Roman Jakobson Quotes

As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?

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.

Well rounded forms gives smooth sounds; sharper or angular forms give harder and harsher sounds.

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

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

The human voice: mysterious, spontaneous, primal. For me, the human voice is the vessel on which all emotions travel - except perhaps jealousy. And the breath, the breath is the captain of that vessel.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

I love the word 'resonance.'

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

When I open my mouth, the room rings.

Sound is a movement which is handed on from atom to atom in a gas through which the sound is passing, just as a chain of workers pass buckets of water to a fire. The quicker the workers move their hands and arms, the quicker the water moves.

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.

Sounds always fascinated me.

The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.

I'm an acoustical person.

Everything goes in waves. Evolution goes in waves. The ocean goes in waves. Energy goes in waves. Sound travels in waves.

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

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

All things are in a state of vibration. Vibrations from objects in our surroundings are constantly impinging upon us and carry to our senses a cognition of the external world. The vibrations in the ether act upon our eyes so that we see, and vibrations in the air transmit sounds to the ear.

The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.

Music is just air moving around.

It's not about retro or modern, it's about this note or that note, which sounds better?

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.

A tune has to resonate with whatever is happening around it.