Words matter. These are the best Instrument Quotes from famous people such as Elton John, Julian Bream, Brian Tyree Henry, Victoria Legrand, Stefon Harris, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When Little Richard used to stand up and play it was just fabulous, and Liberace had the candlesticks and the rings and the gift of the gab. The piano’s is the most ungainly rock’ n’ roll instrument of all time but those two people transcended it, as did Jerry Lee Lewis.
The cult of the instrument is O.K. for people who are mad about the guitar. But I love music. The guitar is just the instrument I happen to play.
My school had the dopest arts program – the dopest show choir, the dopest marching band. I couldn’t sing or play an instrument a lick, but I was just going to fake it till I make it.
I think the voice is an underrated instrument these days and it’s easy to make up for lack of ability with effects. I think sometimes people are more wowed with effects than core craftsmanship. Strong voices are not as common as they used to be.
If you listen to the way I speak, I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I’m playing my instrument, that concept comes through very clearly.
At no time during the period intervening between the ratification of the Constitution and the inauguration of the new government were the leaders in Federalism certain that the agrarian party, which had opposed the Constitution, might not render the instrument ineffectual by securing possession of Congress.
Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
If there were an exact and universal scale of punishments and crimes, we would have a fairly reliable and shared instrument to measure the degree of tyranny and liberty, of the basic humanity or malice of the different nations.
I’m not here to battle anybody. In the end it’s just an instrument. That shouldn’t be a concept.
My solo music started as a way to really look inwards, and to spend time completely by myself with an instrument, without any outside dialogue.
I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.
Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that’s not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don’t know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don’t have any pressure on me.
Music is an important thing of energy. And there are a lot of wonderful aspects that come with it and vibrations, the physical vibrations, the movement of notes through an instrument and creating a wave that resonates into our spirit.
I enjoy encouraging and inspiring people to pursue their purpose in the arts. To help cultivate and develop their instrument.
Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.
My central quest was to have a piece played on the saxophone sound like more than one instrument, exploiting different registers and wide interval leaps.
My identity has everything to do with me and my instrument. It doesn’t have to do with what production style I use, or how many people played on it, whether it’s sparse or grandiose or whatever. And I’m social, frankly.
Essentially, your voice is an instrument; it’s a muscle, and you have to treat it like a muscle, and so you have to work it.
SoftBank is not a specialist on any instrument. We did not invent any instrument. Not the best player. But we would like to be a conductor of this information revolution.
I don’t play an instrument – I just write in my head, and I usually hear fully formed songs. ‘We Are Young’ turned out so much like it was in my head. But it also exceeded all my expectations.
If you are a musician, you practise your instrument every day, but actors can’t be on a set every day. Theatre is a way for me to keep practising my art form.
As human beings we’re visual creatures, and it’s so easy to play the guitar by looking at it. It’s a real challenge to go from that visual way of perceiving the guitar to getting back to that pure sound connecting to the instrument.
Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
The voice will guide you-will tell you what to do. In order to do that, you must be quite sensitive with the instrument and accept this daily conversation with your voice.
The regime of globalization promotes an unfettered marketplace as the dynamic instrument organizing international relations.
The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don’t typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it’s using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.
We really were a very musical family. Father managed to buy us a small pump organ, and I just loved this instrument.
It’s pretty traumatic knowing that your instrument that’s your career isn’t working, and you’ve got to have an operation.
I think John Williams, him and his team, have been incredible orchestrators. By that, I mean how he chooses which instrument plays which note.
The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.
An house is of a double nature, viz., one, wherein it is a way and means of expence, the other as it is an instrument and tool of gain.
I like to believe that the voice is the most powerful, expressive instrument. And you can use it to fit most any style.
I want the Congress to become an instrument for dialogue among the Indian people – all of us, from all corners of our great country, all religions, all ethnicities, all ages, genders and people – and for our dialogue to always be led by love and affection.
Musically, I didn’t relate to Berlin. There seemed to be a lot of machine music made there – I don’t think I saw a stringed instrument in two years.
My voice is an instrument.
The overwhelming public sentiment in India was that no meaningful dialogue can be held with Pakistan until it abandons the use of terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy.
People don’t think of cello as a rock instrument, really, and we want people to know all the possibilities that the cello can offer.
