Joseph Addison Quotes

Gaps can be very emotional. I mean, that's in my drumming. When I drum, you know, I don't need to drum all over the track. I play with the singer and I can back off.

As with any art, you create it [drumming] out of something that isn't there. It's very architectural. It's the architecture of whatever piece of music I'm playing. I think the whole idea of drumming is to allow other people around you to more easily express themselves.

Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live.

A lot of people play to impress, but the really gifted ones play to move. That's the greatest point of ever doing this.

The arts open your heart and mind to possibilities that are limitless. They are pathways that touch upon our brains and emotions and bring sustenance to imagination. Human beings' greatest form of communication, they walk in tandem with science and play, and best describe what it is to be human.

The finest singing, given a good voice to begin with, comes from the constant play of a fine mind upon the inner meaning of the music.

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.

God gave us music, so we play with our words.

When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'

A work of art must make the rules: rules do not make a work of art...I tell people I am not a musician; I work with rhythms, frequencies and intensities...tunes are merely the gossips of music.

You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.

When I listen to my songs, they seem like pieces of music or art, like a painting that you look at. The reality is that, yes, when I wrote the songs upstairs or wherever, I was writing very specifically about my life or a specific subject matter that's very personal. I've never shied away from that. The vocals and the performance that come after the record, I don't think of that as confessional, but the core of the music is completely. It makes sense that people would see that as being the main thing. I guess not everyone is able to speak so candidly.

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space

And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.

It was overwhelmingly beautiful to see my music performed.

I guess the disc jockey thought I was trying to sing or something so ... they had fun with it. But the reality was that it was something, there was a concept behind it.

I envy drummers. It must be the ultimate to sing and play drums at the same time. Phil Collins, no wonder he's so f... happy.

It's just about really being sensitive, and trying to play a music that is about music.

I like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.

Play the last measure very softly.

If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.

As to...old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off.

If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book... that's no fun at all.

Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

Performance and music are inexorably tied together. And hell, I'll watch Brittany's Toxic music video all day. But there's a difference between that and listening to Leo Kottke play guitar. One is entertainment. The other is Music.