Marian Seldes Quotes

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

When one plays a Steinway, there is a warmth and nobility in the sound that is unequalled by any other instrument.

I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

When I need to nail that riff to the cross, Marshall will always provide the hammer!

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.

I wish I was a shredder that could play everything, but I don't have the patience.

When you're in a club or a theater or even an arena, yeah, you want visuals, you want a good light show. But Slayer has always been about the sound. We have to sound good. It has to be tight.

A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people's attention for two hours.

The oboe is the most maddening thing of all time. I'm struggling to play something that my oboe teacher was doing when she was much younger than I am.

I had decided that if I was going to be a singer, I had to earn it. I had to learn how to play an instrument.

My harmony is passable but is usually made more eloquent at the hands of Steve Hamilton.

The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

I always admired very much the virtuosity in Strauss because, really, he's a master of using the orchestra. And I like virtuosity, I must say, even if the taste of the music is not always mine.

You have a natural groove inside of you, but the more you practise, the more comfortable you will be with your instrument.

When I play the clarinet, I am 100 percent myself. It is as if it is part of my body. I can play whatever I think. Let me just read a melody and make it as sweet as I can.

I'll never forget the first time I heard Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Partita in E Major' for violin. It was in a late-1980s television commercial, of all things. As a young violinist at the time, it enchanted me - it was so pure, precise, and unadorned.

At the end of the day, you, as the player, create the tone coming out of the amp. The gear is part of it but by no means all of it.

I was the singing boy in school.

There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.

It's about how you're using the space. That's what makes live music.

Ideally, I'd really like to put my own stamp on things, but it takes years, you know, and you're constantly learning and studying and falling in and out with your instrument, learning different approaches and different attacks.

My earliest memories have to do with music.

The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.