Quotes & Sayings About Music Theory

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God. — Quincy Jones

I've never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn't feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you've got to work as hard as them. — Taylor Swift

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

Which is to say that culture is not a reflex of political economy, but
that society is now a reflex of key shifts in music theory and practice ...
[Sampladelia is] the sound made by those early-twentieth-century discoveries
in particle physics and relativiity theory, the projection of the minds of
Einstein, Heisenbery, and Bohr, their fateful explorations of liquid time,
curving space, uncertainty fields and relativity theorems, into densely
configured and fully ambivalent android music tracks — Arthur Kroker

Theory is a six-letter dirty word to most musicians, but hey, musicians love dirty words, right? And just like all the other dirty words, theory is easy to learn and fun to use! — Ray Harmony

Learning" virtue - becoming virtuous - is more like practicing scales on the piano than learning music theory: the goal is, in a sense, for your fingers to learn the scales so they can then play "naturally," as it were. Learning here isn't just information acquisition; it's more like inscribing something into the very fiber of your being. Thus — James K.A. Smith

I think there are some things in music that work and don't work. That's learned from counterpoint and rhythm and theory, and they don't work if you don't want them to work. — Jeanine Tesori

The only good thing about religion is the music. Because nature is filled with balances and opposites, there are always exceptions to the overall rules, whether the overall rules are bleak or otherwise. If you propound a joyous theory of existence, I will find an exception to that. If I propound a bleak theory, someone will find a joyous exception. That's just nature being nature, I think, and I don't think it offers a lot of hope. It's sort of a respite along the way. — George Carlin

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that. — Bill Callahan

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too. — J. D. Souther

We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people. And it was easy to find an apartment because we had no standards; we were just amazed that it was *our* door, *our* rotting carpet, *our* cockroach infestation ... We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired - as furniture sanders - we could hardly believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and to set it to music. — Miranda July

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more. — Jon Secada

Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world. — Beck

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory. — Neil Diamond

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. — Moby

The Pythagoreans... were fascinated by certain specific ratios, ...The Greeks knew these as the 'golden' proportion and the 'perfect' proportion respectively. They may well have been learned from the Babylonians by Pythagoras himself after having been taken prisoner in Egypt. Ratios lay at the heart of the Pythagorean theory of music. — Graham Flegg

I play bass. I play a bit of guitar. I've never been to a lesson, so my theory of music is non-existent in any instrument, but we always had guitars around. My dad taught me to play drums for 'Love Actually,' and I still play drums now. But I'm not a 'drummer.' I'm not a 'guitarist.' I'm trying to be a bassist. — Thomas Sangster

I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.
But I was wrong.
You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.
But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet. — Sarah Warden

If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four year course, we could end up with all theory and no music. When we study music, we start to practice from the beginning, and we practice for the entire time ... — Charles Kettering

Comedy is like music; it builds on itself. Once someone comes up with a theory or a different way of doing things, people start to mimic it on some level. That's why you go back to the guys you loved in the 80s ... and it just seems tired now, because it was all foundation. — Doug Stanhope

He then expounded a remarkable theory, which had occurred to him while he was playing the clarinet during one of the power cuts that the French electricity board arranges at regular intervals. Electricity, he said, is a matter of science and logic. Classical music is a matter of art and logic. Vous voyez? Already one sees a common factor. And when you listen to the disciplined and logical progression of some of Mozart's work, the conclusion is inescapable: Mozart would have made a formidable electrician. — Peter Mayle

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

Yes, anyone can log onto your "anonymous" band's MySpace page and hear the music. So, in theory you have gotten your music in front of 5 billion people. The other thing is that something has to cause them to go to those bands MySpace page, and it's that reliance on taste makers or radio, that is still very much a part of how music is sold and marketed. — Chris Cain

Got to go sing in a few minutes ... no, that's GOT to go sing in a few minutes, as in ... GOT TO GO SING in a few minutes ... hahaha It's an all consuming compassion/obsession ... a drawing ... a wonderful bliss ... a union of soul and spirit, of notes and voice, of all of life's vibrating essence. String theory ... all of life is vibrating, is alive, and the life of that essence is music itself!! — Gloria Smith

