Music Major Quotes & Sayings

Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song. — Alex Ebert

Morley is one of the outstanding voices of her generation, as a singer, songwriter and bandleader she's in a class of her own, transcends all categories and is making a major contribution to contemporary music. — David Amram

It doesn't take long to sum up the major theses of most popular music: he loves me; he left me; I need him; I needed him, but now I need his best friend. Rather limited scope. — Holly Near

There are three intellectual pursuits, and, so far as I am aware, only three, in which human beings have performed major feats before the age of puberty. They are music, mathematics, and chess. — George Steiner

I have hundreds and hundreds of songs waiting to get on albums, but I don't know about the three-month radio tours and if I'll be interested in that. I haven't figured it out, but I will definitely be doing music, whether it is independent or with a major record label. — Jewel

The determination and enthusiasm of the Category 5 team makes it the perfect home for my music as I embark on this next stage of my career. The promotional savvy and level of support they've pledged meets or exceeds anything I've seen from the major labels I've been associated with. — Travis Tritt

It ain't this big I, little You. Music is to be shared. Music is not a hustle. [Hip hop's become] cultural stripmining [by the major labels]. Some people get into this music to make a killing but music is a way to make a living. — Chuck D

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable. — Bela Bartok

The Clash were a major influence on my own music. They were the best rock 'n' roll band. Thanks, Joe. — Bruce Springsteen

For a long time in the 1970s, I was experimenting to build musical instruments and use them. I did a lot of ethnic music studies and other things, like electronic music. Making homemade musical instruments and performing was my major activity from the time. — Yoshi Wada

Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell a C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproof chambers of my heart. — David Mitchell

I think the Ambitious Lovers never got their due- we had terrible management and at that point, we were on major labels and we didn't have any music business savvy which we could have used. We made a series of hilarious mistakes not in terms of music but in terms of making it happen. — Arto Lindsay

To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter. — Matt De La Pena

As a major country music fan, the CMA awards are my favorite! — Megan Alexander

I have major respect for Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood and Sugarland. They are wonderful. They're superstars in the music business. — Darius Rucker

Clear Channel owns all the major radio stations and venues. Most musicians aren't aware that a few people control so much of what we hear ... — Susan Tedeschi

The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There's no such thing as major or minor, and it's unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time. — Jonny Greenwood

The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word
the note
is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters with the mood of a nation from major to minor, from the assertive to the mournful and foreboding. — Neal Ascherson

One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it. — Moby

[What I want to communicate] doesn't have a language with which I can communicate it. The things that I want to communicate are simply self-evident, emotional things. And the gifts of those things are that they bring both intellectual and emotional gifts - understanding. But I don't really have a major message that I want to bring to the world through my music. The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it. — Jeff Buckley

There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major. — Arnold Schoenberg

You have to be able to grow and move with the organism that is the music industry. You need to maintain flexibility. Ownership of your own stuff is key and then you're able to dictate on a present-terms basis what would be the most effective way to protect yourself and what you've created. You also don't want to lock yourself into a situation where a major label owns part of your touring and merchandise. — Eddie Vedder

As a DJ, it's my job to break new music. And instead of it just being the stuff that's coming from the major labels or the big pop records, I've always gravitated to something that's just different, you know? — Diplo

I am kind of majoring in bull shitting. — Kate Voegele

Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter; a major influence on my own music from the very start. — Daryl Hall

Well, the good news is that there's quite a lot of cynicism about major labels within radio and the press. I think they have been largely disillusioned by the manner in which the record companies have developed music. — Mick Hucknall

I think it's a natural fit, major league baseball and country music. — Joe Nichols

Just as the music industry couldn't combat the financial impact of digital piracy, major corporations will have to rethink how to maintain margins when many of their most profitable items can be easily manufactured at home. — Jay Samit

The major media companies are playing a defensive game, and I'm not sure I blame them. If you look at the digital revolution, you look at who the winners and the losers are, there are some very very big losers - music, the newspaper industry. And there are some really big winners, social media, Facebook. — Harry E. Sloan

Being independent gives me freedom to creatively be great. Standing on your own doesn't always get major exposure or support, but because I make music from a pure place, I am more so excited and relieved that it actually gets out into the universe. — Mya

I almost became a music major, but somehow I was so enthralled with the camera and becoming a director that I stuck with film school and theatrics. — James Brolin

I always liked major-key music quite a bit, and that might have something to do with so many of the musical experiences of my childhood being based around the piano. On piano, it is very easy to move between major and minor and to really see how it looks and to feel how it sounds. — Andrew W.K.

