Playing Music Quotes

I know that I can sing. That's the reason I started playing music when I was twelve years old.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.

I've been playing music most of my life.

If I'm not on tour or in the studio, I'm in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It's not lost on me that it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.

The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.

It's my language, the language I speak. I've spent a lot more time playing music than talking or writing.

I see a lot of parents now who are really supporting their kids playing music.

I dropped out of college, started playing music. I was going to do what I was going to do and it is what it is.

Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.

I like to think that if it hadn't gone as well as it has, if I wasn't able to make a living off of playing music, I would still be playing the music. But, of course, I wouldn't likely have had the opportunity to travel, and a lot of the places have inspired songs.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds.

If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth.

There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music

Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.

Any idiot, any stockbroker can get out there and live out a fantasy and pretend like he's playing music. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I like playing music. I don't always like the feeling of people looking at me. I don't think I'm, like, a natural performer, but I'm getting better.

As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.

The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.

The moment you start to talk about playing music, you destroy music. It cannot be talked about. It can only be played, enjoyed and listened to.

We had a great educator [in the school band], a man named Larry Laurenzano. He was tough, but we knew that he loved us. And that was the beginning of playing music with people and really being inspired and having fun and being in a community.

The piano has been drinking, not me.

When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.

All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.

Playing music has always felt very natural. You know, you do try to do other things, and you do learn lessons that way, but, eventually - well... if your dad is a plumber, you become a plumber. It's the family business, and I felt like I was taking over the family business.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

I hate that sense of entitlement or the sense of business crawling into playing music.

I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet.

I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negros should write Negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies…We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America we must develop along our own lines.

It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible.

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

I think the world is very much embracing this whole concept of musicians going out and playing their instruments and playing music for music as opposed to music that has something to do with some form of image or imagery.

After I found out that I was playing music and that I'd have to learn how to read and write music, I started doing that about two years later. Finally, I said, "Oh, that means what I really want to do is to be a composer." But when I was coming up in Texas, there was segregation. There was no schools to go to. I taught myself how to read and how to start writing.

Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much.

When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head.

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy.

I've worked since I was 11 years old, playing music and following the dream, and shaking and moving and doing it. And then, you have cancer and it was like 'Ooooohh.' It was like a big eraser. It was the only thing in my life that had ever made me just stop.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name.

I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.

Knowing that I am out here, with a full open heart, travelling and living my dream with my guys playing music, that allows me to come home and be a better man, a better dad, knowing that I am fulfilling what I have always wanted to do.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

Music is the universal language of mankind.

There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

When I was playing with synth players, I was still within a conceptual framework of playing music. When I started playing solo, I became much more aware of the acoustic phenomena that the instruments were producing.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Playing music well is difficult, yet the world has an abundance of fine performers. Explaining a little about music is easier, yet few do it well. Those who can do both supremely form a tiny club, whose honorary chairman is the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.