Egyptian drumming happens to be a favorite of mine. It’s a really simple instrument, but it’s really difficult to play. You can take it anywhere with you – you can play it in your room, in an airport. It’s very quiet, so you explore the quiet side.
The banjo is my chosen instrument – it’s what I write my music on.
I don’t know if subconsciously there was some reaction going on, if there was something in me that didn’t want to learn an instrument – because I couldn’t have been that incompetent!
An important instrument of economic policy-making in a market economy is credible, consistent, and timely communication.
I feel like you’re not a real musician or entertainer if you can’t go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.
I remember watching my dad work on PCs, and I remember using Texas Instrument calculators in school. It was a bit nostalgic.
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd – it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo’s known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the ’60s and ’70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.
The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.
A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I’m very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.
The name of my ailment was longing, and it was not cured till I finally went to the department store and counted out the money in small coins before the dismayed clerk. When I came to the house, I held up the instrument before the eyes of the astonished household.
I feel like piano is my main instrument. I’m most comfortable on the piano.
My belief is that when the military is used as the sole instrument of power, that never has a good outcome. If there’s no one to take ownership and develop that failed state, human suffering can be even worse than that created by the conflict itself.
I’m very interested in music, but I was not born musical. I honestly do think some people have the knack. I can’t play an instrument. I’m a terrible singer. I’m not about to launch my album!
Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I’m right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that’s the way I’d like to be remembered.
The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of the Instrument.
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
A universal draft is most often the instrument of Third World dictators.
I see man more as an instrument or an agent more than anything else.
I don’t think it’s about playing and singing, to be honest. That seems like old news, you know? I wasn’t thinking about that. I just think that’s in my body now. Dancers don’t think about their legs moving one way and their arms moving another. Over time, you incorporate that into your instrument.
I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn’t lived long enough to experience. That’s why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.
Compulsory arbitration is a practical instrument of pacification and, as such, it can and should be enacted by the Hague Conference.
I got my first instrument at Christmas when I was three or four. My dad and mom got me a mandolin. It was the only instrument that fit me because I was so small. I went straight from that into drums when I was six and then started playing guitar when I was seven or eight.
I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.
I treat my vocals as an instrument.
That was my way, and I also use the music after five years, I started hearing opera, opera, it was very good instrument to keep the spirit very strong because you feel like you are yourself singing opera, and I used to hear a lot of opera, they send me tapes.
The German car industry has a clear vision of the necessity of stability in the continent that goes beyond selling cars. For Germany, the economy is an instrument in a much wider issue of stability in continental Europe and overcoming the mistakes of the past.
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting – to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it – it’s like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.
It’s been really fun to see what happens to my body when I don’t have an instrument attached to it.
I was put through piano lessons when I was a kid. I say ‘put through’ because it was fun and I loved it, and it’s been beneficial now, but it was difficult because, although I can read music, I much prefer just playing and improvising and at least finding my own way to play an instrument.
Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.
Ideally, I’d really like to put my own stamp on things, but it takes years, you know, and you’re constantly learning and studying and falling in and out with your instrument, learning different approaches and different attacks.
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it’s reflective of the chords that I’m considering as I’m soloing, and at the same time I’m going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.
I love the ukulele. It’s got a beautiful, melodic tone to it. There’s something innocent and romantic, and it’s just a grand instrument to play.
The cello is a hero because of its register – its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war.
I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
I think ‘Tap Dogs’ has lasted so long because people have a natural interest in tap dancing. This form of dancing can’t be dated, it’s such an intriguing form of dance because the feet are also an an instrument.
I am an instrument of purposes that I don’t fully understand.
Bassoon is not an easy instrument to play and to pick it up and play it like a flute or a saxophone is quite an accomplishment.
I feel a lot closer to music and my relationship with my instrument than I did as a teenager. I have an adult perspective now about getting to do something I love for a living.
An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.
Only having one melody instrument in play at a time meant that we could improvise more in our practices.
The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.
When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.
I don’t play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word ‘jazz’ only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that’s fine.
The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument. And I think that’s probably a good thing.
I play keyboards and Pro Tools, if you want to look at it as an instrument.
The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.
My main calling in life is to seek and achieve spiritual balance, and to express that through my instrument. Everything else is here today, gone later today.
I can’t read a note. I have lots of discipline, but I can’t sit still at any instrument.
