Stevie Ray Vaughan Quotes

The problem with music was always that the sound system often obliterated the words, and words, not music, have always been what I was about.

When I first came out, like a lot of the artists at that time, I had a very polished, very overproduced sound.

I project stronger. If you notice the old records - they're much lighter - vocally much lighter in sound than the records that I'm doing today.

I think the biggest part of being on a sound system is wanting to always be the best.

I've seen a lot of people getting into Jazzmasters because of me, and, well, people don't know what they're in for. I mean if you're looking for endless sustain, you're going to have to get it out of your hands (laughs). Because a saxophonist gets it out of his breath. You've got to work for it on the guitar - it means you have to pull it out of yourself, otherwise, what are you doing? You end up playing a lot of noise or scale exercises.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right.

For the records I've work on over the last 10 years, I get sent the really compressed version and the non-compressed version, and oftentimes you end up going with the more compressed one because it's what people's ears are attuned to. I think the bigger problem is saturation and people being desensitized.

Whether people are making narrative cinema or experimental cinematic movie experiences, they all want the biggest screen possible and the quietest room and the most attention to every nuance and detail. Obviously, most people will not see the movie that way, but I can still hope for it, and I'd like to think we will be able to pull it off this time.

If I didn't have the reverb I'd be an unhappy camper. So I want reverb in my monitor mix. Reverb and a good level in my monitor and I'm all set.

Our military has been so badly depleted. Who would think the United States is raiding plane graveyards to pick up parts and equipment? That means they're being held together by a shoestring. Other countries have brand-new stuff they have bought from us. It's insane.

Every single year since they invented sound recording it gets better and better. We've always improved it. With MP3, which just sounds awful, it's the first time in the history of recorded music that it sounds worse. It's really - and it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous.

There's nothing harder than making a mellow, clean record. It's really scary. I can see why people would never want to do it.

I wanna go in the studio and just go back to the same amps and stuff I'm so comfortable with the sound of. Which I think is important to stay original.

Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.

People want to hear clean sounds; they don't want to hear coughing in the background, pages turning.

I actually think in music, learning technical stuff doesn't matter. You can be as technical as you like, but still sound awful.

I think the Yamaha has a giant quality. When you combine the Yamaha with other organs, you get this crazy rectangular sound. It's kind of flat and thick.

When one plays a Steinway, there is a warmth and nobility in the sound that is unequalled by any other instrument.

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.

You're not getting the b-level tunes. Our most recent producer, Danger Mouse, was quite sure about that. So you're getting the best of the best, the cream of the cream of what we have to offer.

You've got to know much more than the mere technicalities of notes. You've got to know sounds and what goes between the notes.

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.