Instrument Diversity Quotes

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?

I play as many different things - piano, sax and harp parts - as I can at once. Whatever I can fit, whenever I need to.

I traveled to a library in South Africa called ILAM (International Library of African Music), which has a collection of about 500 different instruments that don't really exist anymore.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

No rock and roll ensemble, however inspired, can deliver the kind of musical variety obtainable with the resources of 110 instruments.

I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar. I think regular touring has forced me to play the guitar more than anything else, which is why I'm probably most confident playing that. And whist I'd be lost if I couldn't play it too, I dislike the totemic worship of the thing... magazines, collectors, and so on. I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play.

Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument.

My goal is to just be able to play as many instruments as I possibly can.