Musical Tempo Quotes

The simplest beats, on what rock music or any music has been formed on, can be the toughest beats to execute and perform, because it's really easy to not respect a simple 4/4 beat, because people always want to play fast.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

Drummers are conductors - we set the pace for the music - so if you're not relaxed and feeling right, the whole thing goes out the window.

I'm not a trained musician. When folks talk about 'Well, you go to this or that' - the tenor, or the third part - I don't really know what they're talking about.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

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

Music is really, really mathematical.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

Certain rhythms just have certain moods.

Lord, when the song wants to pick up and go a little faster towards the end, it's hard for me to resist.

I don't know one note from another.

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

Up-tempo or slow tempo, I don't feel that one is better than the other.

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

One learns how to change gears within a concert repertoire.

I can appreciate people for being able to go that fast with their left hand, man. But I just can't groove to that beat. I'm sorry. It's just like somebody sweeping the floor or something - tik tik tik tik tik. It just doesn't really jam to me.

I studied percussion as a music student, and I didn't have the best of timing, so I could never make it as a professional, unfortunately.

I dare say you never even spoke to Time!" "Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied; "but I know I have to beat time when I listen to music." "Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He won't stand a beating. Now, if only you kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you like with the clock.

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

When we started off it was all nervous energy and we probably played everything twice as fast as we do now.

It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.

At every concert I've sensed a certain insecurity about the tempo. It's clearly marked 80...uh, 69.

I can't bear working with a click track, we're not click track people. But for "Mercy Is ..." we all got in one mind because the song is delicate; it's not a song that showcases a vocal or some virtuoso.