Music Audience 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

That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying. — Eduard Hanslick

It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean? — Joe Cocker

What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector. — Jacques Attali

I think that the audience intuitively understands the idea of sampling and remixing stories. That's why electronic music is global. — DJ Spooky

What I try to get beyond is playing music at people and, instead, to play music with people because audience members are constantly part of the experience. What they say in their body language, what they say in their eyes, what they sing with me ... it's an 'us,' and there's a communication that's like ... it's like church, man. — Al Jarreau

When you're on stage, the audience becomes your other half. It's the ultimate high you can reach as a musician - an incredible feeling. And no matter where I am it's still the same; there's a reason we call music the universal language. — Laura Branigan

What I'm trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don't need to change my music to get to a certain audience. — Boots Riley

'A Little Nightmare Music' is the first show we created. It's about all the nightmares that can happen in the span of a concert. When things go wrong - when the lights go out or a cellphone rings - that's when an audience suddenly comes alive, wondering what's going to happen next. Things going wrong often leads to something good. — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

I'm still learning about music. The best way to learn is to listen to the audience. When you listen to the audience, they will tell you what they like. I wish these big corporations, instead of telling the audience what they should have, would listen. — Tony Bennett

If you're a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it's a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn't even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn't have an audience. — Jason Mraz

You'll also need to invest in yourself with the kind of promo that targets your specific audience to help build that word of mouth. Most importantly, believe in what you're doing and in your music and lyrics. — Eliot Lewis

It's the hardest thing for a young player to develop. At the same time a young player also has to deliver their musicality to the audience. I'm still developing my own sound, because you can never know all the music. — Jimmy Heath

Frank [Zappa]'s music was never for the mass audience. His music contains specific kinds of information that you won't find elsewhere in rock and roll. — Gail Zappa

What I remember best from those times is the music itself. When it succeded, we took hold of the audience's attention, working it from a distracted, unshaped mass into spun beauty, passing the fine strands back and forth until we wove together something grander, not only music but memory, too-the particulars of past and present, stretched taut across a loom of timeless ideals. Harmony. Symmetry. Order. — Andromeda Romano-Lax

I wanted contemporary music to be treated the same as the traditional repertoire - performed regularly by people who knew each other and the music. That is the way you convince an audience. — Pierre Boulez

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage, talking to the audience, looking at them and smiling, that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now, but there are still moments of awkwardness. — Norah Jones

If you ask me about music and how things should be played, I believe that music-making is the combination of having learned how to do something right, what one feels is right to do in the moment, and the way the audience is listening. — Michala Petri

Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first. — Dar Williams

I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience. — F. Sionil Jose

We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it's because people don't have the chance to be closer to it. — Gustavo Dudamel

I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one. — Igor Stravinsky

Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations. — Alfred Jarry

Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence. — Leonard Bernstein

I think a lot of people get intimidated by the language of music, but everyone owns music. I think there's nothing standing in between a composer and her audience. I think a lot of people feel that way because they feel it's rarefied, but it's really not. You should feel the impact of it without being able to name it because it's ultimately a primal thing. — Jeanine Tesori

I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel narrative switftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience. — Bernard Herrmann

I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much. — Will Oldham

I'm grateful to my audience, that there are people who will buy a ticket and come and see us play and who essentially support me and this life of music. — James Taylor

In horror movies, you can write music that if it was performed on the concert stage would have the audience running out of the room with their fingers in their ears. But in a movie, all of a sudden it becomes incredibly accessible and appreciated. — Christopher Young

When I was sixteen, I danced before an audience without music. At the end someone suddenly cried 'its Death and the Maiden'. But that was not my intention; I was only endeavoring to express my first knowledge of the underlying tragedy in all seemingly joyous manifestation. The dance according with my comprehension, should have been called 'Life and the Maiden'. — Isadora Duncan

When I do things, like, with Josh Grobin, or he has so many fans, and I get people after my concerts, classical concerts, all the time coming back and saying, 'Never heard of you until I heard the song with Josh Grobin.' Then they're now classical music fans, which is something I think we need to reach a wider audience. — Joshua Bell

You get the feeling that on a lot of days the audience for most music would kind of rather not be faced with the artist, especially because we've been educated to think that the artist are these special creatures are otherwordly and aren't like us. — Amanda Palmer

It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music. — Gavin Bryars

I make a lot of music for different people. My audience is varied so I use different tempos for different music in order to satisfy my many fans. — Sizzla

We do play to our audience. It's very important. You can't create music in a vacuum. — Brian May

My heartbeat accelerates. I am in the here, in the now. I am also in the future. I am holding her and wanting and knowing and hoping all at once. We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are the underneath every part of this moment. And by making this moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It's the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it's racing toward. — David Levithan

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard. — Iggy Pop

There is no reason why a joke should not be appreciated more than once. Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a conductor refused to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the ground that his audience might have heard it before. — A.P. Herbert

