Musician Quotes - Page 52

I've been really lucky as far as the caliber of musicians I've been able to work with each time.

Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.

Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.

I am a musician before a writer, and a drawer before a writer. When I lose sight of that, which I do, my work tends to suffer.

I still don't understand the music industry that much. Everything I learned was from hanging out with rock musicians in studios. I certainly have respect for those who make music their livelihood.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart.

A lot of musicians don't learn the business. You just have to be well-rounded in both areas. You have to understand publishing. You have to understand how you make money, what's in demand, what helps you make the most out of your talent.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste.

I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

It's usually important to me to get my idea out first because a lot of times my ideas will seem weird to musicians.

I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.

I speak my mind and come from a place of conscience, as well as have fun as a musician.

As convenient as that would be to make it easier to communicate with more prolific musicians, I don't want to think of music like a math equation.

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

When I was a young musician, the only option available to pursue secondary education in music was to attend a classical conservatory.

I work with musicians whose opinions I respect and if they don't like something they don't hold back. They'll say, 'That really sucks' and 'You've lost it' and 'You're no good anymore.' And I crawl away with my tail between my legs and I fear that kind of ridicule, but I want them to like the music I'm bringing to them.

It's really hard to make a living as a musician. It's almost impossible.

The idea that musicians should be talking about politics is, in some ways, quite a sixties' idea. Music no longer has a vanguard role in youth culture.

I know I'm always going to be a musician, for the rest of my life. That's for sure. It's about how you balance between being a musician and being a parent, and making it intertwined.