If you and I shall, like the believing shepherds, watch and long for His appearing, one day we, too, shall hear a music grander and sweeter even than the song of angels, when the great Composer shall transpose all the strains of earth from the minor into the major, when the wail of nature shall give way to the glad harmony of the everlasting jubilee. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

The Doors embodied - incarnated - a major upheaval in popular culture. Their music was of the times and it shaped the times. — Jac Holzman

Now, I normally do not like it when people sing near me, much less at me. I don't care if they're good, bad, or mediocre. It's all the same. Unless you're signed to a major label with music I can find on iTunes, I don't want to hear your live performance. It's why I can't watch American Idol. I keep worrying the contestants will mess up and be embarrassed, and then I'll be embarrassed for them. — Lauren Morrill

I can't believe I got a major-label record deal. My music was quirky, and my voice was so odd and high and girlish, it was like a weird novelty act. — Juliana Hatfield

The sudden passing of Jack Bruce is terribly sad news. One of the greatest rock bassists to ever live and a true and profound inspiration to countless musicians. He was one of my first bass heroes and was a major influence on my playing and my music. My heartfelt condolences to his family and fans. — Geddy Lee

Well, I want to do The Music Man. I think it's an amazing opportunity, but I think that they are probably looking at major movie stars right now, and I don't blame them. — Gregory Harrison

It struck me tonight how music mirrors life. Fleeting ephemeral moments, made up of beauty, sadness, joy, hope and despair. Melodies which are written in both major and minor keys. Flowing and fleeting. You can't hold onto it, or keep it from changing. Our emotions possess the evanescence of a note. — Virginia Burges

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music. — Gian Carlo Menotti

Music is a major gift that keeps on giving! — Kathy McClary

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s. — Camille Paglia

The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling. — Warryn Campbell

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it. — James Taylor

If ... [Alban] Berg departs so radically from tradition, through his substitution of a symmetrical partitioning of the octave for the asymmetrical partionings of the major/minor system, he departs just as radically from the twelve-tone tradition that is represented in the music of Schoenberg and Webern, for whom the twelve-tone series was always an integral structure that could be transposed only as a unit, and for whom twelve-tone music always implied a constant and equivalent circulation of the totality of pitch classes. — George Perle

The industry does have some influence on who gets other awards. With the Mercury Prize, they don't. Jon comes from the business, but his heart is still very much in the music. Currently, we have about 12 major names that have said they want to be a part of MUDDA. — Peter Gabriel

If I don't already know a song's chord progression, I'll stop writing and try to figure it out. I can occasionally listen to unstructured, amelodic ambient music, but I prefer no music. I don't need silence - I can write just about anywhere - but music is a major distraction. — F. Paul Wilson

Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions. — Paul Hindemith

I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of the Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we'd take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was gear. — Paul McCartney

My dad had a steady job with a really major dance band from '54 till '68, and then quit because he wanted to play different music. He wanted to sing about peace. He believed in these things. — Elvis Costello

After moving to Los Angeles in the early '90s, I started looking into "music for picture" more seriously and in broader scope. My collaboration as a programmer and arranger with Graeme Revell exposed me for the first time to the full spectrum of film music, including the hectic demands of orchestral scoring and the power politics surrounding the finalization of any score for a major motion picture in Hollywood. — Paul Haslinger

The people at the label were great but at the end of the day our visions didn't match up and I knew I had to do it my way. The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made. It was a hard decision to make, but I've never regretted it for a second and it's only become more clear to me after making and releasing Stairwells that it was the right one. — Kina Grannis

