Quotes About Music

We built something very special with Gaslight, and we don't want to mess with that sound too much. But I've always wanted to do a record where I can put strings or organs or pianos or whatever on it.

I collect many ethnic instruments, and as a guitarist, I'm usually able to play any sort of instrument - as long as it has strings. That's why I like to experiment with different sounds.

Strings have been a part of my career and my albums since the very first day. 'Snowbird' had beautiful strings.

By adding open strings to even the simplest chords, you can create voicings that sound sophisticated, but are really easy (and fun) to play. They're practical, not intimidating, and most certainly don't sound like 'jazz chords.'

The isolation of Eastern Europe actually helped me to be so original. I couldn't travel so much, I had to find my own things, such as making the strings sound like electronic music.

I found I could speak through the guitar. Because you have the feel of the strings with both hands and it's up against your solar plexus, it's real, and so there's nothing between you and the music.

Robby had a flamenco and folk music background. I was so enamored with watching Robby's fingers crawl across the flamenco guitar strings like a crab.

I went through a period in my life where I didn't have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't play guitar.

If it's a Clean Bandit-related stress, there are smooth things they play on Classical FM that can help, such as Barber's 'Adagio for Strings,' or there is a choral version of it too that is very relaxing.

Music has always enhanced our experience of life on earth by seeming to give us access to something larger than ourselves - the strings of the universe.

You can be in the band, you can go buy your own guitar strings at Guitar Center, you can go and do everything the boys can do and you're not the oddity anymore.

It's amazing how well real strings blend with metal, like that whole sound.

The sitar is a really difficult instrument to play. Physically it's taxing because of the cross-legged sitting position, the length of the neck on the shoulder, the thinness of the strings. There's a lot of pain, especially at the start.

I have grown up listening to Strings and they have always been a source of inspiration to me.

Rhythm, melody, message, that's what matters. Our main concern coming out of the gate is to make sure those foundations are strong, the songs are speaking to us. Everything else, horns and strings, is sweetening.

I always break three or four guitar strings per show and fling them at the audience.

I've always recorded the same way. I put down as many ideas as I have, then strip them away at the mixdown. It's better to have too much music than not enough.

Music is multi-dimensional: it's all in the feeling. Sometimes I feel like looping; sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want to strip it back, play instruments I've never played before.

But once you strip that down, you realize it's all about a voice, like a Norah Jones - that's inspiring to me.

Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.

We like to take pop songs that have really cool, complex melodies or lyrics and strip away all that fluff and electronic noise, and put them back as if they were written for a singer and a piano.

There's probably a bunch of Power Stripe floating through the Def Jam offices right now.

I'd make a White Stripes record right now. I'd be in the White Stripes for the rest of my life. That band is the most challenging, important, fulfilling thing ever to happen to me. I wish it was still here. It's something I really, really miss.

I like The White Stripes and I like the kinda twang American thing right now.