Synthesizer Quotes & Sayings

For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument. — Andy Summers

I'm a synthesizer. We need to synthesize more the relationships between artists and scientists, and men and women. — Leonard Shlain

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar. — Marc Almond

Never let your wife prevent you from buying equipment. A car will not buy a synthesizer, but a synthesizer can buy a car. — Hans Zimmer

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it. — Stephen Hawking

A MIDI file contains coded instructions to play a particular series of notes on an electronic music synthesizer. A MIDI file is more like a piano roll in a player piano than any type of sound recording. — Charles Petzold

If it's fast, no I don't have enough piano technique. In that case, it's probably been done on some kind of synthesizer or sequencer. Then the score can then be printed out and so forth. — Bill Bruford

More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp. — Andy Summers

It means basically I'm using the synthesizer more to change the sounds of other things rather than to use it as the source of the sound. — John Frusciante

I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer. — Robert Moog

I started working with synthesizer players, and I had to find new instruments. I needed a more complex sound, so I went to a surplus place and got a bunch of hard plastic stuff and stainless steel stuff, and that stuff worked. So from that point on, from the 70s on, I've made instruments. — Z'EV

I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer. — Jean-Michel Basquiat

I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra. — Tom Waits

My music, my whole approach to the synthesizer has completely changed now. — John Frusciante

The rhythm built up, high resonant notes from the buzzing xylophone, the off-scale dipping warble of the flute, the eerie, strangely primeval bass of the synthesizer.
The others punctuated the music with claps and sudden piercing shrieks from behind their veils. Suddenly one began to sing in Tamashek.
"He sings about his synthesizer," Gresham murmured.
"What does he say?"
I humbly adore the acts of the Most High,
Who has given to the synthesizer what is better than a soul.
So that, when it plays, the men are silent,
And their hands cover their veils to hide their emotions.
The troubles of life were pushing me into the tomb,
But thanks to the synthesizer,
God has given me back my life. — Bruce Sterling

I guess that I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, largely because of 'Frankenstein' being such a heavy song - you know, it was really hard rock, almost a precursor of heavy metal and just the image of the synthesizer. I happened to be the first guy to get the idea of putting a strap on the keyboard. — Edgar Winter

The use of electronics is a natural extension of the instrument - it is an electric guitar. So we guitarists have been plugging into something since 1931, and we are not about to stop now. Current advances in technology means we can have a huge array of sounds at our fingertips, and this offers amazing possibilities to the contemporary composer. It is always a guitar (I don't play synthesizer) but it becomes something else all together - more like sculpting sound in real time using metal wires, 5 fingers and a pick. — Tim Brady

It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards. — Andy Summers

In England, people had been loudly proclaiming the death of the guitar and the birth of the synthesizer, but Sonic Youth and other American guitar bands started to create a buzz. — Kim Gordon

As I sit there flipping through a Sports Illustrated, listening to the easy-listening station Dr. Patel pumps into his waiting room, suddenly I'm hearing sexy synthesizer chords, faint highhat taps, the kick drum thumping out an erotic heartbeat, the twinkling of fairy dust, and then the evil bright soprano saxophone. You know the title: "Songbird." And I'm out of my seat, screaming, kicking chairs, flipping the coffee table, picking up piles of magazines and throwing them against the wall, yelling, "It's not fair! I won't tolerate any tricks! I'm not an emotional lab rat! — Matthew Quick

If smart technology can transform 3-D from a crude novelty to a genuine visual enhancement, why shouldn't a sophisticated odor synthesizer follow a similar path? — Charles Platt

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can. — Samuel Beckett

If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet. — Andy Summers

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That's a personal point of view but that's the way I see it. I think that's what it's all about. The drive, the fire, the passion - it all comes out on the guitar. — Jimmy Page

I'm really not into the idea of just faking songs with a synthesizer. That just isn't the music I'm making at all. — Hamilton Leithauser

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer. — Charlie Haden

The head is in charge of thinking; the heart is in charge of feeling; and the spirit realizes the creative, infinitely thriving power of life while imagination acts as translator and synthesizer. — Deborah Sandella

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either. — Andy Summers

People are tied together and yet isolated from each other by invisible threads of rhythm and hidden walls of time. Time is ... a primary organizer of all activities, a synthesizer and integrator, a way of handling priorities and categorizing experience, a feedback mechanism for how things are going, a measuring rod against which competence, effort, and achievement are judged as well as a special message system revealing how people really feel about each other and whether or not they can get along ... — Edward T. Hall

The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar. — Andy Summers

As soon as people hear my voice and synthesizer together they hear Erasure. — Andy Bell

I am in touch with a company that hopes to replicate my voice. However, they are not replicating my original voice - if they did that, I would sound like a man in his 20s, which would be very strange! They are actually trying to replicate the synthesizer that sits on my wheelchair. — Stephen Hawking

But for me if I'm gonna read about something I'd rather read a pamphlet or the instructions to a synthesizer than a book on Buddhism. — John Frusciante

I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer. — John Eaton

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying Wait. — Douglas Adams

There's so much to be said for making your guitar sound like a synthesizer and try to make your drummer sound like a drum machine. — Matt Tong