Musical Concentration Quotes

I'm not a big fan of guitar face. You know, when someone's playing guitar, and they make this really embarrassing face, like they smush their lips together and... they look you in the eye and it's really humiliating. You know some people have that really embarrassing guitar face? I remember thinking about this when I was doing the DJing, because... you do have to focus, and that's what happens, it's your focus face. But you're in a movie, so you should probably lock it up.

Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things.

A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

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.

Finger-picking, in general, is a hypnotic thing. I feel like I'm more A.D.D. all the time, so the music has to be hypnotic.

On those long notes behind the trumpet solo, if anyone lets his mind wander for a minute he is dead.

Anyone can sing badly, but to sing badly on purpose and make it believable is harder. I listen for the actual melody in my head but sing right underneath or above it out loud. It takes a lot of concentration.

Music does not carry you along. You have to carry it along strictly by your ability to really just focus on that little small kernel of emotion or story.

Pianists don't argue too much generally because we have such a hard time just getting things right; arguing is for string players.

I can't read a note. I have lots of discipline, but I can't sit still at any instrument.

Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

Like most musicians, I'm good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we've done in the past.

Not being able to play makes one be able to listen and receive better. The constant noodling on guitar can be great, but also distracting to the universal music inside you.

Usually we're all comfortable playing the songs, but during the song there might be one part where you're like „oh, this part's coming up, I have to really focus", a lot of songs have those moments in them.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.