Music Musician Quotes & Sayings

The jazz guitarist Peter Sprague calls his home recording studio SpragueLand, but sometimes it seems that the moniker better captures the way he has turned the entire southland into his own musical playground. Sprague is a highly versatile musician who draws on the wellsprings of jazz and Brazilian music as primary influences. — Andrew S. Gilbert

When you have the opportunity to make music with great musicians, take it. That's it. That's the only reason I need, really. — Joss Stone

I always liked playing music and I always wanted to be good at playing guitar. I always saw myself as an old man living in the mountains playing a guitar, but I didn't really turn that into a desire to be a professional musician or a singer or a rock star or anything like that. — Brett Dennen

The most intelligent inspection of any number of fine paintings will not make the observer a painter, nor will listening to a number of operas make the hearer a musician, but good judges of music and painting may so be formed. Chess differs from these. The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others. — Emanuel Lasker

My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations, but interestingly, I didn't become conscious of wanting to be a musician until I was about 11. I was a rather late starter. — Gunther Schuller

Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician. — Robbie Robertson

Music is not everything in life. If a young musician looks at it that way, then he can just play his instrument like putting a nail into a wall. — Joe Zawinul

The musician and the listener.
If this is love between two strangers watching each other from afar, that rough, burning moment when you rush in and kiss is the show. — Tablo

Billy Joel is an incredible musician. He just feels like one of the guys, you know. I grew up listening to his music. — Action Bronson

As convenient as that would be to make it easier to communicate with more prolific musicians, I don't want to think of music like a math equation. — Blake Judd

Basically, at some point, one day maybe you can expect to hear some of my music. I haven't really done that yet because my younger brother is a musician and really talented and I want him to come out with his music first. — Stephen Dorff

It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made. — Zachary Cole Smith

The hardest thing for a musician to learn is how to play WITH people. That's what made the Basie rhythm section. — Jo Jones

School was pretty good about letting me take up music and that's where I had my first musical ideas and first said, 'Yeah, I'm going to be a musician.' I just had to do a quick stop gap in the army first. — James Blunt

I never have been a musician; I'm not actually capable. Because I can't even pretend to acquire the gift, all of my first feelings about art are still attached to music. I look at it yearningly, I look at it wonderingly. I behold it from afar, as something unattainable, something outside of myself, from which I can take nourishment, but I can't domesticate and master. — Jonathan Lethem

I'd actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument. — Amanda Palmer

When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come. — Sam Shepard

Many jazz musicians affect a misunderstood-genius air when they play, which alienates the audience and breaks down the communications of the music. A musician's responsibility is to get as much of his art across as possible. Musicians used to be kept when only the rich could afford art, but now practically everyone can afford radios, stereo equipment, concert tickets, etc. A musician must learn to communicate to survive. — Gabor Szabo

My dad's a musician, and he taught me how to play when I was three, I think, so I've been playing ever since. It's something I've always done. And when you're really young, and you play music for people, people get really excited, so you get this inner sense that you are good at it, even though I've always been really not good at it. — Bob Schneider

You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I worry about that terribly because the public eye can bring all sorts of unwanted intrusions and problems. But he's treading his own path. I think the modeling is something that Rafferty Law sees as a pastime and something to maybe give him a bit of pocket money. He's a musician mostly. He's in college studying music, which he takes very seriously and I think that is something that he will concentrate on in the future. — Jude Law

I've never been really interested in music, classical or otherwise, where the craft is more important than the result. I realized quickly that I'd never be a technical electronic musician. — Anna Meredith

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out. — Beck

The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he. — Duke Ellington

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. — Albert Einstein

My dad, bless him, was a musician. And his dad had thought that his music was rubbish. — Paul McCartney

There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security. — Derek Sivers

I'm into old-time music; I'm not very interested in modern, popular music at all. And if I'm really into some particular old-time musician, some fiddler or banjo player, I'm always dying of curiosity to see what they look like. So there's some connection between visual images and music. — Robert Crumb

I have a music career as well, so I was going to either be an actress or a musician. Then, I did both. But, I was always going to do something creative. — Zooey Deschanel

As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm. — Daron Malakian

The saxophone is the cocaine of the woodwind family, the sax teacher continues. Saxophonists are admired because they are dangerous, because they have explored a darker, more sinister side of themselves. — Eleanor Catton

I don't know if One Direction will stand the test of time. I have a niece who goes crazy for them. But the only way to judge art is to wait and see if it becomes evergreen. This takes a bit of time. Adele is a very good musician and I'd like to sing with her. But, again, time will tell if her music will become evergreen. — Andrea Bocelli