We are able to speak for ourselves through our music rather than being defined and put into the spotlight in a very male kind of groomed way for an obviously predominantly male audience. — Shingai Shoniwa

Once over there [Balkans], I felt extremely patriotic. Here are these people, from 18-year-olds to military veterans, enduring real duress for the cause of peace. I don't ever want to play for a regular audience again, only military folks who are starving for music. — Sheryl Crow

My [singing] style really has no style, because I try to sing each number differently. I've always believed that if style takes precedent over the words and music, the audience get's cheated. It's like when people see a fine play or movie. They imagine themselves in the leading role. I want them to imagine that they're singing - not just listening to someone else. — Judy Garland

There's music that can affect people in their lives, and they will always relate to the point that they heard it and experienced it, either if you're playing it or you're receptive, as an audience. — Jimmy Page

Things have gone beyond my wildest expectations and dreams, and I feel like I've been given so many blessings in my life, between my friendship with the guys in the band, our wonderful audience, being able to play this music, and then my family. — Trey Anastasio

By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry , plot and narrative and character in fiction , the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience . They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite. — Steven Pinker

rhythmic drums were pumping waves of emotion into both of them. Her lusty eyes looked at him with a penetrating stare. Fionna's naked breasts pressed against Dick as they came together to dance. Dick faced Fionna and he held her tight. His naked rippling muscles pushed against her firm aroused female flesh. Dick danced with his wife Fionna. Then he grabbed the guitar to stroke a few chords of ecstasy. Another man was pounding the drums while Fionna danced naked in front of the live audience. Fionna made harmony with Dick as the throbbing beat made her explode with excitement and pleasure. He touched her deep inside with his music. He made love to her with his instrument. Each stroke of the guitar was like a motion of erotic love. Dick made her feel as if her body was quivering inside. — Fionna Free Man

It's one that still happens, actually ... forgetting a part of a difficult piece. Usually, the chances of it happening are directly proportional to how quiet and attentive the audience is. — Steve Morse

The idea that a musician can submit music online for the chance to have it promoted to a nationwide audience is the American dream come true, and a major step toward democratizing how music is discovered. — Ali Partovi

Each artist attracts his own different set of fans. And G3 over the years has created it's own audience as well ... they know it's something unusual and special that they're not going to get anywhere else ... young and old, both sexes, all come out. They all look at each other like, Wow, what are those people over there ? ... They're surprised at their own diversity ... — Joe Satriani

The power of sound to put an audience in a certain psychological state is vastly undervalued. And the more you know about music and harmony, the more you can do with that. — Mike Figgis

All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience. — Mstislav Rostropovich

I always listen to music while I'm working and I always read aloud to my wife. I love to read aloud to an audience because there's a cadence and a beat. There's a music to the language that's very important to me. — T.C. Boyle

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it. — Bruce Springsteen

All of Europe is tremendously integrated now; perhaps from all those years of colonization. Everybody that they've colonized has come to the mainland, so you'll have a racially diverse audience as well. You'll have many Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, from seven to ninety sitting in the audience, and the really incredible thing is that they all know the music. I don't mean they just know a song here and there. They know the music. They are a very educated audience. — Patti Austin

Keep making music.. Keep improving your music.. If there's no viral action on your music, you're just not good enough. Don't get mad at the audience, get mad at yourself. Either give up or get better. — Bob Lefsetz

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience. — Gustav Mahler

My American gay audience have continued to dance and sing to the music I make in a way that straight Americans haven't. I am grateful to them for that. — George Michael

It's a privilege to play music fora living. Even more, it's a privilege to have an audience. Respect that. — Bob Lefsetz

When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good. — John Tesh

Touring allows me to play material that isn't on the album and that they wouldn't be able to hear otherwise. I love it. It's the most legitimate way to acquire and sustain an audience of people who are interested in your music. — Gavin DeGraw

The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me. — Michael Tilson Thomas

Without an audience, all your dreams will not come true at all, because you need an audience to write new songs and continue to do music. — Rokia Traore

Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Comedy is the only form of entertainment where the audience doesn't know what to expect. In an evening, you might get ten comics doing ten different things. That's not what happens when you go to hear music. There isn't a classical performance followed by a hoedown followed by rap. — Jon Stewart

The music is something outside myself that's also inside myself ... Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain. — John Tavener

When you tour, you regain the music and the connection with the audience. — Sade Adu

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts. — Trent Reznor

A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music. — David Garrett

I never felt like I had a surface image to rely on that people would like - I always felt like my music would not be very fancy music, my voice is not very fancy, there is nothing hiding me from the audience. — Jeffrey Lewis

Stand-up comedians say that anyone in the audience can be funny, but people paid to see us because we're just a little bit funnier. In the same way, I think anybody can play music - in fact, I think everyone has music in them, but some of us can do it a little better. — J. D. Souther

The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal. — Robert Fripp

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

The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience. — Sir Arthur Sullivan