Isn’t the purpose of bitcoin mining simply to get rich – or not, as the case may be? Well, at 21, we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol – and particularly in the industrial uses of bitcoin enabled by embedded mining.
I’ve been interested in hip-hop since it first appeared: the fact that it was born not in the music industry but on the street, the idea of using a turntable as an instrument, singing vividly about reality instead of typical love songs, and its links to graffiti and dance.
Yeah, uh, no, I play the cello. I played it, when, a lot when I was younger and it’s one of those such a beautiful instrument. It’s kind of the few things I’ve kept up.
It’s a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can’t do.
It requires an effort of logical acrobatics to believe that carnage of innocents is an instrument for freedom and elections are a symbol of deception and repression!
Most people are fascinated to see someone play an instrument in an inspired way. We are moved by witnessing musical brilliance, and it was this notion that led me to purchase the GuitarTV domain 10 years ago.
Money is the kind of instrument which is very speedily produced.
I have not practiced how to be a singer without an instrument.
There’s nothing quite as raw and honest as one person and one instrument.
We still have to overcome the notion that a clarinet squeaks. People need to remember what a beautiful instrument it is, including in popular music.
To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it’s all-encompassing.
I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he’s his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that’s all his own.
Don’t say you want to be an actor and not know how to read a script. Don’t give up 15 minutes before the miracle comes. Everyone’s career ebbs and flows, especially if you’re African American. That’s the time to dig in and keep your instrument sharp.
Being involved with BABYMETAL has allowed me to acquire more chances to really become involved with music. As a result, I find myself noticing each individual instrument the band plays and I feel that I have found a new way of enjoying music on a deeper level.
There are a lot of cases where I’m using, if not an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar more as a rhythm instrument. Rather than blasting away, I use it to create more of an acoustic feel.
What’s great about acting is that there’s never a moment when you’re like, ‘OK, I got this, I understand this.’ You’re portraying life, and it’s a craft that only gets better with time – kind of like playing a musical instrument: the more you get to play it, the better you are.
Whenever I’m really excited about a song, I want to learn it, and it becomes the first thing I play every time I pick up an instrument.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song’s hook.
I grew up in a family that believed that art should be used as an instrument for social change.
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who when their turn comes will manufacture professors.
The guitar was not treated very seriously as a concert recital instrument.
Mum is a photographer, and Dad does world music and plays almost every instrument except for drums.
I found early on in teaching, if you’re too blunt an instrument, the students discredit you and think you’re just being mean. They’re not interested in what you have to say.
You must have the music to justify an instrument’s extensive use.
Dub has been a big influence in terms of production. It’s inspired so many people and so much music – in terms of music where mixing desk was the instrument. Central to that is the echo chamber, and I think there’s a little bit of a romantic thing there.
I’ll always do the guitar parts since it’s my main instrument.
The drums can get pretty boring as a solo instrument.
I’ve always seen our faith as an instrument to embrace our fundamental equality, before God and before our laws, and not as a license to discriminate.
People have said I’m a puppet, an instrument of my grandfather, but I think they quickly realised that I’m my own person, that I have autonomy in my actions. I think they rapidly realised I could look after myself.
There was always a guitar hanging around the house when I was a kid. It was a much lower impact instrument than me playing the drums, which is what I really wanted to do. My mother put a stop to the drumming.
I write in my study, where I also have my prayer altar. I believe that keeps me focused and gives me positive energy and reminds me that I’m merely the instrument of greater creative forces.
For Italy, sanctions are never an end; they are an instrument that must be overcome as soon as possible.
The Fender Precision is my instrument, my beloved Precisions.
Be it flute, piano or any instrument, there would always be a reason to bring in the particular feel into a song.
There’s force-feeding people synthesised music, then there’s a skill in technically being able to play an instrument, even if that is some electronic pad.
Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Music was a big outlet for me. Being able to play an instrument and sing was definitely a good way for me to escape things I was dealing with: family issues, growing up, being a kid and not knowing what I wanted to do with my life.
I started out with piano when I was little. That, for songwriting, is my favorite instrument.
I like guitar. It just turned out that it’s the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I’m learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup – guitars, drums, bass – will stay fresh forever. I don’t know. I’m still into it.
Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh.
You have to have great passion, because to sing operatic music requires lots of work. I study for at least two hours every day. The voice is like an instrument and requires constant exercise.