All integral laws of spectral lines and of atomic theory spring originally from the quantum theory. It is the mysterious organon on which Nature plays her music of the spectra, and according to the rhythm of which she regulates the structure of the atoms and nuclei. — Arnold Sommerfeld

Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it. — Harrison Birtwistle

Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots. Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

[If] it were possible to watch composing in the same way that one can watch painting, if composers could have _ateliers_ as did painters, then it would be clear how superfluous the music theorist is and how he is just as harmful as the art academies. — Arnold Schoenberg

I took music theory in high school and dropped out halfway through the semester because it was ruining music for me. — Blake Judd

As discussed earlier, when it comes to music, most of us tend to have confidence in our taste even though we may totally lack knowledge regarding historical development or compositional theory. I frequently hear, "I don't know anything about art" but hardly ever, "I don't know anything about music". — Michael Findlay

It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play. — Quincy Jones

In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the 'Mind of God' is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace. — Michio Kaku

The theory that music has a depraving effect on morals has now been abandoned to the old women of both sexes. — George Bernard Shaw

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn't learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot. — John Fahey

People have an affinity towards things, and you don't know where it comes from. Mozart wrote a symphony when he was four, so it's said; the theory is maybe because his father was a conductor, it happened in vitro, and he heard the music before he was born, and by the age of four he knew how to write music. — William Shatner

Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. — Theodore Dalrymple

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. — John Holt

Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae , catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot. — Zooey Deschanel

My theory. Music can fix anything. Anything. — Asa Butterfield

When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music. — Moby

I studied voice when I was at school, and I was in the chamber choir, and I studied music theory as well, so I guess a lot of it came from being taught at school. — Lily Allen

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people. — Wes Borland

A billion and a half human souls, who had been given the techniques of music and the graphic arts, and the theory of technology, now had the others: philosophy and logic and love; sympathy, empathy, forbearance, unity, in the idea of their species rather than in their obedience; membership in harmony with all life everywhere.
A people with such feelings and their derived skills cannot be slaves. As the light burst upon them, there was only one concentration possible to each of them - to be free, and the accomplished feeling of being free. As each found it, he was an expert in freedom, and expert succeeded expert, transcended expert, until (in a moment) a billion and a half human souls had no greater skill than the talent of freedom. — Theodore Sturgeon

Do everything you can to learn your craft. Score student films for free, attend conferences, learn music theory - do anything (and everything) you can. — John Keltonic

In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation ... as music. — Roy H. Williams

I'm hopeless at playing scales. Try and be instinctive first and analytic afterwords, although it's good to study the theory of music. — Brian May

My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches — Laura Esquivel

There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art. — Claude Debussy

I've come up with the theory that the music is within. We don't bring it in; it's already there. We have to figure out how to get it out. — Howard Roberts

String theory is based on the simple idea that all the four forces of the universe: gravity, the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces, can be viewed, as music. — Michio Kaku

There are tools that help sharpen freestyle skills like having a diverse vernacular, some sense of music theory, being outspoken, phrasing, spacing, cross word puzzles, thesauruses, the ability to expand on an issue and embellish that with more descriptive terminology. — Myka 9

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

I write music that sounds complex but isn't. I frankly never think in terms of theory. — Eric Whitacre

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood. — E. M. Forster

The unified field theory that ties together Jobs personality and products begins with his most salient trait: his intensity. His silences could be as searing as his rants; he had taught himself to stare without blinking. Sometimes this intensity was charming, in a geeky way, such as when he was explaining the profundity of Bob Dylan's music or why whatever product he was unveiling at that moment was the most amazing thing that Apple had ever made. At other times it could be terrifying, such as when he was fulminating about Google or Microsoft ripping of Apple. — Walter Isaacson

Form is what transforms the content of a work into its essence. Do you understand? The character of music arises out of its form like steam from water,' Yury Andreevich said. 'With solid understanding of the general laws of form, which encompass all that is amenable to formulation, one can, by groping further, perceive the individual, the particular. Then, subtracting the general, one can sense a residue where wonder lurks in its purest, most undiluted form. Herein lies the goal of theory: the more fully one grasps what is available for comprehension, the more intensely the ineffable shines. — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Music is part of Number Theory. Nowadays when a number-theorist applies for a grant, he says that it is good for security, but in those days, way before America, he would say that it's good for music. I will not comment whether we have progressed ... — Hendrik Lenstra

