Anton Seidl Quotes

The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

I'm not a very good singer. I just know how to present a song, and honey, I think I've been through enough to do it right.

Singing isn't always about being on key; it's about emotionality.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

You know, I think you have to sound right singing whatever it is that you sing.

I think singing it when it's done well is extremely natural. It feels great.

I have never been too concerned about things you're supposed to be concerned about as a singer. Pitch is important, and so is sounding good. But I think there's something underneath all that.

Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.

That's the thing about the blues: It's one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

We have to put expressions in a song when we sing it.

I don't think the singers take it as seriously as we used to. The words, the meaning, the phrasing, the feeling of the song. They see the words, they know the tune and they just sing it.

The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely.

If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer's character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist's presence.

I play very, very emotional. That's just my style.

What always attracted me to [Bob] Dylan, and what has sustained me as a Dylan listener, or has always continued to surprise me, is his voice, the way he sings, the way he wraps his voice around certain words, the way he backs off from melodic moments, the way he moves forward to grab something in a song that, were anybody else performing it, they would have no idea it was even there.

I like to use my voice as an instrument and just play along with the music. That's really how I tend to my voice. The content usually comes after or during that process of just trying to be an instrument.

The voice is certainly important and you can hear if it's beautiful or not, it's the gods who decide; it's more a question of what you do with the voice, which is the mysterious element. It's the personality behind the voice which makes the artist. The voice is a gift of God, but if you're not able to use this gift, what's left? Nothing but a beautiful voice, without nuance or color.

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play.

If I have to hold a note for a long time, I imagine it as moving and spinning, for the note has to have life. In a way, a singer actually refreshes a note with every beat that it's held.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

You look at somebody's work as an actor and you can see their emotional life being fed into it and you can kind of feel them through it.

People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling.

The art of music, rather more daughter than imitator of nature, in her impressive and mysterious language minding and educating us, rouses directly our temper and rules us to the depths of our souls.