Scott Joplin Quotes

I don't have favourites, I think, when you play, you have to be like a prostitute, you have to love the piece you are playing. Even if you don't like it, you have to play it as if you would like it. Then you are a good interpreter.

The message of music was also the first thing what I learned from my first teacher. She was an organist too and she was very devoted to what she played, so she had a respect for every piece and she felt that she is not allowed to add something of her own.

I can go to a country song, go right into it and make it sound authentic. And I think that's because of my ear as an impressionist.

I've always wanted to make records that rock like hell. But also, I've never wanted to compromise that Country place deep inside.

Blues purists may hate what I do sometimes because it's a little dirtier.

I don't think I could ever be in a band if we just had to go out there and play the record note for note. I'd give up. I'd become a banker.

I'm a rock drummer. I couldn't sit down and pretend to be a jazz drummer.

Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture.

... The 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It's like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz....you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you're a poor composer but a great player.

Music is a living art.

I came from a Conservatoire background where the idea of complexity was very much bound up with good music - good music was seen as complex and difficult to understand.

I don't want impersonators playing our music badly.

I play a very streamlined piano.

I always put my best into our live performances and most of all it is always important for us to keep true to what we do as BABYMETAL.

I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell... who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.

Some specialist guitar music is not of the highest intellectual calibre, so I must make it sound as though it is. If it bores me, it certainly won't please an audience.

To me, rock and roll is not a perfect science.

There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.

You can have a favorite band, but when they sign with a major label... maybe a new producer says, 'You can't do that, take this down a notch.' And you'll keep listening, but you'll always think their first album was their best album.

When I hear people who love my music and are trying to copy it, it sounds strange to me because it sounds so simple, made by other people. It took me a lot of years to find the balance, to find a way to be on the edge of being accessible but at the same time having the echo of a deep, more complex world.

I started classical piano when I was eight, but I wasn't a virtuoso. I just really liked it.

Music is all about creativity.

Fingers don't have much to do with playing the piano. The idea that they do must be unlearned.

Music is a living art. You re-create it.

I feel like a lot of the singer-songwriters in my genre and in my generation have gotten more and more snooty about covering other people's songs. They believe that creativity is the intersect of expression.