I learned to play by ear before I learned music theory. For me, that makes sense. After all, children learn to speak before they read and write. The more you understand of music - how harmony and time signatures work, and what chords and inversions are - the more you'll enjoy it. — Jools Holland

I always wanted to be a musician, 100 percent, my whole life. I went to school, I did music theory, I did voice training and piano lessons, and while I was a decent musician, it didn't seem like enough for me. I felt like I wanted to make more than just music. — Adria Petty

Listeners love when opera dethrones or kills language; the regicide, on these occasions, is the revolutionary, pleasure-seeking, penetrated, tickled ear. Opera theory tells us that words master music, but we, in our secret hearts, know music's superiority; and this destruction of language, this reversal of hierarchy, makes opera a fit object for the enthusiasms of sex-and-gender dissidents. — Wayne Koestenbaum

Architects should be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

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

I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition. — Rohinton Mistry

We can teach about hip-hop history, we can teach about legends, hip-hop theory. It's been around so long that text books can be written about it. This is a perfect time to capitalize on and get kids excited about [music] education. — Kanye West

For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"
to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will ve replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances. — Daniel J. Levitin

I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business. — Moby

My own personal theory is that all popular music, in whatever form it is, to me, it all comes from Africa. Whether it's filtered through America or whatever - African-American. But I still think there's something in that roots music that's very, very African, and I think that's what unites people. — Paul Weller

We knock upon silence for an answering music. — Archibald MacLeish

The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting. — Flea

There are different people who got me into music, but what I liked about Beethoven is that even when I didn't understand it or it was too long, there's still something about it that drove me to it. Then it got me excited about actually learning music, like a theory of it. — Albert Hammond Jr.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window. — Keith Jarrett

I'm steeped in aesthetic theory, so I tend to bring in my own amateurish way of baring a little bit - when, in practice, I'm not thinking about that when I'm working over the keyboard, or musing over musical ideas in my head. But when discussing it, we want to have some new thought about this new music. — John Maus

Composers, skilled in theory, hear music differently. CAT profiles of their listening brains show more verbal hemisphere activity, as if they don't just let the associative sensations of timber and rhythm swell through them, but somehow eavesdrop on a point being argued on thought's original instruments. Can the effect be any less beautiful for being better articulated? — Richard Powers

I don't know anything about music theory at all. Zero. But I don't really need to. — Amos Lee

Individual and team discipline ultimately come down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Said in yet another way, discipline is to an athlete what scales are to a musician. Mastering the scales is what allows the musician to perform music. Mastering the skills of self discipline is what enables a person to become an accomplished elite athlete. — Mike Hebert

I was pretty lucky to get into Berklee at all. I never really had any theory or music-reading capabilities; I was completely by ear. — Madi Diaz

I'm maybe too rude with myself but the fact is that I don't know music theory so I can't tell myself "it's ok now I make good stuff," I need to improve more and more. — Marilou

We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired - as furniture sanders - we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had a rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.
Something That Needs Nothing — Miranda July

Music is an attitude. It's a sensation to the average person, to the human being. And keep it simple, stupid. That's always been my theory. — Dick Dale

We must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption. — Marvin Minsky

My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned to introspection, contentment, and acquiescence. Equal temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent action films. The music doesn't turn your attention inward, it makes you want to go out and work off your nervous energy on something. — Kyle Gann

Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage. — Alanis Morissette

To talk about communication theory without communicating its real mathematical content would be like endlessly telling a man about a wonderful composer, yet never letting him hear an example of the composer's music. — John R. Pierce

I have a theory - if the music is good and you have good musicians, the name doesn't matter that much. There are a lot of examples of that. The name is just a calling card. — Joey Tempest

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style. — Frank Black

I realized that, all along, my theory was right: Make music that you want to hear, and instead of having fans that one day might criticize or abandon you, your fans aren't even fans. They're people with tastes similar to yours. They're friends you haven't met yet. — Natalia Kills

I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days. — Isao Tomita

Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much. — Derek Bailey

When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted. — Harrison Birtwistle