Music Quotes for your Inspiration

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Welcome to GTiD's music quotes! These quotes are taken from our BLOG, where one is published from time to time.

You can explore this section in two ways: The fisrt is to see the quotes in the order in which they were published via our RSS feed and Blog. Don't forget to subscribe!

Disclaimer: These quotes are not intended to represent my own points of view. I've chosen them because each is profoundly revealing in two ways:

So, I hope you enjoy this kaleidoscope of ideas as much as I have enjoyed putting it together it for you!!!

music quote of the day. 11.07.09

"Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven."
-Lawrence Duncan

music quote of the day. 11.08.09

"Information is not knowledge,
Knowledge is not wisdom,
Wisdom is not truth,
Truth is not beauty,
Beauty is not love,
Love is not music
and Music is the best!"
-Frank Zappa

music quote of the day. 11.09.09

"Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same."
-John Denver

music quote of the day. 11.10.09

"A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal."
R.W. Emerson

music quote of the day. 11.11.09

"I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.
I say this because it's a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don't have that ability. I didn't. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren't able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.
I believe in things that are developed through hard work."
-Bill Evans

music quote of the day. 11.12.09

"Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific."
-Aaron Copland

music quote of the day. 11.13.09

"Music is the exaltation of the mind derived from things eternal, bursting forth in sound."
-Thomas Aquinas

music quote of the day. 11.14.09

"My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?"
-Duke Ellington

music quote of the day. 11.15.09

"The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar."
-Jimi Hendrix

music quote of the day. 11.16.09

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
-John Cage

music quote of the day. 11.17.09

"It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's there and I don't question it!"
-Miles Davis

music quote of the day. 10.10.09

"Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music."
-Ezra Pound

music quote of the day. 10.11.09

"Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it."
-Duke Ellington

music quote of the day. 10.12.09

"We accept the desirability of studying internal formal and structural relationships in a human product which is obviously systematic -yet we have no tools for approaching the intuitive human activity that controls decision making in spontaneous composition."
-Norma Mcleod, "Some Techniques for Analysis of Non-Western Music"

quote of the day. 10.13.09

"I think playing and writing go hand in hand. I don't feel that at this stage of the game I can actually sit down and say I'm going to write a piece that will do this or that for the people -a thing which some artists can do- but I'm trying to tune myself so I can look to myself and to nature and to other sounds in music and interpret things that I feel there and present them to people. Eventually I hope to reach a stage where I have a vast warehouse of study and knowledge to be able to produce any certain thing.

Duke Ellington is one person who can do this -that's really heavy musicianship and I haven't reached that stage yet. I've been predominantly a soloist all my natural life, and now I'm a soloist with my own band, and this has led me into this other thing: what am I going to play and why?

My material is mainly my own, and I find some of my best work comes from the most challenging material. Sometimes we write things to be easy, sometimes to be hard, it depends on what we want to do. A year ago we had quite a few standards which made up a third of the book, but now other people, certainly Ornette (Coleman) and Eric (Dolphy), have been responsible for other influences."
-John Coltrane, 1962 interview, Jazz Monthly

quote of the day. 10.14.09

"I don't give a fuck if you boo, as long as you boo in key..."
-Jimi Hendrix

quote of the day. 10.15.09

"The most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time."
-W.A. Mozart

quote of the day. 10.16.09

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice."
-Albert Einstein

quote of the day. 10.17.09

"Guitar playing, as currently understood, has more to do with sports than it does to do with music. It's an Olympic challenge type of situation. The challenges are in the realm of speed, redundancy, choreography, and grooming... ...clouds of educated gnat-notes."
-Frank Zappa

quote of the day. 10.18.09

"Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

quote of the day. 12.03.09

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."
-Ludwig van Beethoven

quote of the day. 12.04.09

"Anybody can do anything, it's up to themselves. All it takes is the right intentions."
-Jimi Hendrix

quote of the day. 12.05.09

Jimi's answer when asked by Dick Cavett whether music had a meaning or not:
"Definitely, and it's getting more spiritual. Pretty soon I believe people will have to rely on music to get some kind of peace of mind, or satisfaction, or direction, actually. More so than politics, the big ego scene. You know it's an art of words... Meaning nothing. Therefore you will have to get an earthier substance, like music or the arts."
-Jimi Hendrix

quote of the day. 12.06.09

"Before Elvis there was nothing."
-John Lennon

quote of the day. 12.07.09

"In Zen, it is said, if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."
-John Cage

quote of the day. 12.08.09

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."
-Leopold Stokowski

quote of the day. 12.09.09

Very applicable to music, too:
"Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition. "
-R.W. Emmerson

quote: 20.01.10

"It's no use practicing too much. First you have to find out how to do it best. You have to be able to invent ways of doing better.
Not only practice; obviously you have to practice. But to invent things how to do better.
If somebody doesn't know what invention means, he should stop violin playing! You can't explain everything...
Not practicing only: Think how to achieve quality."
-Nathan Milstein, in a thick Russian accent.
As applicable to the guitar as it is to the violin!!!

quote: 23.01.10

"I wouldn't say that I'm the greatest guitarist ever. I'd say probably that I'm the greatest guitarist sitting in this chair."
-Jimi Hendrix

quote: 01.02.10

"Improvisation is the art of becoming sound. It is the only art in which a human being can and must become the music he or she is making. Improvisation is the only musical art which predicated entirely on human trust and love."
-Alvin Curran

quote: 02.02.10

"Jazz isn't a what, it's a how."
-Bill Evans

"There is no art when one does something without intention."
-Duke Ellington

quote: 04.02.10

"You can play a shoestring if you're sincere"
-John Coltrane

quote: 05.02.10

"All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws."
-John Coltrane

quote: 06.02.10

"Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction."
-Jimi Hendrix

quote: 07.02.10

"To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."
-Igor Stravinsky

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