Igor Stravinsky Quotes

A melody without the right rhythm hardly exists.

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.

My heart beats in three-quarter time.

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

Timing has a lot to with art.

You can always tell when the groove is working or not.

The mathematics of rhythm are universal. They don't belong to any particular culture.

Some songs go super-quick; some take a really long time.

Drumming is so hard.

In music, four is the number that every measure is - four by four, four beats to every measure. The number four is a sense of completion, almost.

I've always really liked the rhythm element of songs.

I can't hear rhythm.

I have to think in terms of musical tempo. Let's say someone comes into a room and slowly sits down or someone rushes into the room and rushes to sit down. That's how to work out the tempo of the music you produce.

Any time you sit out, it could throw off your rhythm a little bit, and I'm kind of a rhythm player.

I can conduct and play musical instruments, but dancers' counting is different - they only go to eight beats, which doesn't relate to a bar.

The most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time.

…beating time along the edge of thought.

There is a difference between being a timekeeper and keeping the pulse or being in step with the pulse in the band.

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

Rhythm is the pulse of music.

Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

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.

Get rhythm when you get the blues.

A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? Andit's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart,where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's acompletely different perception.

I have an erratic drummer for anybody who's just listening to this, he can keep time, but just in spurts.