Ravi Shankar Quotes

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I listened to the rock music of that time, but as you know and can easily hear: my music of that era had nothing to do with the common music of this era. I was experimenting, I was searching for something new.

I am so envious of my colleagues from 100 years ago who only sang new works, they hardly ever sang revivals.

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!

I'm never going to stop writing music as Porter Robinson and I see 'Virtual Self' as more of a tangent.

I combine aspects of many styles of music and create my own musical forms by way of electronic instruments.

After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

The sarangi, the ney flute are pretty ancient instruments.

I play piano and guitar and I do write my own stuff so to a certain extent I know what I want to do in regards to music. But I'm still finding out what kind of music is my favourite kind to listen to, never mind do myself so I've got a lot of time to find out myself and develop myself as an artist.

Singing is a limitless form of expression, and I love to experiment with my work.

I found my sound early on. Look at U2: they haven't changed their music for 20 years. Anyway, many people come unstuck when they try to change what they do and what they are known for.

Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.

Mine is not a traditional music, but it comes from a tradition.

Although my music is electronic, it has a lot of influences from my past, which is all sorts of genres; I've been in a rock-metal band for a long time, and I still feel like, personally, I have a lot of influence from that. My classical influence, you can find spots here and there.

I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.

I'm a self-confessed geek, and my whole concept of music at first was entirely electronic. In many ways, it turned out to be an advantage. I was so green, so utterly naive about the nature of classical music, that I did things that made me look totally, deliberately unorthodox.

I come from a very strenuous, strict, disciplined classical music background. My grandfather, noted Carnatic classical exponent Dr. Sripada Pinakapani, was a Padma Bhushan recipient.

I have always just experimented, and I come from a very ancient, acoustic root. It was very hard to put a finger on me.

The musical instuments may be western but my voice never wavers away from my own ragas. it is good to make experiments and I do a lot of them but my thoughts always round the centre and that centre is the tradition of my elders and it is classical music...

I wanted to try a different way of making music. That's what made me try different things with my voice.

When you say, 'Man, what kind of music does Outkast make?' You be like, 'They make Outkast music.' What kind of music does N.E.R.D. make? They make N.E.R.D. music. I want to be one of those people, because there's so many layers to the music I create that I don't want people to expect me to do one thing.

'Salt' is like this snapshot in midair, an action shot. It's about my relationship with the church, the classical and choral music that I dealt with in school, and my new introduction to jazz. It's very hard for me to listen to from beginning to end, because I hear how lost I was.

I was trying to make my name just Artist in the beginning, but it was weird at first, because I wasn't an R&B singer or nothing. Not an R&B singer. I didn't do no melodic songs, none of that yet.