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

If you have a recital to do, you have to memorize the songs. I never use music when I do recitals. It produces an instant barrier, both for yourself and the audience. — Bryn Terfel

She was not the audience to which he played, but she was the profound intelligence that heard him. She drew him in with her great bruised eyes, and his music she drank, and it was wine to her thirst. — Ellis Peters

I think this market space, this modern world we're living in, one of its greatest failures is that it can only seem to describe a collective in terms of consumers or clients. It never sees an audience or a community as part of the process. And that's something I'm quite proud of, even if the music is crap. — Herbert

When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music. — Agnes De Mille

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

Basically, radio hasn't changed over the years. Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues - communicating with an audience. — Casey Kasem

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.' — Pete Townshend

Music is a performance and needs the audience. — Michael Tippett

Everyone in Tool is interested in how we present our music. We write a group of songs that have a vibe, energy and feeling, and then we try to pick an image to capture that and communicate a feeling. We want something that adds to the connection with the audience. — Adam Jones

These things I sample, or clip, are things that we share - music, films, sounds. It triggers a layer of participation from the audience as they recognize the material and remember it. — Christian Marclay

Between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it's nearly impossible to catch what she's saying. Always, though, while tripping and stumbling to the music, she looks out into her audience and tells the story about her mother. Most people laugh and yell for her to lift her skirts, but every so often she'll spot someone weeping and swear they can understand her every word. — David Sedaris

Comedy is a live art, and the only way to record a comedy rock album is to do it live. The audience and their laughter is just as much a part of the album sound as our music. No retakes, no room for error. — Vir Das

Many, many years ago, I was one of the few conductors who talked to the audience and now a lot of classical conductors have figured it out ... otherwise, you just get the back of someone's head playing music you could hear on a CD. It's not enough anymore. — Marvin Hamlisch

When punk and new wave styles exploded in the late '70s, some established artists were nimble enough to respond to the changes around them. Some grumbled, "What am I supposed to do, forget how to play?", and continued to ride their dinosaurs into extinction, but others willingly adapted to the streamlining and back-to-basics urges of the times, without giving up all they had learned. Former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel, for example, or former Yes keyboardist Trevor Horn, continued to produce vital, influential music through the '80s and '90s. Ian Anderson has continued to lead Jethro Tull out of the '60s and '70s and quietly through the decades, making high quality music and finding a large enough audience to continue recording and touring worldwide. — Neil Peart

Regardless of the age of the people in the audience, they are clapping, screaming with joy and enjoying each and every note. I used to think classical music was boring. But that was because I never really gave it a chance. When I first saw 2CELLOS' cover of Smooth Criminal, I was mesmerized by their talent and instantly intrigued. With just two instruments, they created a sound so powerful and incredible, a sound I had never known could come from a cello. — Valentina Gomaz

The fact that I do place music at the end of my films is not to accentuate the emotion. It serves an opposite purpose which is to remove them from the emotional space and allow them to enter a space of thinking, because I believe that when the audience is watching the film they're watching it with their feelings. — Asghar Farhadi

A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book ... A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades. — Chuck Palahniuk

I aim my music at the hip black hip-hop audience. — Heavy D

It's true that the audience gasped when Nina did her thirty-two fouettees. They began applauding when she was just half way through, so loudly that she couldn't hear the music and had to hope the conductor would simply follow her. With each whip of her leg she spun faster, beads of sweat flying, stinging her eyes - and yet she finished cleanly, precisely, and counted calmly to five before releasing the pose. Secretly, though, Nina finds it cheap, these technical feats. A cheap way to impress, nothing subtle or artful - just virtuostic display, demanding of applause and dropped jaws. Nina wants to do more than fancy tricks; she wants her body to sing, her eyes and her hands and the very angle of her head to convey every nuance of the music, and each facet of whichever character she is called on to play. — Daphne Kalotay

I love music and love a good audience and still have to make a living. Why would I quit? — Doc Watson

Music that touches the transcendental aspect of a human being is reserved for a marginal audience — John McLaughlin

The basic success of the conga came from ... that basic principle of African music and dance: everybody participates. The conga eradicated the distinction between performer and audience, broke down the wall of the proscenium ... — Ned Sublette

Rather than trying to create an audience, just try and create music that feels good to you. — Chet Faker

I think I have great responsibility, and when I do my music, when I try to relate to my audience, I just try to do it in an honest fashion, you know, just try to be as earnest as possible and sometime it may be self-effacing. Sometimes it may be finger-pointing. Sometimes it may be beautiful, and sometime it may be ugly. — Q-Tip

'Jersey Boys' has been the most amazing experience ever and has exposed an entire new audience to the music. It's great to see people of all ages coming to the show. — Frankie Valli

You can never judge any music by their audience. That's the main reason people in England have a prejudice against someone like Skrillex. You judge people by their music. That's always been first and foremost. — Diplo

I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music. — Win Butler