Marvin Minsky Quotes

I just saw metal as another tool for me to use.

To me, trying to achieve the balance is when you become good: when you have enough technique to be able to play what is that you want, but also when you can refine what you want to communicate to people. As a younger person, it wasn't something I thought about so much.

Work with sound until you are absolutely amazed that you can produce such a sound and it seems to you that you are just the instrument to which the divine pied piper blows the whisper of the incantations of his magic spell.

If I crave a frequency in the mid, I'll just drag in a sound and try to mold it into what feels right. It happens very quickly. And if I've been making a piece of music for five hours and it sucks, I'll just throw it away.

You never can overwhelm an instrument. You will never get out all that's in an instrument. An instrument will bring you to your limits.

You have this resonant box that sounds cool when you smack it, so why not go for it?

I don't believe in getting a lot of new gear all the time, so I get very deeply into one instrument and use it for many years.

I know how to paint... In a way there is a boredom there because a lot of the magic is gone.

I've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.

Ideally, I'd really like to put my own stamp on things, but it takes years, you know, and you're constantly learning and studying and falling in and out with your instrument, learning different approaches and different attacks.

It's a game of adjustments. Your hands aren't going to be in the right spot 100 percent of the time.

The more you style, the better you get. Don't give up. At a certain point, the magic happens.

I found the recording sessions very freeing because you can really try things. When you're filming something, if you're improvising a film and you're wasting film and wasting a cameraman's time.

I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.

The object of music is a Sound. The end; to delight, and move various Affections in us.

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.

Where is the stretch? Where is the perfect fit? Where does it make sense? You have to be a Baryshnikov.

I love acting. And if there's a niche that needs filling, I'm happy to get in there and try to fill it.

I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since.

The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.

They gave 12 monkeys a typewriter for a week, and after a week, they only used it as a bathroom.

You've got this piece of wood and some wires, pickups and some strings. How somebody uses that configuration to make something memorable, that's what's interesting to me.

When you try to be true to the script, changes occur. A script is there to show us a certain direction. But when you actually have the actors in and you start shooting the movie, you have the actor say a line and it doesn't sound right so you change it and make it different. It's the script that gives birth to these changes and the more you try to stay true to the script, the more that happens.

It is not solid wood that can become a flute, but the empty reed.

I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.