Evelyn Glennie Quotes

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

I love music and I enjoy creating sounds. I got into making music when I was a child, starting with the spoons and the koto before moving onto the piano.

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.

Anything that broadens your musicality always moves the way you write drum or guitar parts.

I really just wanted to play the drum set and match that. I was never really into the percussion thing.

I never had lessons. Used to try to play to records, which I hated doing. Still can't play to them.

When you're young, playing drums is immediately satisfying 'cause whether or not you know how to play anything, the bottom line is that you're pounding on something, so you're happy about it.

All the instruments of percussion known to European science are essentially nonmusical and can only be tolerated in open air music or in large orchestras where a little noise more or less makes no difference.

I'm a percussionist, so that's most of what I know when I attack a record. Melodically, knowing the keys - my first love - that makes the perfect blend.

It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Music, music, music. It doesn't get much better than that! It pretty much consumes my life.

We're not playing your typical guitar tuning, so there is no normal chords for us to get our footing with. We're pretty much making it up as we go as far as the sounds we're creating. Oftentimes, the song will be inspired by just a certain kind of block of sound that somebody creates.

Since I was a child, I was yearning to learn about percussion because that's what I loved.

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound. It's not trying to replace a band, per se. It's become a completely different thing. And it's not just simply an effect. It's just a very surprisingly intuitive thing.

We're not building a nuclear reactor here. We're not drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean with no plan in case something goes wrong. This is making music, this is melodious air and people can hear what goes into it.

To me, a day off is sitting at a piano or with a guitar and writing.

[When asked if the voice is an instrument:] Yes, of course. Some are violins, some are fountain pens and some are stethoscopes. And others are just washboards.

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

I'm a guitarist by background. That's what I used to do for sessions when I was younger and that sort of thing. We have several pianos in the house and I tend to just sit and fiddle around.

At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time, Before we make music, music makes us.

I just love making sounds. Anything that made a sound, as a kid I was just taken back by and would sit with it for ages and just try and make all different sounds on it.

Making music is mostly spontaneously following sounds you find compelling that you chase and see where they're leading you.