Musical Anticipation Quotes

My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

After waiting four long years since the Lost CHIC Tapes were recovered, I'm finally putting out our first record. I'm like a child waiting for Christmas morning.

I have a lot of new music that I'm very excited about.

If you are trying to think ahead musically, it is not going to help you. It is better to ignore what is happening melodically and just look at the little dots coming at you and the corresponding colors and try to do it at the right time.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. . . .

You hear the beginning of a melody, you should kind of know it's going to lead down this path. It should start feeling like a friend, like familiar.

You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio.

The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.

When Nina Simone first sings the title of 'Feeling Good,' her voice has been alone for thirty-nine seconds. The solitary singer: there's always something fiat lux about it. Resolute, the individual moves through the void. You know the accompaniment is coming, but the voice, all by itself, makes you care about it: form turns into feeling.

As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.

My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode.

Every time that I hear the orchestra tuning up, I get chills all over my body. You know, catharsis after catharsis. It's better than sex!

I don't like drums dictating the song; like when you hear a fill and then you know the chorus is coming up.

So you can be about your business, and then on it comes again. And this time you're ready, and you've got a wine glass or something. And you put the glass up to the wall, and you can hear through the wall a little bit more of the song - maybe just the middle bit this time. You know, you managed to get in a little bit of the end. And so it goes on until - because you just got to - you really just want to sing it.