Quotes & Sayings About Percussion

A thousand violins cloy very rapidly without percussion. — John Fowles

There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England ... Everybody was in a skiffle group..All you needed was an acoustic Guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India- and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass..you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that's basically where i've always been at. I'm just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that's all it is. — George Harrison

Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument. — Charles Petzold

Percussion is physical, as most instruments are. The body must function well in order to play the instruments well. Last year I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. — Evelyn Glennie

A volley of hailstones began abruptly, filled the woods with a frenzied percussion & ended on the sudden. — David Mitchell

There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart's chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood. This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world's percussion instruments combined. That sweet sound of love. — Michael Jackson

While we only look at Nature it is fair to say that Autumn is the end of the year; but it is still more true that Autumn is the beginning of the year ... Autumn is the time when in fact the leaves bud. Leaves wither because winter begins; but they also wither because spring is already beginning, because new buds are being made, as tiny as percussion caps out of which the spring will crack ... It is only an optical illusion that my flowers die in autumn; for in reality they are born. — Karel Capek

The thing with the piano is, the piano is like percussion almost - well, it is. You have to ... not beat on it, but there is more work involved than a Hammond. With a Hammond, you just lay your hands on the keys, man, and you're gone. — Gregg Allman

I was able to interpret the difference between the sharp, quick sound and the slow, deep sound of percussion and manipulate it, get a third sound out of things, if the beats were rapid enough. — Sunny Murray

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer. — Bruno Mars

For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion. — Dweezil Zappa

If the Good Lord meant men to use percussion caps, he wouldn't have strung flint all over the ground. — Taylor Anderson

Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way ... What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent. — John Cage

I play a percussion instrument, not a musical saw; it needs no amplification. Where it's needed, they put a microphone in front of the bass drum. But, I don't think it's necessary to play that way every night. — Buddy Rich

Before she went to bed, she loaded her Tatham percussion-lock pistol and added its weight to her bounty of spells. One didn't always need magic to win a fight. — Charlie N. Holmberg

The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients. — Oliver Sacks

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion. — Robert Wyatt

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. — Quincy Jones

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized — Charles Ives

When I heard We Are the World do a techno version of one of my songs, I didn't know the word techno, but I said, "That percussion is astounding, will you help me do a piece?" Nobody said, "Techno isn't allowed for you." — Linda Perhacs

The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined. — Evelyn Glennie

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion. — Janina Gavankar

Remember the last show you saw that got a standing ovation? Now try to think of one that had the audience on its feet at intermission. They stepped, strutted, stomped, romped, ran rung, hung, flung, flew, threw and played their way through 16 numbers (17 if you count the percussion encore in the lobby that stopped the departing crowd in its collective tracks). It was Blast! and it was fantastic. That said, the show is a cacophony of color and creativity a musical montage offering nearly two hours of stimuli. — Jan Perry

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion. — Paul Weller

Say it's true: It is what it is. We're social, tribal, musical animals, walking percussion instruments. Most of us do the best we can. We show up. We strive for gratitude, and try not to be such babies. — Anne Lamott

Quentin had told Spike that inking 'percussion' across your
knuckles was kind of lame. It takes more than ten letters to make
a badass knuckle tattoo. That was the problem with drummers.
They didn't listen. But they always seemed to get laid anyway. — Ros Baxter

That moment, the music screeched to a halt. There was an ungodly collision of brass, reed, and percussion - trombones and piccolos skidded into cacophony, a tuba farted, and the hollow clang of a cymbal wavered out of the big top, over our heads and into oblivion. — Sara Gruen

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. — Karen Russell

The walls and windows popped in staccato percussion as they relinquished the heat of the day. The soft chimes of the mantle clock supplied a beckoning melody. — Laura Rudacille

I've figured out what to do with my hands ... onstage. I'm a percussion player, so I grab a tambourine as much as I can. — Taylor Hanson

Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way. — Evelyn Glennie

The wind plays the world like an instrument. Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won't grow in cement. And as heart beats bring percussion fallen trees bring repercussions. Cities play upon our souls like broken drums. — Saul Williams

I like to listen to my iPod and also play music. I've been doing percussion since I was eight or nine. Rhythm is crucial in long jump but also in life. — Bob Beamon

I've been down there 6 times and there's nothing like Brazilian percussion. — Les Baxter

When I was 12, I happened to see a schoolmate playing percussion, and it looked interesting. I asked for lessons, and it felt right. — Evelyn Glennie

'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' is a kind of expansion of chamber music. — Pierre Boulez

With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise. Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through. — Steven Price

I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion. — Teena Marie

According to my parents, I just started drumming when I was two. I traveled with them from five to seven on the road, playing percussion. Between 8 and 12, my dad sort of prepared me by teaching me every aspect of road life. — Questlove

I have to have the reasons to make the record. There are just too many records out there, especially when it's something as audacious as a solo percussion record with solo drumming music on it. There better be a reason behind it. — Glenn Kotche

I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a piercing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase
nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it. — R. J. Anderson

I have always been drawn to percussion and drums, to bass and piano, in music much more then I am drawn to the guitar and the other lead instruments. — Dave Matthews

I can't get that live and I don't have the time to take the tape, after I've finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound. — Danny Elfman

