Musical Foundation Quotes

I don't want to be a lead player. I don't want to shred and play fast licks. I just want to be the best rhythm section ever.

Overall, Korean pop serves as the foundation of my musical upbringing. As a result, the melodies that I create just exude that type of vibe.

Usually when you interview somebody for a number of hours, they'll say something that is self-aggrandizing or is a manipulation of the facts.

You need to have spent your time from playing Top 40 pop rock in order to know how to play a song like 'Ritual,' a song like 'Absolution' or 'Idolatrine.' You need to know your classic drumming and your classic guitar.

You cannot go wrong by learning classical music because it trains the ear.

Anytime a person can play the blues, he has a soul and he has a 'lift' to play anything else he wants to play. It's sort of like the foundation to a building.

I think the rhythm is like the spine of the piece. If you change that, then the body that forms around it is changed as well.

The blues is the foundation for a lot of things. Things have branched off. It's cool how music grows, but the foundation is always there. It's not going anywhere. The blues is always going to be relevant.

The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you've got to have your story together. You've got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He's got an understanding that you don't hear that often.

I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.

Study Bach. There you will find everything.

Having a band was part of my heart's desire, musically. Within myself, I was saying that, 'Not until you have a band for yourself can you maintain the standard of your songs,' and the sound become a foundation. You don't have to feel around for two or three weeks for the sound because the foundation is already built.

Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions.

My roots are Carnatic music. I think everything stems from that.

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there. So I intentionally don't get involved with arranging stuff or fussing over the sounds and the edits and the beats too much, at least not in the beginning, because I feel like then you can fool yourself that you've got something there, when you might not.

Yes, our band will change and evolve, but we want to establish the reality of what this band truly sounds like.

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

I began to learn a lot of chords and rhythms. It was a bit boring at the time but came in very handy later on.

We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based, so the songs always came later.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

I was born out of classical music.