Smart Musicians Aphorisms

[Silly Moustache]

Ok, I was looking for more smart comments for my other thread (which aren't really mine) and I found this.

“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”
― Louis Armstrong

“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
― Angus Young (AC/DC)

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
― Frank Zappa

“My music is best understood by children and animals.”
― Igor Stravinsky

“Do it again on the next verse, and people think you meant it.”
― Chet Atkins

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”
― Leonard Bernstein

“If I didn’t do this well, I just wouldn’t have anything to do…I can’t cook, and I’d be a terrible housewife.”
― Freddie Mercury (Queen)

“I don’t know anything about music, In my line you don’t have to.”
― Elvis Presley

“There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t care what goes on in between.”
― Thomas Beecham

“There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won’t.”
― Annie Lennox

“I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.”
― Jimi Hendrix

“After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what I was going to do with my life.”
― Jeff Beck

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
― Bob Dylan, Music at Night and Other Essays

“Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.”
― Jim Morrison

“I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it!”
― Quincy Jones

“When people say you’re doing something radical in rock or dance music, I’m not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It’s like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing.”
― Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead)

“Competitions are for horses, not artists.”
― Bela Bartok

“I’d rather be a musician than a rock star.”
― George Harrison

“I smash guitars because I like them.”
― Pete Townshend

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”
― Frank Zappa

“I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.”
― Duke Ellington

“There’s nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn’t exist before – I won’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.”
― Paul McCartney

“Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.”
― Keith Richards

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
― John Cage

“When I was a little boy, I told my dad, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a musician.’ My dad said: ‘You can’t do both, Son’.”
― Chet Atkins

“If you’re listening to a rock star to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.”
― Alice Cooper

“To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.”
― Igor Stravinsky

“To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.”
― Keith Moon (The Who)

“Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.”
― Trent Reznor

“Dogs smoke in France.”
― Ozzy Osbourne

“In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.”
― Robert Schumann

“I think John would have liked Free As A Bird. In fact, I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I’m dead, making them into hit songs.”
― George Harrison

“In the end we’re all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven’t been on the show.”
― Marilyn Manson

“If I knew I had to play this song the rest of my life I probably woulda wrote something else….”
― Joe Walsh (“Rocky Mountain Way”)

“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk in order to provide articles for people who can’t read.”
― Frank Zappa

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”
― Igor Stravinsky

“I never practice my guitar… from time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.”
― Wes Montgomery

“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.”
― Igor Stravinsky

“When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed!”
― Trent Reznor

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
― Unknown

(all stolen from someone called -Adam Small) Shameless eh?

NOTE: I don't even know who all these people are - but I'm guessing that Frank Zappa and Igor Stravinsky would make great dinner guests!

Ok - youse guys - over to you!

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

NOTE: I don't even know who all these people are - but I'm guessing that Frank Zappa and Igor Stravinsky would make great dinner guests!

Ok - youse guys - over to you!

Well the good news is they're dead so they won't eat or talk much at your dinner party....

[tbeltrans]

I like this one from the OP:

“Competitions are for horses, not artists.”
― Bela Bartok

Tony

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

I like this one from the OP:

“Competitions are for horses, not artists.”
― Bela Bartok

Tony

Yeah, that's a "wish I'd said that" comment.

Actually, I have done, just not in such a concise way.

[DanR]

"I'm the best guitar player on my street. And I always will be. Even if I have to move." - Paul Westerberg (The Replacements)

I saw that quote attributed to him some time ago but I can't verify it. I do like it, though.

[Ozzy the dog]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

I don't think Eric Morecambe heard that one.

Many years ago there was a TV advert here in the UK that had a Southern States guy playing the Sax. He looked at the camera and said "Of course I annoy the neighbours - 'cause they can't play as good as me"

No idea what they were advertising but that has always stuck with me.

[KevWind]

"Music is the silence between the notes", Claude Debussy

[Daniel Grenier]

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds” Bill Nye (Often repeated by Mark Twain).

“Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted”. John Lennon

“If I wasn’t a physicist I’d be a musician” Einstein

“Without music life would be a mistake” Nietzsche

[godfreydaniel]

“We wanted to play traditional jazz in the worst way...and we did!“
- Dave Van Ronk

“There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.“
- Duke Ellington

[tbeltrans]

This: “If I wasn’t a physicist I’d be a musician” Einstein (from another poster)

...is not much different from:

If I wasn't a software engineer, I'd be unemployed"



Tony

[Jim Owen]

Originally Posted by KevWind

"Music is the silence between the notes", Claude Debussy

You beat me to it. It’s so true.

[Cabarone]

Pete Seeger told a story about Woody Guthrie. Woody was asked about another folksinger who copied Woody's style and lyrics. "Woody said, 'Why, he just steals from me; I steal from everybody!' Or as my father stated in his own musicological way, 'Plagiarism is basic to all cultures'"

Another Seeger quote, "There are no wrong notes when you're singing"...

[PeteCady]

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: Music and Cats."

- attributed to Albert Schweitzer

[00Buck]

No matter where you go, there you are. Buckaroo Banzai

[Bob Womack]

“Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.” - Frank Zappa

"Now we've got them where they want us!" - Joe Walsh

"There's a feeling I get when I look to the sky, as if someone is watching, someone hears every word." - Joe Walsh (Song for Emma)

"I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?" - Jeff Beck

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thomson

"A Guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know." - Les Paul

"The guitar is the most unpredictable and least reliable musical instrument in existence...and also the sweetest, the warmest, the most delicate, whose melancholic voice awakes in our soul exquisite reveries." - Andres Segovia

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” - Pablo Picasso

"There’s a simple joy of using a very expensive ballpoint pen to write on real paper. I don’t know how to describe it but in a way these are like different kinds of paper, different kinds of ballpoint pens. You pick up certain instruments and for some reason, immediately a melody or a song or a theme or something comes to mind, inspired by the instrument." - Jeff “Skunk” Baxter from Turn it Up!

Bob