I think there’s a fallacy that’s been concocted by the music teachers’ profession, to wit: that there’s a certain sequence of events necessary in order to have the revealed truth about the way one produces a given effect on a given instrument.
Living in Cape Breton, it’s really all about fiddle music, so it’s not like there were other instruments out there that tempted me and it was like I had to decide which one. It was automatically fiddle, because it’s the predominant instrument in Cape Breton Island.
My first instrument was an accordion. Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage.
I had prostate cancer that, for me, was debilitating. I didn’t touch a guitar for two years, but when I realized I was seeing the light at the end of the recovery tunnel and was going to live pain-free, I realized again that it was a fun little instrument to play.
The only thing as a kid that really mattered to me was that I wouldn’t quit. When I say ‘quit,’ I mean you wake up, you go to the piano, you go to whatever instrument, and you work at learning how to tell the truth.
So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.
There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.
Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
The main thing is the ability to control your instrument, which, in the actor, is yourself. Look the way you want the character to look. Sound the way you want the character to sound. Once you’ve trained the instrument to do what you want, you’re in control, and you’re free.
Getting into the banjo and discovering that it was an African-American instrument, it totally turned on its head my idea of American music – and then, through that, American history.
As a musician, language is almost like another instrument. Every word has a sound.
You do have to be a bit careful with your voice. It is an instrument.
My parents encouraged us to commit to things, so if we wanted to learn an instrument, it was all the grades and all the theory.
Anytime I switch to another instrument, I immediately turn it into another kind of drum so that I can understand it better.
I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.
I always wanted to make music but I cannot play any instrument.
Seminars, TV shows, documentaries, always spreading Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I’m an instrument of this art more than a character myself.
I’m a little more of a lead instrument in the Meatbats.
But I’ve come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can’t play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play – and I need to embrace that in a big way.
In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance, I myself don’t like it.
Clarinet is an incredible instrument. It’s a great, expressive instrument.
An actor is an instrument. One needs to control them.
More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.
Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.
It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.
In 1986, Pakistan got the blasphemy law. So, while we had just two cases of blasphemy before that year, now we have thousands. It shows that one should be careful while bringing religion into legislation, because the law itself can become an instrument of persecution.
The guitar is a funny instrument because you have bendable strings and distortion – there’s a potential for noise. It is more exposing. Actually controlling the instrument, using proper vibrato, bending notes in tune, not fretting too hard, controlling the noise is a skill in itself that takes many years.
I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.
There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America.
I think the CG is an instrument to create reality. I don’t think it’s an instrument to create a heightened reality.
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Growing up, I didn’t come from a musical family. Neither of my parents played an instrument, sang out loud, or listened to the radio with frequency. The record collection in the living room was only about 2 feet long – and that included 4 solid inches of Neil Diamond and Herb Alpert.
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
The piano is the closest instrument to me in my life, so it’s just natural to play my pieces on the piano.
I would argue that no financial instrument counted as regulatory capital should be allowed to receive any protection from losses.
I would love to be able to program myself to pick up any instrument and to be able to play it very, very well, and to be able to read music and dance as well. I’m very uncoordinated, and I’d love to be able to bust a really great move.
My dad always told me that anyone’s voice is just another instrument added to the music.
The best way for me to teach myself an instrument is to just jam on it, and sound awful sometimes, and sound great other times.
I’ve written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played.
Every teacher that I’ve ever had, that I still remember their name, made me laugh. I feel like comedy is the best instrument to teach.
Advanced nation-states are now using cyber power for unrestricted economic warfare and national security-motivated espionage, as well as a force multiplier and signaling instrument in conflicts.
I started taking vocal lessons, I always loved the challenge of playing my instrument and trying to sing.
My mom played 12-string and sang, and my dad could play pretty much any wind instrument and had a great ear for harmony. Soon enough, my sister and I got into music because we were always around it, and people were always listening to it.
Some of my first teachers were incredibly tough. You could never sing more than three words without being stopped and having to do it over 20 times. I loved that – that sort of process of dissecting and trying to figure out and master this incredibly mysterious instrument.
I tried singing. I tried playing a musical instrument. I really wanted to be a musician, but I never could quite pull that off. I liked entertaining, but I was always drawn to some kind of technical work – some kind of honest labor.
