Quotes About Music

There's a certain kind of idealism attached to 'Tusk' as a subtext to the music, and I think people now can respond not only to how colorful and experimental it is, but also why it was made.

I don't sing to people. I sing for them. I told that once to Elvis Presley. He bought it. After that Elvis sang not to but for the audience. A subtle difference.

A lot of my music is slow and subtle. The subtly is what I enjoy about making music.

I've never set out to do anything other than get better at guitar and record and have fun. I feel like the Jazzmaster's just your comrade on that journey. It can be really subtle, it can be angry, it can be chill. It can be anything.

I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming.

I feel, in a way, on a record, you can be more subtle. In the live setting, everything gets amplified. The dynamics are more extreme in concert.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

Music that is considered minimalism - or post-minimalism music in general - things of that nature or that come from that tradition, or even drone, or non-western music, have a more subtle and more open-ended verticality to them that allows for your own mind and body to be involved.

When punk started, it wasn't subtle.

If you want to truly take in the subtleties and detail of your favorite records, then enjoy them the same way you would a movie. Make music an event, not a side dish.

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level.

I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.

Dad was pretty solid. He had great grooves and there was occasional moments of sheer brilliance with fills and things, but in general, the sheer brilliance is the simplicity, how much groove, how much feel he had, all the subtleties that we miss.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make, there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.

Country's cool if you like that kind of thing, but it doesn't have the complexity or - what's the word? - subtlety.

I like songs with a lot of heart and feeling and subtlety.

There's definitely no subtlety in what I do. When you want to get your face melted, you come to a Grace Potter and the Nocturnals concert.

When I first became aware of music, it was probably the same way a lot of people do - even more suburban or rural people - from my older brothers playing music.

When I was growing up, it was a lot of punk and hardcore music going on in legion halls and firehouses, and we'd play those shows, and it was very Jersey. It was very suburban, and there's just a great pride there.

Great rock n' roll comes from suburbia.

On long car rides, we would always listen to the 'Blues Brothers' soundtrack and try to emulate everything that Aretha Franklin was doing. There was soul and grit in it that I think a kid from the suburbs really needed.

The first time I held an African drum in my hands was at Koc University in a forest in the northern suburbs of Istanbul.

Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.

If I wanted to make a subversive record, it would be horrifying and insane.