Jean Philippe Rameau Quotes

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

My course is about really working on a sheet of music. You work out the chords, which note complements the other, and how they will make the feeling of tension, the feeling of resolution. It's all about harmonization. That's more of the theory of notation and everything rather than practical. I don't play any instrument.

Discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.

Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

The concept is basically; that the pieces we know and love are made up of scales, arpeggios, and the like.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

I really believe in melody.

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.

Music would lose its charm were not dissonance interspersed at frequent intervals. The closer a composer can come to discord without actually entering it in the score, the more pleasing will be his composition when given life through musical instruments.

You have to have that organizational principle behind the song.

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

There are notes between notes, you know.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

Music is really, really mathematical.

I want music to move me, and I don't think it can do that without at least a link to tonality. It's the tug between atonal and tonal which makes music poignant.

I think Beethoven means dissonances to be more stressed than consonances - it's the shock tactician in him.

Music has to deal with silence. Music has to deal with time.

Music is science more than art, and it is the main code of the universe.

I express myself using my classical skills to write more complex forms of popular music.

I always think about music horizontally and vertically at the same time.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

Music is about depth. Music is about harmony. Music is about notes and tones.

My favourite chord? Bb6th with added 9th.

Chopin was a master of melody, harmony and voice leading - the art of smoothly moving from chord to chord.