I don't think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it. — Hugh Masekela

For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. — Oscar Wilde

Anybody who'd expend energy preventing people from hearing music seems not to understand the basic principal of making music in the first place. It's so antithetical to being a musician. — Jeff Tweedy

Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people - and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn't mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter - but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness. — Anthony Hopkins

To me, if you're a musician, then you're interested in music, and if you're interested in music, then you should listen to a lot of different types. — Brittany Howard

My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me. — Kevin Bacon

I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since. — Michael Gira

When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they'd teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician. — Flea

She closed her eyes and began to weave a song. She abandoned the familiar melodies she'd played so many times before and went in search of something new, no longer wanting a song fed on pain or guilt. She needed one that could replace those wounds with strength, with resolve, with confidence. She needed a song that could not only assuage, but heal and build anew. The notes stumbled around the room, tripping over beds and empty stools and hollow men sleeping. They warbled and fell, haphazard, chaotic, settling without flight. Fin's forehead creased and she persisted. She let her fingers wander, reached out with her mind. She chased the fleeting song she'd glimpsed once before. In Madeira she'd felt a hint of it: something wild, untameable, a thing sprung whole and flawless from the instant of creation. — A.S. Peterson

It was a real party of swells. — Elvis Costello

It's emotional blackmail to say if you're a good businesswoman and a musician, you're betraying your music. — Tori Amos

I like the smell of my Grandma's soap - I used to sit in the bath and eat it. — Carl Barat

It's very interesting for me to listen to music with my wife. She's not a musician but she very often makes comments about pieces in ways that are similar to what I'm thinking. — Paul Lansky

Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists. — John Locke

William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn't quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. — Benjamin Clementine

I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business. — Robert Fripp

Then, at age 20, I discovered theater sort of by accident. Quite quickly, theater became more important to me than music. I began to realize that maybe my talents as a musician were quite limited, or had a ceiling to them, whereas acting seemed to sort of stretch before me. I got very passionate about it very quickly. — Cillian Murphy

I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. — Pharoah Sanders

I think if you're a painter, you paint; if you're a golfer, you golf; if you're a fisherman, you fish; if you're a musician, you play music. — Randy Bachman

My advice to women who habitually gravitate toward musicians is that they learn how to play an instrument and start making music themselves. Not only will they see that it's not that hard, but sometimes I think women just want to be the very thing they think they want to sleep with. Because if you're bright enough
no offense, Tawny Kitaen
sleeping with a musician probably won't be enough for you to feel good about yourself. Even if he writes you a song for your birthday. Don't you know that a musician who writes a song for you is like a baker you're dating making you a cake? Aim higher. — Julie Klausner

At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. We want you to win because your music is the best music. — Daniel Ek

Just as a musician loves music and not nightingales, and a poet loves poetry and not sunsets, a painter is not primarily a person who responds to figures and landscapes. He is primarily one who loves pictures. — Andre Malraux

By exchanging notes, you get to know one another, to understand one another. As if your souls were connected and your hearts were overlapping. It's a conversation through instruments. A miracle that creates harmony. In that moment, music transcends words. — Myself

You know, I discovered something. Everyone has something ... Something deep inside their hearts. For some, it might have been enmity. For others, admiration. Wishes, a craving for the spotlight, feelings that one wants to deliver, feelings for one's mother. Everyone was supported by their own feelings. I realize now that, perhaps, no one can stand alone on stage. — Myself

Music needs the juxtaposition of opposites to achieve its drama, so harshness and dissonance are simply part of the material a musician can use to create a musical work. All one thing is a bore-all dissonance, or all fatuous consonance. George Winston and Guns and Roses are two sides of the same worthless coin in my esthetic world. — Chuck Israels

That Raymond was something," Nestor said. "Very talented."
"Perhaps not the best pianist." Bocha grimaced apologetically, as if compelled to put that evaluation on the record.
"He used to tell me he was basically faking it on the piano," Pescatore said. "He said he played just well enough to get into trouble. — Sebastian Rotella

If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music. — Billy Eckstine

I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about it. And I stepped back and thought 'Why are you bitter? You can't just stand there like every other indie musician and criticize this so-called 'generic' music when you're not doing anything to challenge that.' — Marina And The Diamonds

You get a lot of who you are as a musician across through the music you write. If you're writing your own music, then it's important to be really honest. — Harry Styles

That's what music is: entertainment. The more you put yourself into it, the more of you comes out in it. — Kurt Cobain

