Music Technology Quotes & Sayings

Rock music is some of the most impoverished music the world has ever heard, a fact that is hard to square with the sophisticated technologies that produced it. — Julian Johnson

If you take psychedelics and the Internet and music and put all of that together you have the basis for a new community that is wider and deeper than you know. The people who are building the new machines, who are designing the new circuitry, who are writing the new code are ALL freaks. They work for capitalist dogs, of course, because we all do, but the creative thrust of these technologies is being driven by people just like you and me. — Terence McKenna

Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous - in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture - that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it. — Paul Di Filippo

This is ... an attempt to find some of the important fault lines in the narrative of "recorded history"
the points where people with access to the technology decided that *this* was how recordings should sound, and *this* is what it means to make a record. Ultimately, this is the story of what it means to make a recording of music
a *representation* of music
and declare it to be music itself. — Greg Milner

The music technology scene is changing so fast it's hard to keep up. — Natasha Bedingfield

Engineering producers who don't play and have technology as a background may be the reason why there's a lot of cold non-musical music, for lack of a better description. — Bill Laswell

All digital music listeners are equal. Acquisition is painless. Taste is irrelevant. It is pointless to boast about your iTunes collection, or the quality of your playlists on a streaming service. Music became data, one more set of 1's and 0's lurking in your hard drive, invisible to see and impossible to touch. Nothing is less cool than data. — David Sax

The compact disc may now be outdated technology, but a lot of music albums are still released on CD. A standard 700-megabyte CD is actually 703.125 megabytes (a rare case of the music industry giving something extra away for free), which is a total of 5,898,240,000 1s and 0s. By my calculations, the number of possible different CDs in base-10 would have 1,775,547,162 digits. Which is also the number of corners a hypercube would have in 5,898,240,000 dimensions. So whenever a musician claims they have written a new album, all they have really done is choose a corner on a very high-dimension hypercube. — Matt Parker

Technology, publicity and sexuality have their place in music, but they are all subordinate to the pleasures and power of true vocal talent. — Christopher John Farley

Although I think it is wonderful to have the whole world of music available in something that small and to have it conveyed with such fidelity almost straight into the brain, I think the technology is also a danger. — Oliver Sacks

Interesting how fashion is cyclical," Jaccob said when she came out of the store with two black plastic bags. "Goth was the look when I was young, too."
"It's not a look," Chuck said. "I'm just wearing my feelings on the outside."
"Uh huh." His phone buzzed. "Hang on a second."
He rolled up his sleeve to check his HUD, but the call hadn't come through there.
Huh. He had to pick up his phone and check the read-out, which listed a phone number: an old school page. "That's funny ... "
"Dad, you're doing that thing again," Chuck said.
"What thing?" Jaccob asked.
"That thing where you have to check every single doohickey you carry around."
"I am not." Jaccob took his hand out of his coat pocket, where he'd been reaching to check his police scanner or music player (he hadn't decided which to use first). — Erik Scott De Bie

Disco is the first technology music. And what I mean is that 'disco' music is named after discs, because when technology grew to where they didn't need a band in the clubs, the DJ played it on a disc. — Will.i.am

While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts
a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the "humanities." Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a "humanity" as poetry. — Carl Sagan

You can fix things with digital technology and there's a temptation to fix everything or make it perfect and what you're losing there is the human performance that may not be perfect but there may be magic in it. You can make it perfect but music doesn't sound good perfect for some reason. — Joe Walsh

The basic idea of a hyper instrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how it's being played - literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is. — Tod Machover

He also flowered intellectually during his last two years in high school and found himself at the intersection, as he had begun to see it, of those who were geekily immersed in electronics and those who were into literature and creative endeavors. "I started to listen to music a whole lot, and I started to read more outside of just science and technology - Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear. — Walter Isaacson

The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature. — Nalini Singh

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. — Tyler Cowen

Since hip hop emerged from the South Bronx in the 1970s, it has become an international, multi-billion-dollar phenomenon. It has grown to encompass more than just rap music. Hip hop has created a culture that incorporates ethnicity, art, politics, fashion, technology and urban life." This debunks the widely accepted argument that the genre is inherently divisive. With so many factors converging to create such an intricate, informative and multi-faceted genre, whose history and impact have bridged barriers between artist and society, it is not too complicated an endeavor to understand that its relevance repudiates its notorious reputation. — Carlos Wallace

