Elizabeth Moon Quotes

A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

I am just the band leader, and I just keep everything in tune.

I learned how to play mandolin for 'A Mighty Wind!'

The banjo is my chosen instrument - it's what I write my music on.

I could live inside a G major chord, with Grace, if she was willing.

But I find that the keyboard is the complete instrument you know?

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.

I used to play the piano in the band, and so there's some horrendous scenes of me playing the keyboards.

The bass is just the crayon that I picked out of the box. I'd probably be writing similar stuff if I played guitar or trumpet. The pictures I want to draw I do with this crayon I chose, which is the bass.

Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

The local music community here was dying for a place to record, so we started doing acoustic, folk and bluegrass and then did rock projects for other bands, as well as for my son Tal and my own work.

I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.

I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.

So in one sense you don't have the classic keyboard player in Yes.

It's really hard for me to sing and play bass. Unless you're singing something that's kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it's just difficult.

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.

Since I first picked up the violin, I've been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin.

When I do the music, I make the musicians listen to what's happening in the film. That way they treat the dialogue as if it was a singer.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

Music is all about training in harmony, training to understand and use musical energy for our greater pleasure by attuning to the natural laws of the universe.

And you don't want to just totally mess up the rhythm when you're playing with Bob Dylan.