Pierre Schaeffer Quotes

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?

Sound creates an intimate effect: the sensation to feel the place. It makes the viewer enter. You have the liberty to hear what you want.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.

Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true.

The atmosphere defines the environment of sound.

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

I think there's something strangely musical about noise.

The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.

I never made a distinction, really, between music and sound. Let me explain what I mean by that. I grew up near to a train station, and the sound of the trains became a very important part of my world. It was a very musical sound to me.

I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.

I think anything you listen to is going to be different. You're going to listen to a song differently if you're just sitting around somewhere listening on your phone as opposed to sitting in a dark room listening to a vinyl album. It's going to be a totally different experience.

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.

Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it.

Soun is noght but air ybroken, And every speche that is spoken, Loud or privee, foul or fair, In his substaunce is but air; For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke, Right so soun is air ybroke.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

If sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

We do not realize the sound the world makes -- unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

Some people don't even notice. "Oh, you sound exactly like you did!" And I say, "OK, if that's what you want to believe, that's fine."

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.