Our mission goes beyond commerce, it goes beyond technology. Our intent is to preserve music's importance in our lives, music is the language of love, of laughter, of heartbreak, of mystery. It's the world's true, true, without question, universal language. — Alicia Keys

It's a scary question for a musician or songwriter today - what does the future hold? It is a strange time in the music business too; it feels like we are all in some kind of transitional period, stuck between old technology and new. — Dean Wareham

So a more sensible thing it seemed to me was to go to Silicon Valley and be pushing on the technology companies to accelerate the use of audio and music in computers. — Thomas Dolby

Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later. — Lewis Thomas

I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met. — Talib Kweli

I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense. — Elvis Costello

Technology has helped me with the writing and recording processes, and it's a great way to reach out to fans of my music, ... Dell's combining all these different technologies and making it really easy to enjoy them. — Sheryl Crow

With technology and everything, compact discs are going to be, like, vintage soon, right? The way vinyl is now. Like, if I ever have kids, they're going to look at CDs and think, 'What is this crap, geez, how clunky.' By then everyone will have the fiftieth edition of iPods - or maybe they'll just have music downloaded directly into their brains, like with microchips, or something. And I'll be the old lady in the corner going, 'Back when I was a kid, we had mix tapes, and floppy disks, and gas didn't cost twenty bucks a gallon, and oh, yeah, MTV actually played music videos, if you can believe it.' And they'll probably say, 'Oh, Mom, you and your stories, we're jetting to the oxygen bar, see you later,' and take off in their flying cars. You know there'll be flying cars, it's only a matter of time. — Hannah Harrington

I often get asked, 'Is the book dead?' It hasn't happened yet. It's different than music. Music was always meant to be pure sound - it started out as pure sound and now it's pure sound again. But books started out as things. Words on paper began as words on paper. The paperback book is the best technology to deliver that information to you. — Chip Kidd

Opera is the most complete art form. It includes drama, acting, technology (lighting), art (the sets), dance, and the epitome of the human voices. But mostly, go for the glorious music. The arts are crucial to the life of every community. — Karen DeCrow

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program. — Douglas Adams

SOPA has been described as hitting a carpet tack with a sledgehammer. But technology was a sledgehammer to the music industry, one that allowed digital distributors like Apple to grow rich. — Peter Lerangis

The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it. — Edgar Bronfman Jr.

Science is not just there for technology. It's part of what addressing who you are in the universe and understanding your place in the cosmos. Good art, good literature, good music - all of that is for that and science is a part of it. — Lawrence M. Krauss

I wrote, recorded and produced everything myself. I played the guitars and keyboards while the drums were programmed. As a producer, I think music technology has reached a point, where the results that can be achieved in this way, allows me to create the music and sounds I envision. — Paul Wardingham

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

You know, I do music. If you look under the hood of the industry I'm in, it's all based on technology. From radio to phonographs to CDs, it's all technology. Microphones, reel-to-reels, cameras, editing, chips, it's all technology. — Will.i.am

I just do what I do and hope it's accepted by the public at large. It's different from when Marvin Gaye and Stevie revolutionized what music was 25 years ago. Now there's all this technology that's available to everyone. It's tough to be ahead of anyone. — Brian McKnight

The fact is that all the recording science and technology in the world is no substitute for a good song or for real feeling. Music is about feeling and if there isn't any genuine feeling, if the song isn't about anything that anyone gives a damn about, there's nothing you can do. All the technique that exists won't make it any good; it'll just make it technological. All the production values you add won't do anything except make it glossy. — David Crosby

Whenever there's a new music, there's a new way of listening. And whenever there's a new way of listening, there are new musics that follow from that. And people start listening differently - that can either mean in different places or at different volumes or in different social groups or through different technologies. — Brian Eno

Technology has made music accessible in a philosophically interesting way, which is great. But on the other hand, when everybody has the ability to make magic, it's like there's no more magic - if the audience can just do it themselves, why are they going to bother? — Thomas Bangalter

Digital technology has eaten classic radio as we know it. Independent stations with disc jockeys who chose their own music have all gone; it's these huge parent companies that own a hundred stations and then decide what we should hear. — Joe Walsh

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it. — Michael Sheen

It's a fundamental human need to pass music around, and however the technology evolves, the music keeps moving. — Rob Sheffield

I always wanted to work with Michael Jackson. His music will live forever and with technology nowadays ... maybe I could. — Jordin Sparks

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. — David Byrne

Electronic music used pure sounds, completely calibrated. You had to think digitally, as it were, in a way that allowed you to extend serial ideas into other parameters through technology. — Luc Ferrari

