Eddie Condon Quotes

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

Music is just air moving around.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

When I open my mouth, the room rings.

I'm an acoustical person.

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me.

I love a visceral sound, the kind that hits you in the belly.

There is something very basic to the sense of listening. The sense of hearing is the only one that operates totally from vibrations, without other physical or chemical reactions to receive the sensations.

Your mallet or your stick goes through the instrument, the sound goes out and then wherever the sound goes nobody knows, you know.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument, the harmonics continue to sound along with the fundamental note.

I count all the time on resonance. I call on this, you see.

Actually, I think the average voice is like 70 percent tone and 30 percent noise. My voice is 95 percent noise.

One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.

Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.

It's not like I actually understand the properties of sound.

Bronze makes the most complex waveforms of any substance known to man. It creates these vibrations that will just crack your skull.

I think anything you listen to is going to be different. You're going to listen to a song differently if you're just sitting around somewhere listening on your phone as opposed to sitting in a dark room listening to a vinyl album. It's going to be a totally different experience.

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

I can hear the music all around me.