I made records for 20 years, I lived off it. But people would say I made so many mistakes, I did so many things you’re not supposed to do. I had a band name nobody could say. I didn’t play live. I never practiced, I never got better at my instrument.
When I got to high school, to be playing an instrument was really uncool.
Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.
With Connery, he does act. He is in complete command. He completely trusts the person first, then the instrument. I’ve worked with his son also, on a picture in Russia.
I learned my profession onstage. I didn’t have a musical background. I had no conservatory training. I don’t play an instrument.
You go with what you ‘get,’ and I get playing the guitar. It’s a challenge because it’s not an easy instrument to play. There are so many interesting sounds you can make out of it and so many different elements. I dig it.
I actually think that bass is probably the instrument that has evolved in a quantum leap compared to other instruments. It’s the instrument that’s evolved the most, especially with how it’s perceived. And even how it’s played, and how it’s viewed from a point of view of commerce, like with the music industry.
The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people.
When I first picked up an instrument, nothing really happened. I played piano when I was a little kid. I hated it so much, I actually don’t play piano now.
On stage, I have my three band mates and my guitar in front of me, and mic stand and that’s like your shield – it’s genuinely amazing what having an instrument does for you, it’s like your safety blanket, taking that away is really weird.
You go to a studio with a guitar, people are like, ‘Oh this girl’s going to write this song on a guitar.’ Or wants to, or whatever. You go with a ukulele, people are just like ‘Eh, well, whatever.’ They don’t really care. It’s a very non-threatening kind of instrument.
The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.
I feel if I’m playing an athlete, I know I have to prepare. I need to get that body language right, I need to walk like an athlete, look like an athlete. If I’m playing a musician, I need to know how to play an instrument.
As an actor, your body is an instrument.
I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I’ll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.
So I think that is one of the reasons we can face some regional problems, which are very difficult, very dramatic and is necessary to have instruments to solve these problems. NATO is such instrument.
I think if you speak to any creative person, there’s something so powerful – so intoxicating, if you will – about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things.
My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I’m not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.
Language is an inadequate form of communication. If you’ve picked up an instrument, it’s because you don’t feel you are communicating sufficiently.
When Kanye gets to a point where he can actually put a couple of notes together either vocally or two bars of valid music playing an instrument, then he might have a right to criticize somebody else.
I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there’s so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.
A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.
I was drawn to the guitar, and still am, because it struck me as the most soulful instrument.
We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.
I regard myself as a beautiful musical instrument, and my role is to contribute that instrument to scripts worthy of it.
The God’s honest truth is that, being the singer, my body’s my instrument.
Yes, I always say that we’re a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.
Before Liszt, a conductor was someone who just facilitated the performance, who would keep people together or beat the time, indicate the entries. After Liszt, that was no longer the case; a conductor was someone who shaped the music in an intense musical way, who played the orchestra as an instrument.
Voice acting is very different from live-action. You only have one tool to convey emotion. You can’t sell a line with a look. It’s all about your vocal instrument.
With the violin, for example, one understands culturally that the sound comes from the instrument that can be seen. With electronic music, it is not the same at all. That’s why it seemed so important to me, from the beginning of my career, to invent a grammar, a visual vocabulary adapted to electronic music.
Conservatives really don’t believe in politics as the primary instrument of getting along in life and therefore don’t tend to put their energy into it a way people left of center do.
You know the drum was the first instrument besides the human voice.
Drums were my first instrument.
Hip-hop is the only music in the world where you can take any instrument and make it hip hop. It’s anybody’s music. It’s what you make of it. That’s for anything you do in life.
And it’s sad because it’s like a surprise to people – almost an anomaly – when artists are actually refined and trained on an instrument. That’s the last thing people think about.
Everyone knows deep in their hearts that the drums are the coolest instrument, and that a band is only as good as its drummer. So I’m all for drum solos. I’m all for drummers hamming it up. I’m all for drummers standing up and kicking over the kit.
The first instrument is not the final instrument.
In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play.
I tried to embrace the concept of the sampler as an instrument, looking at how to take it artistically to another place where it can be appreciated, more than just taking someone’s song and doing a 4-bar loop.
Rock is about finding who you are. You don’t necessarily have to play your instrument very well at all. You can just barely get by and you can be in a rock band.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
What I’ve learned how to do as I’ve gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I’ve ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.