I've had a very different career than a lot of other musicians. I went through the major labels. I was signed to two major labels and bands. I've toured with Aerosmith, and I've had records on the charts, songs in the movies. If you had checklist of things a person wants to accomplish in music ... I've done a lot. And I don't mean that in an egotistical way; I never take it for granted. But you can't think outside the box unless you know what's in the box. — Michael Angelo Batio

I cringed as the band oozed into the next chord. If notes were cars, I think there was a D major under the wreckage. — Mary Hughes

Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message - beats, lyrics, singers, bass players - anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat. — Nikki Giovanni

There have been a lot of people involved in the growth of EDM's support in the U.S., from DJ/producers like David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Skrillex, to major festival organisers and pop artists of EDM integrating elements of dance music into their music. — Tiesto

Ben had never seen his mother cry before, and it startled him, so he didn't ask again. Right afterward she'd put on her favorite record and played a mysterious song called "Space Oddity," about an astronaut named Major Tom who gets lost in space. She used to listen to the song over and over again. With her eyes closed, she'd place the palm of her hand against the fabric of the speaker, so she could feel it vibrate against her skin. — Brian Selznick

Some artists will tell you that's all they want to do is write their own music, and that's great, but George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, they didn't write everything they recorded, and they've had major, major careers. I think it's all about the best song. — Jake Owen

I feel that I want what allows me to reach the largest number of people as possible, and I don't feel ashamed of that. I think I'm the kind of artist that's meant to be on a major label because my music is different. — Jon Crosby

So I immediately joined Sutton College of Music in Grove Road, Sutton to thoroughly learn theory of music. Over and over again, I would copy all the major and minor scales until I was blue in the face. It wasn't easy because it was so boring but I knew it was absolutely essential to have this — John Fox

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings. — Kate Christensen

I was a history major in school. I review the past a lot and think about music history and how culture unfolds. — Bruce Pavitt

I want to go to Berkeley and major in music. — Cheyenne Kimball

As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music or literature. It wasn't until my 30s that I began a profession in music. — Tom Glazer

With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music. — Ian MacKaye

Western man has tried for too many centuries to fool himself that he lives in a rational world. No. There's a story about a man who, while walking along the street, was almost hit on the head and killed by an enormous falling beam. This was his moment of realization that he did not live in a rational world but a world in which men's lives can be cut off by a random blow on the head, and the discovery shook him so deeply that he was impelled to leave his wife and children, who were the major part of his old, rational world. My own response to the wild unpredictability of the universe has been to write stories, to play the piano, to read, listen to music, look at paintings - not that the world may become explainable and reasonable but that I may rejoice in the freedom which unaccountability gives us. — Madeleine L'Engle

George Jones has been a major part of my personal and professional life for a long time. I have been inspired by his music for the last 50 years and for 42 of those, I had the pleasure of knowing him personally and professionally. He was IT to me. George was and will always be my guy. I am luckier than a lot of people on this Earth because God let me be a part of George's life and him a part of mine. And on this day, his song couldn't be more true: 'He Stopped Loving Her Today.' — Sammy Kershaw

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something. — Dmitri Shostakovich

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists. — John Oates

At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that. — John Legend

Do you think music has the power to change people? Like you listen to a piece and go through some major change inside?"
Oshima nodded."Sure, that can happen. We have an experience - like a chemical reaction - that transforms something inside us. When we examine ourselves later on, we discover that all the standards we've lived by have shot up another notch and the world's opened up in unexpected ways. Yes, I've had that experience. Not often, but it has happened. It's like falling in love. — Haruki Murakami

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess

I love classical music. It has left a major mark on my playing. — Slash

You hear lots of notes, don't you? Some have a major sound. Some have a minor sound. But there's not one blue note among all these black and white keys. The real blues, the soul of the sound, comes from the spaces in-between. — David Mutti Clark

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf

Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising. — Barbara Januszkiewicz

All my books are about one major idea and two or three subsidiary ones. I have thought a lot about music when constructing books, and I like the way in music that themes come back. — Sebastian Faulks

When I was signing up for the University of Southern California's music program, I flipped a coin to decide my major. If it came up heads, it would be flute - tails would be voice. — Sondra Radvanovsky

