Making Your Own Music Quotes & Sayings

It's just being who you want to be, even if you are a poor kid making loud music
about being unhappy! — John Darnielle

Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing ... Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music. — Robert Bly

Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. You find yourself saying things like "I didn't know that part was so ugly." Or "I better get a professional opinion about that." You go to bed hollow and then back into the operating room the next day ... facing every fear, every disgusting thing you hate about yourself. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform ... you perform like your life depended on it
and in those perfect moments you find beauty you never knew existed. You find yourself and you friends all over again, you find something to fight for, something to love. Something to show the world. — Gerard Way

Music should be like making love. Sometimes you want it soft and tender, another time you want it hard and aggressive. — Jeff Buckley

You can't quite believe what you are hearing - and it's not necessarily something that you can listen to all the time because it's too intense - but it changes the way you go about making music. — Daughn Gibson

There are any number of models artists can use to profit off of their talent and artistry. It is not up to the state to protect them from competition. Musicians can obviously get paid for performing and having their music copied and "pirated" helps them in this respect by making them more well known, more popular. — Stephan Kinsella

There's still people that do it poorly ... and people that do it very, very well. I think there's still an incredible spectrum. I guess there's something that's appealing in it, in that everyone on some level is a DJ. But people still go to clubs, and there's still ... it is interesting - with everyone having an iPod now - when music is so personalised and things like Pandora and making your own playlists, there's something really powerful about a room full of people all dancing to the same song. — Chris Baio

I hope we can keep doing it this way - making music and art that are pure products of our influences while not really having to let the whole celebrity side of it get in the way. Then maybe more virtual bands will come out and do the same thing. — Damon Albarn

I'm 19 years old. I think I'm doing a pretty good job ... Basically from my heart I really just want to say it really should be about to music. It should be about the craft that I'm making. This is not a gimmick and I'm an artist and I should be taken seriously. — Justin Bieber

I don't need an award to inspire me to keep making music. — Jake Bugg

Do you remember telling me how you're willing to put up with the pressures of fame if it means you can play your music for people?' When she nodded, he said, 'Making sure my family is happy has been worth any tradeoff. — Bella Andre

I want to continue to remain present and grateful each day that I get to be doing what I love. Making and performing music I believe in. — Rachel Platten

It don't matter about all that anyway," Armstrong added. "You think it do, but it don't. A man ain't just his one talent. Lil Louis needs you. And Jones look to you like you his brother. You got the talent of making others your kin, your blood. Music, well that's different. I reckon it got its own worth, but it ain't a man's whole life."
"Aww hell, Louis," I thought. "Ain't nothing else I want. — Esi Edugyan

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff. — David Byrne

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. — Stephen Sondheim

I think, in music, you're always hoping that you'll have a like-minded audience and that the music you like making will appeal to them, too. — Neil Peart

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

God, just shoot me the day I start making music you can just put on in the car and have a conversation over it. — Jack Antonoff

As long as I'm blessed and/or cursed to be alive, it's hard to see a time when I won't be making music. — Kyp Malone

We're making music to help people think and bring them together, that's our role; we're not siding with anybody — Steve Diggle

I've always had a fascination with making your own music but never have been skilled enough to play the instrument, so to be able to make music without the ability was awesome. — Avicii

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

Once you find your own sound, you find the strength and courage to stay true to that. Keep going even in moments when you're not blazing on fire and relevant with everyone around you. It's because you love to make music. It's making sure that the music isn't about the technology and tools, but truly about the music. Because that's how humanity and the soul are communicated. The soul is the true tool. — Richie Hawtin

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way. — Florence Welch

Even then, I could still appreciate the moment of simply making sounds with a group of people. There is another place you go to in those instances, and it feels vast, refreshing, like you're creating your own air to breathe. And even though it's never going to happen again and there's a palpable sense of mediocrity, there's still a connection that you wouldn't have otherwise, to the sound, to the people. — Carrie Brownstein

Bear in mind that you are not making music for your own pleasure, but for the pleasure of your audience. — Richard Strauss