Guitar was just a hobby, but it seemed to me that the instrument had possibilities, not least of which was that there was no one else playing it. I could be, as it were, the best boy in an all-girls school.
To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.
Touring is hard. It’s really hard on the singer, especially, because your body is your instrument and you have to be so good, it’s like boot camp out there; I can’t do anything – just sleep, sing and be very healthy.
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.
I love Darius Rucker. He’s a true artist, a great songwriter who can play his instrument, sing and write about his life.
I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.
Voice is my instrument.
I don’t think that John Kerry is the Messiah or the Democratic Party is the answer, but I don’t like the evangelical community blessing the Republican Party as some kind of God-ordained instrument for solving the world’s problems.
Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele.
There is a state that is able to understand the demand in the economy. That state should use prices as an instrument for implementation of this understanding.
Finding a ‘sacrificial lamb’ on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation’s economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.
When I was born, my dad was playing music, so I’m pretty sure he was singing to me in the womb. I was born into music, in a way, because he was playing acoustic guitar. I was around an instrument growing up.
In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed by study.
With the fretless bass, you have a different tone and different sound, a different dynamic to the instrument, so you can really make it sing.
I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.
The Ramaswami case and subsequent attempts to impeach judges have demonstrated the total impracticality of that instrument to discipline judges.
I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.
When you have a sense of yourself in space, in your movement, in your muscles, you can express yourself through your body, your instrument. You learn so much about who you are and what your truth is.
Imagination is an instrument of survival.
My voice isn’t an instrument I can just hang up on a hook.
Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing.
A weapon kills people and makes people in cities dominated by fear. But if you turn it into an instrument, it’s like social gold. It brings people together and you build trust.
I think executive orders with Donald Trump would be a very blunt instrument with respect to the Constitution.
Indeed, the creators of the euro envisioned it as an instrument to promote political union.
While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.
I had an edge in ‘Andhadhun’ because, being a musician, I knew how to play a guitar, so it was not difficult for me to learn a musical instrument.
If you’re a musician, there’s no instrument that can be withheld from you. If you’re drawn to it, develop the talent for it.
You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.
I’ve always had a fascination with making your own music but never have been skilled enough to play the instrument, so to be able to make music without the ability was awesome.
My talent is definitely a gift. I don’t understand where it comes from. I don’t play an instrument, and I never went to school for music production, but I know exactly how a song should sound and how to give an artist direction.
The greatest musical instrument given to a human being is the voice.
Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others – it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
A lot of people I make music with are really talented and it doesn’t stop at one instrument.
Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source, they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.
With ‘Game of Thrones,’ the most dominant instrument would definitely be the cello. That’s something I just felt really captured the mood of the show very well.
I picked up the bass kind of postpunk-style. There’s a real art to not learning how to play an instrument and being able to still play it.
I’m kind of a terrible musician. I’m a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
When I went to school, you had to take art, you had to play an instrument. You had to play an instrument. But it’s all degraded since then. I do not know what kind of nation we are that is cutting art, music, and gym out of the public-school curriculum.
The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.
I thought I’d do everything on four-track, and then I’ll record every instrument myself in a studio, and then I’ll have a solo album released by spring.
In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.
I’ve been playing with Blackwell over 20 years. We used to play when I first went to Los Angeles. Blackwell plays the drums as if he’s playing a wind instrument. Actually, he sounds more like a talking drum.
Science has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized knowledge.
With Klaxons I had an instrument, so I had a job to play keys. Everyone’s roles get defined early in bands, so you’re ‘that guy who does this one thing’ and it felt too restrictive doing that.
It’s hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones.
I think it’s important to learn instruments, whenever one has a little space. Be eager to learn and love your instrument.
You are an instrument if you understand your voice and how to use it – this sound, that sound and certain ranges and different pitch. Within that I try to find a rhythm and play the voice as if it was a horn.
The accordion was the first instrument I played, when I was 7 years old.
The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You’ll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves.
You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
If you believe that this war will be decided on the home front, then you must believe that radio used as an instrument of war is one of the most powerful weapons a nation possesses.
Writing from a personal experience can bring about this emotion and power of emotion that can be instantly connected to the instrument, my voice.
Unsettling signs of al Qaeda’s aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed.
A big part of my upbringing was being with an instrument and kind of figuring myself out through music. So I feel a strong desire in any way that I can to help do that for other kids.