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous. — Neko Case

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

Getting things straight in your head is a major achievement because there's so much clutter out there. You've got to push aside the static to really hear the music. — Steve Wynn

Diatonic, he heard the word in his head. Chromatic, pentatonic, hexatonic, heptatonic, octatonic, each iteration of the scale opening innumerable possibilities for harmony. He thought about the Pythagorean major third, the Didymus comma, the way the intervals sound out of tune rather than as though they were different notes. This, he thought, was where his brilliance at mathematics bled into his love of music; music was the realm in which his mathematical brain danced. — Ru Freeman

Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death. — Tom Shales

When I signed that major-label contract when I was 20 years old. I did it because I wanted to play music for the rest of my life. That's every 20-year-old's dream - to do whatever the hell you want. — Billie Joe Armstrong

In major movies these days, the fine details of music, instrumentation and sound design are lost. This is a shame, and it is one of the various reasons that make me not want to be part of the entertainment business. Although I have done it in the past, finally I know that I'm not here to create industry products. Music is more than images, it's more than language ... it's the medium that's capable of communicating the answers to the Big Questions. — Julius Dobos

With the growth of market individualism comes a corollary desire to look for collective, democratic responses when major dislocations of financial collapse, unemployment, heightened inequality, runaway inflation, and the like occur. The more such dislocations occur, the more powerful and internalized, Hayek insists, neoliberal ideology must become; it must become embedded in the media, in economic talking heads, in law and the jurisprudence of the courts, in government policy, and in the souls of participants. Neoliberal ideology must become a machine or engine that infuses economic life as well as a camera that provides a snapshot of it. That means, in turn, that the impersonal processes of regulation work best if courts, churches, schools, the media, music, localities, electoral politics, legislatures, monetary authorities, and corporate organizations internalize and publicize these norms. — William E. Connolly

There's no appreciation for the giants [of jazz]; there's never been a major film on Duke Ellington , never a major film on Louis Armstrong. What they accomplished, we could never accomplish today ... What's happening now is lightweight compared to what happened before. If Louis Armstrong was alive today, he'd be a superstar. If Art Tatum was alive today, my god, all the piano players would get on their knees. So that's what's missing today; we've been cut off from our heritage. — Randy Weston

When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony. — Elliott Carter

I'm less interested in uniqueness than in goodness. I see so many concerts where the program notes are more interesting than the music. I remember talking to one composer who went through the most complicated mathematical algorithm to generate some material from scratch. It took weeks and weeks, and he came up with a C major chord. For me, honesty is more interesting than originality. — Anna Meredith

All medical procedures require two hands, so in a sense it's like when you play an instrument. That's what they call things that they use in their work: They call them instruments. A lot of people start out majoring in medicine and drop it and change their major to music. — Tom Waits

While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read. — Richard R. Nelson

Music and soccer. They would be my two major passions. — Joe Elliott

The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made. — Kina Grannis

Music is the major form of communication. It's the commonest vibration, the people's news broadcast, especially for kids. — Richie Havens

The way I see it, the blue is the stuff you can't control, life's major heartbreak and struggles, that feeling of devastation so massive and brutal it inflicts permanent damage on the heart and spirit that can never be undone and will always be there, spewing somewhere in a corner of your mind like deep scars you'll have with you you're whole life.
The green you also can't control. But that's the part that reminds you life is worth living. It's not the here-and-there type of good stuff that happens every day either. The green is the stuff that comes in huge doses that slap you in the face when you least expect it and brings a light to all that you are through growth, bravery, and goodness, and love. It's the stuff that picks you up when you're at the bottom and makes you keep on going even when you're sure you can't. That's the green. — Love Maia

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture. — Wendell Pierce

When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them. — Luc Ferrari

I've been on a major label for 14 years. I've always wanted as many people as possible to hear my music, and it definitely made sense for the majority of my career to be on a major label, on a distribution level, to be in people's faces and be out there, and have access to major labels' incredible machine, even though they have not understood or haven't been invested in what I was doing. — DJ Shadow

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

Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested. — Ian MacKaye