Eddie Condon Quotes

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Improvisation is an important part of bluegrass, and I would hasten to add that classical music wasn't always such an improvisational void. Back in the day, everyone's cadenzas were improvised, and improvisation was taught in conservatories.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

I've always loved to sing.

Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion.

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there are so many things that one can do, at least according to what we know about performance practice.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Music, of almost any kind, always made sense to me.

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

My books are personal: I'm not saying they're the Bible of music.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

Music is a reservoir... of sounds.

My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.