Robert Fripp Quotes

Interplay and interaction are the integral parts of music - they're as important as the notes.

My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.

If Bill jumps into something that relies on a lot of cymbals, I'll jump into something that relies on a lot of skin sounds; if he goes into metal tones, I'll go into wood, and so on. I basically play in his holes.

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.

For me, the conductor is a person who interprets along with me, and we interpret things together.

You have a great result if the orchestra trusts the conductor, and the conductor trusts the orchestra.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

You know, I think music is very interactive. It's a - it's a language.

But duets are a lot of fun, I'd love to do another one.

Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.

But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music.

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

Even though I have often recorded alone, I still feel the best music is made by musicians playing off each other.

Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.

I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

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

In 'Heart of Gold' at one point, there were 23 players on the stage with him. And part of what's magic about Neil is the way he interacts with the other musicians.

The music has a better feeling when you're responding to what's going on. Music is like playing handball, playing catch with someone, not playing golf. Everywhere the ball bounces is where you respond to it.

There is nothing more beautiful for a musician to listen and see harmony.

It's not like I'm writing full songs or full parts and setting it aside for Slash because, generally, I like him to make the first move and hear where he's coming from and what his concepts are, and then I build from there.

Singing duets is instinctive, intuitive.

I love seeing people collaborate to make great music!

It's fun for musicians to step into each other's world. It's like different football teams - it's the same game but a different play.