Well, I've heard a lot of people, but I think I would say a Brazilian musician named Hermeto Pascoal was one of my biggest influences. Through the years he mastered the keyboards. He use to play the organ Hammond B3, flute, saxophone, percussion and guitar. He is one of the most complete musicians that I ever met. Not too long after we came to the United States, Airto Moreira introduced him to Miles Davis, who recorded three of Hermeto's compositions on his album Live Evil. — Flora Purim

A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos. — Evelyn Glennie

I really just wanted to play the drum set and match that. I was never really into the percussion thing. — John Otto

I played in the percussion section 4th grade through high school - snare and timpani mostly. — Suzy Bogguss

My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he's also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion. — Lee Ritenour

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such. — Paul Lansky

The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra. — Max Roach

After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument. — Quincy Jones

No one can get reall drunk on a novle or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's night, Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and percussion or the Beatles' White Album? He loved mozart as much as rock.
He considered music a liberating force, it liberated him from lonliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of hi body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends, He loved to dance an regretted that Sabina did not share his passion
pg 92-93 — Milan Kundera

I love the percussion. It's a right brain, left brain thing. There are different beats, but cooperating together. It's your whole body doing it, you're doing the snare drum and the high top with your hands and the bass drum with your foot. You're this whole motion machine. — Shalom Harlow

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion — Leonard Cohen

I grew up in a house that was always happy, and my family was always music, music. I started playing percussion very young, because I had some uncles who were musicians and all my aunts were singers. — Ronaldinho

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: "Is it genuwyne?" Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before. — Mark Twain

I think I can only help to expose percussion to all sorts of people. The balance between the lighter and more serious side is important. — Evelyn Glennie

I identify more as a musician than as a singer, because I play piano and percussion, and I engineer and produce everything that I do. — Janina Gavankar

And, you know, I think the original recording of Ravel's Bolero, probably whoever played percussion on that, will never have It played better than that. — Buddy Rich

I can't believe you know so little about firearms."
"I can't believe you know so much," Devonmont countered. "Never seen a woman as keen on guns as you. It's rather chilling."
"Isn't it, though?" Jackson put in. "Better watch it, Devonmont. Her ladyship is liable to shoot first and ask questions later if she finds you doing anything she doesn't approve of."
"I may just take your caution to heart, Pinter." Devonmont winked at Celia. "Then again, some things are worth risking life and limb for."
Celia looked startled, then cast Jackson a smug smile. With a snort, he drank more ale. Devonmont was really starting to irk him. They all were.
"So, Lord Devonmont," Celia said, turning her back on Jackson, "would you like me to show you the difference between a percussion gun and a flintlock?"
"By all means," Devonmont replied. "Though I can't promise to remember any of it later, explain away. — Sabrina Jeffries

The strident chimes of prayer bells from the distant temple resonated in the night air with ritual insistence, and nudged Kamala from her repose. What had once sounded to her like a sharp and persistent call to prayer now, with ceaseless repetition, mellowed to become plaintive and wistful, like one's favourite recording playing in the background to the syncopated percussion of lovemaking. (From the novel Blood & Nemesis by Ben Antao). — Ben Antao

No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album? — Milan Kundera

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter. We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment. We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone. Our music is our alchemy. We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever ... — Saul Williams

Symmetria by the Uccello Project is a gorgeous, instrumental and largely unclassifiable record. Best thought of as 'cinematic', each of the tracks conjures up a range of emotions and images, taking the listener on a beautiful journey. The layers of basses, guitars and percussion ebb and flow, drawing on jazz, folk, blues and African music, blending all the elements into one lovely album. Recommended. — Steve Lawson

Denny and McDaniel go into the percussion room and grab a bizarre metal contraption. Denny lifts it over his head and I give him a strange look, to which he responds like I'm a five year old, "Carr-i-er. — Courtney Brandt

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil") — Julian Hawthorne

I mean, I can sit down with a guitar, and in fact, we do two, three songs with just guitar and percussion. — Jackie DeShannon

The devil steps up to the podium, clears his throat and taps out time with his baton: in come the monstrous iron kettle drums of artillery, joined by a woodwind section of whistling bullets and shrieking shells, the ever-crackling light percussion of rifle fire. — Matthew De Abaitua

face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom. — Mark Twain

Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in. — Dan Aykroyd

The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations ... repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup.
But the Composer is still dead. — Lemony Snicket

tape on and the car trembled with percussion all the way to Saugus, where Hawk pulled into a Martignetti's off Route 1 and bought three — Robert B. Parker

My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds. — Wallace Shawn

I studied classical percussion for ten years. At one point I was thinking about going to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but then I realized it's actually not what I wanted to do. — Alycia Debnam Carey

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. — Charles Bukowski

For a million years the sound of making handaxes provided the percussion of everyday life. Anyone choosing a hundred objects to tell a history of the world would have to include a handaxe. — Neil MacGregor

I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar. — Suzi Quatro

That's how we grew up - kinda like Pops would put his drums, his percussion and instruments into the car and we would just go to a facility in the Bay Area and he would say to us, 'You think we have it bad? There are people worse off than we are. Let's go give back to the kids.' And that's how we grew up. — Sheila E.