Karlheinz Stockhausen Quotes

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.

Harmonies are nice.

I like to be one of those drummers who actually add to the music, not one of those guys who sit in a room 24/7 trying to outwit or outplay another drummer.

The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila.

And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.

When you get up, the night and day is a contradiction. But you get up at 4 A.M. That first blush of blue is where the night and day are trying to find harmony with each other. Harmony is the notes that Mozart didn't give you, but somehow the contradiction of his notes suggest that. All contradictions of his notes suggest the harmony.

The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.

You can be a singer, and you can be a guitar player, but putting them together is another animal.

But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

The 'Missa Mirabilis' is a big work which was conceived for a large organ and a lot of singers.

I want to take the great tradition of the orchestra within me, to take what the orchestra offers.

We had a nine-piece choir on 'Aw Yeah.'

Harmony singing is my favorite thing to do in music!

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

Eventually you'll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you've copped and begin to put your own mark on them

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

Rhythm is one of the principal translators between dream and reality. Rhythm might be described as, to the world of sound, what light is to the world of sight. It shapes and gives new meaning. Rhythm was described by Schopenhauer as melody deprived of its pitch.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

I am not an evangelist. I am not a preacher. I am a musician. That is what I know how to do. I know how to write songs. I know how to write things that relate to my heart. I feel that I talk about God in every song, in everything I do - all of it! I really do not know how to respond. I do not relate to that.

[Songwriting is] something that I own - it's my property, it's my music, it's my voice.

Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.

It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.

Rock 'n' roll is about music. Music. Music. Music. It's not about you, it's not about me, it's not about Oasis. It's about the tunes.