Quotes About Music

I had this dream like years ago. I had this dream - I wanted to be in an all-black string band.

That was the special thing about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We didn't want to do music full-time. We weren't looking to get rich, which is good, because we didn't. But we went further than we thought we would go. We started that band to celebrate Joe Thompson and the black string band music. That's not really a recipe for commercial success.

We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.

I can make a record with six-part string arrangements and the best musicians in the world and have it be not genuine. I'd rather make a genuine record that I truly stand behind and have it fall where it may.

I never use pull-offs because I don't like the sort of 'meow' sound they make with the string being deflected sideways.

You know, I never went to music school, and it's always seen as this very proper, serious thing to compose a string arrangement.

I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.

I would say that Beethoven's late string quartets are the nearest to God that we'll ever get.

The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost.

For me, playing music while I write is important. Several of the romantic scenes in 'Paris' were written with Debussy's 'String Quartet,' his 'L'Apres-midi d'une Faune,' or Canteloube's 'Songs of the Auvergne' playing in the background.

I much rather coach a string quartet in an interpretation of Haydn or Beethoven than to teach the guitar.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

The lute I use has 10 courses and 19 strings, which is quite a lot of strings and a quite different fingerboard width from a classical guitar. I use a combination of flesh and nail when plucking the strings.

Chemistry is the melodies you can play on vibrating strings.

My only expenses are probably guitar strings and records.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.

I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers.

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school.

Shouldn't the low strings be at the bottom?

I don't believe that heavy strings make it all that much bigger-sounding. If anything, it can mess up your fingers, and you can get tendonitis, which is not cool.

We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'

All gut strings. That's just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, it's the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it.

I can do the old hand vibrato just fine, but I like attacking the strings.