Musical Accuracy Quotes

I had some proper training, but that was only on snare drum. Learning all the techniques in marching bands and realizing how important it is to play tight set a standard for me for when I did get into a band.

The only time I'm miserable is when I can't keep an instrument in tune.

When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn't a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it's best if everything is written in the score.

I don't think I could have ever had a career as a pianist because I never ever wanted to play the notes the way they were written, I was too sloppy to learn them quite right.

No disrespect to people that don't use music theory or don't know it. It does help to be able to figure out what key a song is in, even though with your scales you can figure it out so you can set your Auto-Tune right. So many songs with Auto-Tune are off or have the wrong note playing on the 808. And they pass it off as being hood.

We all want to play great music all the time, but if that is not possible, you have to hit as many right notes as you can.

The musical training taught me to focus my mind, before playing in an orchestra taught me how to truly concentrate. If you miss your moment in an orchestra, there is no forgiving.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

I try to get a degree of realism in my music.

I can't play piano well enough without making mistakes.

Nevertheless, one doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this is a quarter tone sharp, or flat.

We tune down a full step when we play but I never miss a note. I've learned how to keep my voice.

As a musician myself, it annoys the hell out of me to watch an actor trying to play a guitar out of time with the music.

I did not want to be the accompanist to an operatic star. But I was at a very high level for a 16-year-old, and I maintained that. So really good, but more impressive than classically trained. So I had to take a crash course in classical technique because I really wanted to get away with playing this character [in Florence Foster Jenkins] without people saying, "That's not really accurate."

I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter. The conductor would just rip into me, and it lasted for years.

I've used [drum machine] because I have to have the perfect tempo.

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.

If you call someone up on a mistake - if the drummer's put an extra beat in a bar or something - you have a lot more authority if you can show them how to do it right.

Every concert I've finished with the knowledge I've played a fistful of wrong notes.

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

Every time I'd sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, 'That's B-flat!'

I cross things out more than I write them. And if I try to sing a line, and I know that it's written incorrectly, I get this weird sort of physical nausea, and my mouth curls up all strange. I guess that's why I always write the words first: because, if everything feels okay, I'm ready to put it to music.

I think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else.

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.

To do it always right, that is what music is to me.