Daniel Barenboim Quotes

Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.

You are the music while the music lasts.

You're just playing, playing, playing, and then an image or something will come into your mind, and basically you're just narrating it with music, letting it move along.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

Music should always be an adventure.

I jumped into a world of musical learning that was very much led by myself and then I drew from the music that was all around me.

Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument.

The guitar for me is a translation device. It's not a goal. And in some ways, jazz isn't a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination - a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

I'm interested in music as an extension of character.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

The greatest thing about music is everyone has their own style, and I respect all styles of music.

If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.

Sometimes I feel like I finish a song, and there's another song that I have to write in response to that song. Each is like its own separate feeling, its own separate universe.

I just scribbled away and eventually a C-major chord was there. I didn't ever decide I was going to be a composer. It was like being tall. It's what I was. It's what I did.

There's no rule that says you have to make records constantly, like clockwork, to continue being who you are.

In the past, I tried to be more of a typical session guitarist. I wasn't so concerned with impressing anybody.