No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

The main thing in making your own music is that it's an expression of someone's personality and being. That's what people want to hear, and you can't really teach that - that's just something that comes out. Teaching just hones that. — Michael Kiwanuka

Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere. — Arlo Guthrie

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online. — Gus Van Sant

Develop your own skills and styles. In music, designing, electronics, etc., you may have a peculiar way of exposing your dreams in an uncommon way — Israelmore Ayivor

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself ... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need. — John Coltrane

I decided to start professionally making music at about 11. I was like, 'Okay, this is something I really want to do.' — Roshon Fegan

There's a whole gamut of things to do with film music that don't apply when you're making a record or if you're writing a concert piece or something. — Henry Jackman

Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You're not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest. — Shannon L. Alder

I've making videos since I was seventeen I was originally discollecting vintage hmmm ... footages from different archives and setting moving pictures to classical music clips that meant a lot to me. Maybe there were places I have been where nice things have happened. I had a vision of making my life a work of art and I was looking for people who also felt that way. — Lana Del Rey

Imagine music gushing down the hollow places in your bones, and making you liquid, and giving you speed. Imagine music turning your body into a song. — Beth Kephart

I started making remixes for every specific girl I wanted to date. That's how I learned how to use Pro Tools, and then I started making my own music. — Charlie Puth

There is no music in a "rest" that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody. — John Ruskin

If you are making music for other people, you will have to be aware of how people relate to it. — Ken Hill

That's one of the main things I do, work with choreographers. I've been doing it a long time, and it's a real important part of my life as a soundmaker, making music for dance. — Zeena Parkins

I can't imagine ever not making music, making albums, writing songs, doing shows. That's all I really know, and that's all I really do. — Pixie Lott

Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way. — Steven Rinella

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

The only person who really impressed me with making new music is Cudi. Everyone else seems to be jumping on the same music, the producer-made stuff, but the one person that's made new music to me is Cudi. — Lupe Fiasco

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

I actually do see rock and roll as pop music. I think the distinction I was making was that I was going out of my way to have a very consistent approach to production, where nothing kind of punctures the reality - or, I guess, the fake reality - of the album and what you're listening to from beginning to end. — Dan Bejar

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

That's what it is. That's what my morning was like: all these real physical heavy positive vibrations, the soul of this tape. The fuzzy groove. The meaning of it all, if it has one: All love, all the time. Peace and happiness in every day. Peace and happiness with cow blood dripping from your hands, bright blood staining your fingerprints because you didn't glove up since you don't normally do prep work. Peace and happiness when you're making a list of everything that's wrong with the world and squinting your eyes tight trying to imagine your way out of it. Peace, peace, peace, happiness, happiness, happiness. — John Darnielle

In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life. — Kelis

Twenty years from now, will we listen to Lady Gaga? No. She might think she is making a stand for the freaks and the weirdos. But they're not going to have any decent music to play, are they? — Noel Gallagher

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. — William Shakespeare

There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance. — Michael Ondaatje

The music
the making of music and the performing of music
produced memories, many good, some bad, some difficult. But he knew for sure that he'd spent too much of that time living not in the present moment of creating or playing music but in the expectation or hope of some reward, some success. He had always been waiting for his life to start when that happened, when the recognition came. It had taken him twenty years to realize how utterly wrongheaded that was.
It was as if the twenty years didn't amount to much, that he hadn't actually been present for so much of his life. — Graham Joyce

There's no feeling as a musician better than being on stage, sharing music with strangers. People you have never met, singing along, and making that connection with somebody is so awesome. — Mike Fontenot

It reminded him of the Sound of Music. Myron liked the ole Julie Andrews musical well enough. who didn't? but he always found one song particularly dumb. One of the classics, actually. My Favorite Things. The song made no sense. Ask a zillion people to list their absolute favorite things, and how many of them are going to list doorbells for crying out loud.
You know what, Milly, I love doorbells. To hell with strolling on a quiet beach, or reading a great book, or making love or seeing a broadway musical. Doorbells, Milly, doorbells really punch my ticket. Sometimes I just run up to people's houses and press their doorbells and, well, I think i am man enough to admit I shutter. — Harlan Coben