Words matter. These are the best Bryce Dessner Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There are all kind of corners of the musical world that are deeply influenced by the Dead that one wouldn’t expect. Lee Ranaldo is a crazy Deadhead.
David Harrington, who’s the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.
For many people in the music conservatory world, the message was always, Focus! ‘You can’t do everything; you really need to specialize.’ And especially at an early age, I ignored this advice.
I don’t labour over my lead guitar solos; they’re better just caught in the moment.
As much as you try to organize your life, life will surprise you.
I think that place is a huge part of pretty much any musician’s work, in how one responds to an environment, whether it be your actual surroundings or the more figurative place we’re all living in.
If you make rock music with guitars in it, the Radiohead comparison is inevitable.
I’m not trying to take over the world, but I find it really rewarding to write, and I thrive on learning.
For a composer of concert music, 40 is actually very young. But for a rock musician, 40 is almost past due, where you think of rock music as really part of more youth-oriented culture.
Me, who’s educated classically, I went toward rock music ’cause it was sort of a natural evolution from where I was playing with my brother. But I was always drawn back into classical music.
As a pop musician, as someone who makes songs, the best ideas are the simplest. They come, and that’s the lightning bolt moment.
To me, a song like ‘Demons’ or the title ‘Trouble Will Find Me’ are acknowledgments that you can’t really plan for life, and you can’t plan for trouble.
As a band gets more successful, there’s a danger of falling in love with your own shadow.
I like to think of myself as a musical scavenger.
With ‘Boxer,’ we made the kind of music we wanted to make and didn’t really worry about what the expectation was.
I came from a classical background, and I was teaching and earning a living out of music at a certain level, so it’s funny to make it as a rock star when we’re 40 or whatever.
There is a kind of adventure- and risk-seeking audience in classical contemporary music that is really empowering and part of what draws me to it. The people that come to these concerts are open-minded and curious.
Typically, people think, ‘Oh the hippies and the punks hated each other,’ or that those things don’t go together musically. Sometimes that is true, but we had equal parts of both in our musical DNA.
It’s not a hard sell to be asked to do something in Ireland.
Playing pentatonic scales over orchestral music is not something I want to do or listen to.
Musicians are hungry for new music.
I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
I like to write on tour busses and airplanes. Something about moving.
When we learned to play in bands, what we were covering was equal part the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead. That would defy the logic that somehow these things don’t fit in the same musical well.
For me, the exhausting thing about touring is the sitting around, which is why working on my concert music is really great – and also seeing concerts and seeing friends and, whenever possible, getting out to see a museum.
Working with Bob Weir directly, we learned how high the bar is for Dead music.
I call The National my family, and I’ll be doing that as long as I want to.
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.
Bands like Arcade Fire finding a larger audience has opened a lot of doors. They’ve empowered a whole community in Montreal.
When I’m writing for certain instruments, you want to write within what you know about that instrument but also challenge the player. Something like ‘Aheym’ is very virtuosic – but because I have a history of performing music, I don’t like unplayable music.
You don’t come to our shows if you want to look cool.
When I’m scoring something like a string quartet, it’s all notated music, so it’s meticulously written in the score, which is very different than doing things by ear.
We’ve played in places where there were more of us onstage than in the audience.
Nobody plans on playing their own songs in front of thousands of people.
I think that becoming a successful rock band is a little like becoming a professional athlete. Nobody plans on it.
