Eugene Chadbourne Quotes

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

It's always interesting to me that we all hear music differently. It's an awesome experience to hear what other people hear.

However, very recently I have come to an understanding that complex music is not necessarily pleasant.

I never think my music isn't easy until I got to teach it to other people.

I like to keep things deceptively simple, but hard-hitting. You can reduce everything to the perfect, essential harmony. It's what used to be done with earlier music like Gregorian chants.

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.

There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord.

I wish I finished music school, because then I feel like I could talk more about the dissonant notes.

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to 'get' any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.

The classical music scene was completely unfamiliar to me. It was something that I didn't have the most fun associations around. A lot of people don't - they think of older generations and stuffiness. But it's not. You listen to the Overture of 1812, and you can hear a rock n' roll catharsis.

Most people imagine music playing in their heads, but some hallucinate music; some cannot sleep because of the soundtrack in their mind.

Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

I know music is subjective.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

My upbringing made me think that real legitimate music is written, not heard.

The way the mind decodes music is an individual mystery. But the physical circumstances can change the way you listen.

We're also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element.

I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.

So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.

I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.

Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'