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now. — Edward Norton

The term 'popular culture' always used to mean what the people do - pop songs, folk songs, music in general used to live because people would sing these songs and tell these stories together. Then all of these new technologies came out and it became the work of professionals. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

History's greatest composers would be appalled to hear their greatest works reduced to distorted hold music for businesses. — Michael P. Naughton

Science/horror/Non-Fiction/Technology/Music/Games/Space... these are the subjects of future. The other again will develop but not with such speed like these here. — Deyth Banger

We can and should place special emphasis on developing in our youth constructive incentives - a love of science, engineering, and math, so that they will want to take advanced scientific courses and thereby help meet the needs of our times. Just as a musician has a love of music which drives him to become outstanding in that field, so we must inculcate in some of our qualified young people such an interest in science that they will turn to it of themselves. — Ezra Taft Benson

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different. — Miles Davis

I think people are tired of fake music, man. And there's a lot of it. Technology has reached the point where any boob can walk into a studio and with a little AutoTuning you can have a hit song. I think it's pathetic. — Corey Taylor

It's understandable that the music companies that are comprised of people that are successful by making good creative decisions - they have to decide which out of fifty artists is the next hot one, with no data to go from. It's an intuitive process, and that's what they do well when they're successful. They don't understand technology. — Steve Jobs

I think people should be able to have at their behest, like, four hours of music, entertainment, visual knowledge, different pathways. That's what I'm trying to do with modern technology, not just another song and another song. — Jon Anderson

I don't think piracy is going to kill the music industry. But digital technology and the ability to download will change the packaging from CDs to a single-based business. — Richard Parsons

I also like to use a sensational headline. Many people read blogs in aggregators, which generally show only the headline. So you have to give people a reason to click through. Blogs need to be real and personal. Reading it should be like hanging out with you. I play music for my readers. I show them videos I like. I tell them what I did over the weekend. And I tell them what is happening in the technology, Internet, and VC markets. — Fred Wilson

Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played together. You can't play jazz music that way. In order for you to play jazz, you've got to listen to them. The music forces you at all times to address what other people are thinking and for you to interact with them with empathy and to deal with the process of working things out. And that's how our music really could teach what the meaning of American democracy is. — Wynton Marsalis

I really believe we in the music industry can work together to find a way to bond technology with integrity and just really hope we can teach the younger generation the value of investment in music rather than the ephemeral consumption of it. — Taylor Swift

It's very strange how electronic music formatted itself and forgot that its roots are about the surprise, freedom, and the acceptance of every race, gender, and style of music into this big party. Instead, it started to become this electronic lifestyle which also involved the glorification of technology. — Thomas Bangalter

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that. — Kirk Hammett

Technology has altered the way music sounds, how it's composed and how we experience it. It has also flooded the world with music. The world is awash with (mostly) recorded sounds. We used to have to pay for music or make it ourselves; playing, hearing and experiencing it was exceptional, a rare and special experience. Now hearing it is ubiquitous, and silence is the rarity that we pay for and savor. — David Byrne

I've always dreamed of having an album. The problem is that it's just very difficult to make an album nowadays because through technology, music shifts so fast, especially electronic music. Once you make five songs, the first one you did is already old and you wished you would have put it out right away. So that's kind of the difficult part. — Zedd

Does this mean that religious consumption will increase online? That could be. We do not know yet, but to expect religion to disappear because of online technology is like expecting people to stop listening to music because Napster, Spotify and Wimp are offering us all the music we want online — Torkel Brekke

What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means. — Jaron Lanier

The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations. — Eric Hoffer

There was a naive quality in 1982 around technology and the start of video games. And that's like the start of electronic music - there was this statement and, ideologically, these things to fight for. — Thomas Bangalter

Technology is mechanical and contrary to the emotions that inform a person's life. The country music field has especially been hit hard by this. All my songs have been written by people who went out of fashion years ago. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore. But it can't be wrong to try. — Bob Dylan

The world of technology has made it easier for people to get in touch with their modern muses regardless of the genres that they are trying to utilize and even if they create a new genre based on a mixing of others. The potential for modern-day muses is as vast as individual creativity. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Focus on your music and not technology. — Bryan Adams

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to. — Tod Machover

It's easy to get sidetracked with technology, and that is the danger, but ultimately you have to see what works with the music and what doesn't. In a lot of cases, less is more. In most cases, less is more. — Herbie Hancock

