. "Ask who?"

"The Stork," Faith supplied.

Sophie looked thoroughly confused then. "I thought sex caused babies."

Rachel patted Faith on the back when she began to cough.

Kaycee shook her head. "Rhonda at school told me that special music causes babies. her sister told her that when her mom and dad play music in their bedroom, babies were being made. Momma, you play music in your room, but we don't have a baby."

"I don't have that particular CD, sweetie."

"My friend told me that it takes a penny and a Virginia to make a baby," Sophie said and sent Faith into another coughing fit. — Robin Alexander

It's important to know all those things, but part of our jobs is to move people along and to make people excited to buy music or buy clothes, and give them enjoyment, I think, too. — Paul Weller

And music, our music, will swell and then unwind like two strands of melody at last entwined. Fulfill us! Complete us! Make us whole! Seal our bond forevermore! Tonight for me, embrace your destiny! Let me hear you sing once more! — Andrew Lloyd Webber

I have a lot of musician friends. I worked in radio as a music director, and I know everybody hears about the George Straits and the Garth Brooks and the Kenny Chesneys and all that, but for every major star, there are thousands who didn't quite make it. — Robert David Hall

I grew up listening to everything. I have such a love for music, but I don't want to make the same album over and over again. — Carrie Underwood

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things. — Rivers Cuomo

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

Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal. — Ray Charles

[As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn't so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian. — Bjork