Johnny Marr Quotes

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

The right notes mean more than 1,000 mph arpeggios.

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

From a very early period of my life I have derived the highest enjoyment from listening to music, especially to melody, which is to me the most pleasing form of composition.

You have to follow every melodic line, every emotional idea, or you don't get your money's worth.

You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

Music is a reservoir... of sounds.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

It doesn't take much for anyone to pick up anything I play - it's quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don't dissect it - you just listen, and every bit seems right.

I can't even read music. All I know is whether I think it sounds good and if I like what I'm doing.

Music is the only thing that I trust.

If you can say something special on the guitar, then you're going to perk my ears up. But if you're just gonna run through all the scales, then I can always find something else to listen to.

Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.

Just like using an instrument, a song calls for different things.