Lee Konitz Quotes

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.

Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion.

Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

Music is really, really mathematical.

Music is science more than art, and it is the main code of the universe.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

There are only so many notes so there must be only so many melodies.

Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.

My course is about really working on a sheet of music. You work out the chords, which note complements the other, and how they will make the feeling of tension, the feeling of resolution. It's all about harmonization. That's more of the theory of notation and everything rather than practical. I don't play any instrument.

I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.

A violin is tuned to a fifth. But a guitar is tuned to a fourth with a one-third middle. It is very perplexing to composers.

I've never been much for theory and scales.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.