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come realise the potential of their calling.
Like the shamans, we may serve as healers, metaphysicians, inciters, exciters,
spiritual guides and sources of inspiration.
If the musician is illuminated from within,
he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.
Then he is serving planet and its people,
healing what ails us. Such music is truly important.
It is said that "only one who obeys can truly command."
When the artist is immersed in a services,
giving himself up over and over again, another paradox occurs:
He is being seen by all others as a master. — Kenny Werner

I took a road that wasn't the road, but it was something I chose and that's fine. — Tom Rosenthal

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band. — Robert Fripp

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington

Do your own thing. Others own their own thing. If you copy too much, you'll find yourself in late night cocktail lounge cover band limbo. — Kurt Cobain

Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.' — Herbie Hancock

Journalism is my first love. But music comes in a close second. What's important for me is that whatever you do, whatever your passion is, you should have another passion - something in your life. And when I put on that musician hat and I put the bass in my hands, I'm not Lester Holt the TV guy anymore. I'm just Lester Holt who likes music. — Lester Holt

Playing drums or music, being a musician, is inside of you. So you would always see me tapping on something, playing on tables ... I never felt the need to pull out drums. — Eric Hernandez

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different. — Chuck Israels

She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinary life, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music with diabolical accuracy of judgment. — Anonymous

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony — James Whistler

Remember this, son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens. — Patrick Rothfuss

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

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

'SNL' is probably one of the premiere outlets that a musician can perform on that isn't obviously a music outlet. — Miguel

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. — Herbie Hancock

I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk. — Timothy B. Schmit

One of the biggest problems of mathematics is to explain to everyone else what it is all about. The technical trappings of the subject, its symbolism and formality, its baffling terminology, its apparent delight in lengthy calculations: these tend to obscure its real nature. A musician would be horrified if his art were to be summed up as "a lot of tadpoles drawn on a row of lines"; but that"s all that the untrained eye can see in a page of sheet music ... In the same way, the symbolism of mathematics is merely its coded form, not its substance. — Ian Stewart

Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world. — Joe Cocker

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

It's crazy to think of myself as a musician. It's ridiculous that I get to do it, and I don't necessarily mean music. Getting to do something you really enjoy as a job is an incredible privilege, I think. I still don't really feel like a musician outside of the actual music. — Ben Rector

Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician. — Kenny G

A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely time in which you're just figuring it out, practicing. — Michael Tilson Thomas

I know a flute player is technically called a "flautist," but something about it sounds a little sketchy, as does "pianist," so I will refrain. — Julie Halpern

When I discovered music - when I discovered the craft of shaping a song - my being fell into place. — Charlotte Eriksson

Time and persistence has shown me that I can succeed at sharing my art with others as a musician while running my own music business. And that kind of success is as good as I could have ever wished for. — Bradley Joseph

I would not want the limitations held by the name of a classical musician. I want many people to enjoy my music much beyond just classical music fans. I think the term, 'violinist,' keeps me distant from the audience. I want to communicate with them more. — Ji-Hae Park

When I grew up, the thing boys would do during the summer is work tobacco because it was a cheap product back then. I didn't want to do that. From an early, early, early age, I was like, 'I like music. This performing thing comes easy.' And perhaps that's how I ended up doing what I'm doing today. Being a musician. — Maceo Parker

Your development as a musician will come to an eventual standtill if you do not develop yourself as a human being. Only by having a creative, expansive and inspiring life can you create creative, expansive and inspiring music. — Carl Orr

My mascara a mess, harsh words for your princess
Boy, you and your promises
If your goal was to love, you scored an epic miss
Now you'll just have memories — Sian Reynolds

All people are musicians" Wit countered. "The question is whether or not they share their songs. — Brandon Sanderson

I've been grinding at music for over a decade now. Since I was 18, I decided that this is what I wanted to do. It's not an easy thing. When you start getting 25, 26, people are like, 'Oh you're a musician huh? That's what you're gonna do? When are you going to get a real job?' I never gave up. — Nick Fradiani

My father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music. — El-P

To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable.
The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen. — Robert Fripp

Strike, with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh - the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. — Robert G. Ingersoll

If you're going to be a musician's girlfriend, you have to know that your man will always love his bandmates in a way you can't even touch, because they are the guys who help him create music. You can only help him create a living human being, with your dumb uterus. — Julie Klausner

Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. — Malcolm Gladwell

For a musician, music is the best way to unite with God. — Hazrat Inayat Khan