On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards. — A. Ashley Straker

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun. — Edward Abbey

The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s and accelerating in the 1990s, type design weathered the sort of radical, technology-driven transformation that other creative industries, including music, publishing, and movies, now face. — Virginia Postrel

I love what I do, but I've got a life out of here. I like to spend time on the computer. I like technology. I like music. I like movies. I like to go out and party. I like my cigars, but I don't drink, and I do like to keep a low profile. — Carlos Delgado

I think I've tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It's kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do. — Brian McKnight

I'm happy to have L.A.M.B. participate in the PSP accessories show as I've always loved designing bags and accessories, It's all about creativity at the end of the day, whether you're talking about fashion, technology or music, and that's what my L.A.M.B. bags are about. — Gwen Stefani

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you'd be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today. — Dolly Parton

The technology is getting better. There will be a day when you'll be able to hear any music you want, anywhere you are, on demand, in a quality that is as good as when it was made. Things are moving in that direction. — Rick Rubin

Technology has made it much easier to make and manipulate music. Studio-driven, machine-driven music does not always transcend into being a good live act. Many current acts are great live, but many cannot cut it live. The music is not organic. — Vivian Campbell

Not to say that music today doesn't have heart, but it's really few and far between because technology has advanced itself so much that anybody can be a singer. Back in the day, you had to know how to sing. — Christina Aguilera

I think it's really important, and it's a lesson I didn't learn until my late teens: Whatever bands that you love, go find out what bands they love, and what bands turned them on, and then you really start getting into the human aspect of it because the further back you go in time the less technology you had, and consequently the better records you had. There's this incredible library of music thank god. — Brad Wilk

It's not the music you hear in your head that other people are going to hear. You have to be able to make it true enough to the image in your head, and that's where technique and technology come in, for sure, and knowledge. It's not true and will never be true that someone who knows nothing can sit in a basement and make great music. — Neil Peart

Private listening really took off in 1979, with the popularity of the Walkman portable cassette player. Listening to music on a Walkman is a variation of the "sitting very still in a concert hall" experience (there are no acoustic distractions), combined with the virtual space (achieved by adding reverb and echo to the vocals and instruments) that studio recording allows. With headphones on, you can hear and appreciate extreme detail and subtlety, and the lack of uncontrollable reverb inherent in hearing music in a live room means that rhythmic material survives beautifully and completely intact; it doesn't get blurred or turned into sonic mush as it often does in a concert hall. You, and only you, the audience of one, can hear a million tiny details, even with the compression that MP3 technology adds to recordings. You can hear the singer's breath intake, their fingers on a guitar string. That said, extreme and sudden dynamic changes can be painful on a personal music player. As — David Byrne

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

A big reason why I started writing is I felt that fiction had stopped evolving. All other entertainments were getting better, constantly, as technology allowed. Movies. Video games. Music. — Chuck Palahniuk

Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives. — Nick Harkaway

If artists want to have people come to their shows and buy their merchandise, they really have to make a commitment to those fans and bring the best music, shows and interaction that they can. This is something that won't change with technology or economy. — Steve Mahoney

I hated science in high school. Technology? Engineering? Math? Why would I ever need this? Little did I realize that music was also about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, all rolled into one. — Mickey Hart

Like all tools, modern technology has produced some wonderful moments in music and also some horrors. — Hugh Hopper

Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place. — Frankie Knuckles

The art of DJing is sharing music with one another ... The technology's definitely taking it into a new direction to where it's really becoming performance-based. — Kaskade

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music. — Mark Zuckerberg

Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies. — Eric Hoffer

The way I make music is just a reflection of how I think music should be made. Where you sit in a studio, and you make music, and you use technology to your advantage, not to hide all the blaring mistakes. — Corey Taylor

I offer you a fable for our times...
A magic box sits in your pocket with all the knowledge and music and entertainment of the world contained within it.
If you opened this box and looked down into it...
...How could you ever possibly look up again?
- Larry Ferrell (Unfollow) — Rob Williams

Spin Me Round was number one all over the world, everywhere. It changed the face of pop music, no question. We took technology further than Trevor Horn. — Pete Waterman

Finally, gatekeepers still matter. Technology makes it easier for people to listen to any kind of music they like, but digital availability and ubiquity are steering them increasingly to the biggest hits, not the niches. Bloggers and podcasters and tweeters have shaken up purveyors of news, but not replaced them. Book publishers, art dealers and film producers will still play the biggest role in what gets bought, read, contemplated and listened to. — Daniel Franklin