It is difficult to understand the fortunes of an instrument. There was music written for the guitar until the mid-19th century. Then the instrument declined in popularity.
Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument, the harmonics continue to sound along with the fundamental note.
I can do a gig without an instrument.
With ‘Hannibal,’ it’s like reactive scoring so I don’t get ahead. I don’t read a script; I don’t want to know what’s going to happen until its happening in front of me and I’m able to have an instrument in my hands that I’m playing to make some kind of a map, some sort of tonal map, that I can then build on.
More than 50 percent of kids who play an instrument go on to college, yet music education programs at the inner city public schools who need them most continue to be hit hard with budget cuts.
I guess my first instrument was the recorder when I was about five or six.
Banjos are used in Celtic, English folk music and obviously American music. But not that much in pop music. But it’s more versatile than people realise it to be. It’s a beautiful instrument, very rhythmic and melodic. You can do anything with it.
Alexander Hamilton, of New York, a signer of the Constitution, was a member of the ratifying convention in his state and did more than any other member to wring the approval of the new instrument from delegates practically instructed by their constituents to vote against it.
Whether or not you discover your talents and passions is partly a matter of opportunity. If you’ve never been sailing, or picked up an instrument, or tried to teach or to write fiction, how would you know if you had a talent for these things?
Using modern guitar techniques and modern methods on an early instrument is not a very clever thing to do, because it is the authentic spirit of the instrument that should dictate the quality and characteristic of the sound.
Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.
I don’t believe in getting a lot of new gear all the time, so I get very deeply into one instrument and use it for many years.
When you act, your whole body is the instrument.
The law is not a ‘light’ for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.
At first, I didn’t think playing guitar was the right thing for me to do. But after seeing Jimi Hendrix on television the day he died, I realized it was a really cool instrument to play and not wimpy at all, which was how I originally perceived it.
The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there’s times when you should play and there’s times when you gotta hold back. It’s an extremely dynamic instrument.
The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
The sitar is a really difficult instrument to play. Physically it’s taxing because of the cross-legged sitting position, the length of the neck on the shoulder, the thinness of the strings. There’s a lot of pain, especially at the start.
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.
Being a writer is a very difficult craft. Just like learning an instrument, it takes a long time and I couldn’t really say I was a writer even after my first memoir.
TPP is not a leap of faith; it is an instrument of leverage.
I think body-image issues are not just a dancer thing. I think we’re much more in tune and aware because the body is our instrument and art, and we stare at ourselves in a mirror all day, but I feel like it’s something that every woman experiences and every girl experiences.
The more I got into playing guitar, the more I enjoyed music, and the broader my listening became. The instrument itself became important to me, and I started messing around with classical guitar and took classical lessons.
If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live – the way you live – then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art.
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
I wanted to take up music, so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.
I think when you’re learning an instrument, you are restricted because much of it is the noise of individual theory and your ability to play the instrument.
I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It’s fragile. I don’t have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing.
I have nothing but love in my heart and everything I say is just an instrument for laughs.
If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.
Our dad was always like, ‘Look, if you’re musical, if you live and breathe music and want to play an instrument, that’s not something that’s on me to put on you. If you’re passionate, you will come to my studio every day after school and watch me work because you can’t live without it.
When you are accompanied by the instrument – on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice – you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.
Anyone can pick up an instrument if they want to express themselves or write a song and put it on YouTube. It’s always technology that comes and turns around how we think creatively and what we do creatively.
We drummers all know that our mother’s heartbeat was the first instrument we heard. As a race, we’ve all been trying to get back to that womb. That’s why rhythm makes us move… dance.
NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.
In reality, I never even got to have a Hank Williams instrument. I got a tie, a fishing lure and a check.
The luster of an experience can actually go up with time. So, learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language – those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.
I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.
It’s tough to play the right chord on the instrument when there’s someone out there who wants to kill you.
I love, love, love music – have since I was a kid, and I’m still really into music – and I became a singer because I was too stupid to learn how to play an instrument, I guess.
Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.
I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful.
He was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument, but my instrument needed tuning, and we had to split.
There’s a lot of music that sounds like it’s literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.
I like people who can write and sing, and play an instrument.
You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.
