Quotes About Music

When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music.

My specialty is two things: music or really strange stories.

When I went to university, I was a music major. Timpani was my specialty, and voice.

For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the primary way by which it knows itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.

Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad.

The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.

Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?

We are just fans of music, we are not fans of a specific kind of music. We just happen to be a rock band. Until we explain ourselves, sometimes people don't understand why we limit ourselves to just being a rock band. It's because that is what we like doing.

In '96, I was in a very specific place with my own music - I was only listening to beats. You would come to my house, and I would just play beats all day.

Sometimes I like them artificial and sometimes I like them real. And the reason is because sometimes I like a real close sound. And I like a very specific snare sound and I can't get that in the big room.

Most things that I write are in very specific forms. A score will have a shape and profile, and then the more emotional and intimate moments will come.

The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is.

When I did the album for 'When Harry Met Sally,' I found myself out there in front of this big band, which I had no idea how to do, and they wiped the floor with me. It's a very specific skill, and I didn't know how to do it.

Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.

I write at the piano, so I write things that fit comfortably under my hands, and I'm not thinking in terms of any specific compositional methods. I'm just seeking sounds.

I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.

I have specific playlists for different books and characters. So, I need to have those with me. It helps me get into the mindset of the book.

I really have to be in a specific headspace to even begin to illuminate an idea that would create another Bon Iver record, and I'm just not there.

Looking back at those great singers like Gordon MacRae and Howard Keel - they have such a specific kind of style that it seems like we don't really appreciate anymore.

I'm constantly listening to music and thinking about it and compiling my own cassettes and CDs in obsessively specific order. I have quite lunatic agendas for what I want to achieve. They won't make sense to anyone other than me, but it is what I've spent most of my life doing.

For my characters, it's important to get really specific about what they listen to. Because it affects how they move in the world.

My passion is more specific, in the sense that I've always liked doing comedy. I've always liked doing music. I like acting. And apparently, you need those things in movies.

Clipping is a very specific, concept-y thing. We have all these rules: we don't sample drums. We create all our own sounds. I don't speak in the first person. We come from a background of experimental music like John Cage... Philip Glass.

If I'm extra happy or excited, it'll take me an hour or two to write a song. Or, if I'm really sad or something, it will take me about a day. But I have a specific way of writing: I just listen to the beat. I think about what I'm going to write over the beat.