Quotes About Artistry

When you play, never mind who listens to you.

Retire? Not on your life. I have no plans to stop singing. What are you going to do when you love music? It's a terrible disease. You can't stop. Of course, I'd like to get off the road.

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

You cant make your music good. You cant try to be good. You can try to be present and you can try to remain open so what is going to speak to you can speak through you.

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

The most stupendous miracle in all music.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I am an improviser, ... I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all, it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

It will lead many musicians out of the cul-de-sac they currently face. And those that do not understand will be cursed to make disposable music on laptops forever.

The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That's what critics can't put their finger on.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it. If you're swept away by it you can't wait to do it again and the same magical moments always come.

Our show doesn't rely on the typical whistles and bells, and smoke and mirrors. It relies mostly on the music.

I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women.

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.

My favorite type of music to sing is definitely those big ballads, I just love doing those power ballads.

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

Over the years I hope I've become more of a musican and less of a guitarist.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

I find it so amazing when people tell me that electronic music has no soul. You can't blame the computer. If there's no soul in the music, it's because nobody put it there.