‘Ray Donovan’ was all fiction and pure fun, to be working with such greats as Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight. My character was recurring, but my storyline was intricate to the whole thing. With the character that I played, I got to go through all aspects of my instrument. I got to bring it to tears and to laughter.
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
Occasionally, when I run into a great bass backstage at a festival I’ll play a few notes on the low E string, just to feel the instrument vibrate against my belly.
My father was an amateur oil painter, so some of his oil paintings were on our walls. There was one above the piano of a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, playing an instrument known as a bandura. I remember that one kind of resonated with me; it was always central in the living room.
As a song-writer I have always written with one instrument – either guitar or piano – because I believe that if a song is strong enough to be performed completely stripped down then it is a good one to go on and record.
I stand before you a changed man. Use me as an example of an instrument of change.
With Whitney she has such a unique sound and powerful instrument that she made those songs her own. She might as well have written them because she brought such a power and passion to them that were very unique. She has a great gift.
Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There’s nothing evil about how they’re traded, how they’re accounted for, and how they’re financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.
It excites me when a person puts their whole self in a song or rhyme, or instrument. It fills me.
Where do these arms come from, these Saturday night specials that constitute the instrument of threats in bank robberies, or the hand grenades used by terrorists? How can their sales and their import be permitted?
I was 11 years old, and I had been playing classical piano for three years, and suddenly the guitar came and landed in my arms. I fell in love with that instrument, and I still love it today. I love it so much.
I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.
I despise people who revel in the ignorance of not being able to play their instrument.
Debussy is one of the few composers who actually created a new sound on the piano – or perhaps we should say a new smell, so perfumed are the vibrations which emanate from the instrument.
We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn’t actually come from the criminal justice system.
I’m looking forward to some more solo acoustic dates. That’s a lot of fun for me, because I get to be alone with the song. And I get to hear every little nuance; if my instrument does something that I wasn’t expecting, I get to chase that. Chase that down a little bit.
Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.
The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
We can see that the baby is as much an instrument of nourishment for us as we are for him.
I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I’m a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
Performing outside is always kind of strange. Usually, you can’t hear something, whether it’s your voice or instrument, but it’s a fun challenge.
I think about everything first. I think about the scenario: the story and the characters, what I’m trying to say and I’ll think about that for a couple of days until it’s all locked in and then when I get to an instrument it’ll just fall out. But the song’s kind of all ready there in my head.
In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years, I did nothing else. Every holiday, I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don’t need a long beard or a sari. It’s meant to bring you to yourself. It’s as easy as that.
All modern MIDI synthesizers are capable of polyphony, which means they can play more than one note at a time and more than one instrument at a time.
I approach horror music differently than anything else. The very first time I watch an episode, I want to be playing an instrument to it so I can get that shock into the show.
And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.
When we treat music as an industrial commodity, and young people as merely consumers, we overlook the joy of participating in music… of learning to play an instrument, of joining a band or an orchestra, and playing gigs.
The piano is such a timeless instrument.
I didn’t want to get attached to one guitar; I didn’t want to have an instrument that was irreplaceable.
I want to sound like an instrument. I want my voice and my words to marry the beat. I go with the rhythm of it and the words start to come to my mind and those words could be based on things that’s been on my mind for the past year, the past month, the past week, whatever; I write it.
The interesting thing about improvisation is you’re making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that’ll separate you from the audience.
It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.
Never, never will justice be used in Haitian institutions as an instrument for political persecution.
I don’t play an instrument. I pretend. I try to.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
As soon as I choose the timbre of an instrument, that dominates how I compose.
I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.
For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.
I remember my first trip to Toronto. There was this street musician playing an instrument I’ve never seen before – like, he had a hang drum on the left side and this random bagpipe, bodhran stick type of thing. It was the craziest thing ever! So I sampled it for a beat.
For an actor, if you’re not doing a job, you can’t just practice acting. Your instrument is your whole person.
It’s quite fun to mess with the human voice. It’s quite special in the sense that the voice is the #1 instrument that we can connect with; it doesn’t sound too alien. I think that’s the key is to find the line between sounding human and sounding robotic. That’s an area that I like to explore a lot.
Every time I sit down in front of my piano, I like to improvise with the instrument. It depends on my mood of that day what kind of melodies and rhythms I am playing around. Sometimes, even before starting to play I already have a quite clear picture of a song I would like to compose, or at least the sound of it.
Sometimes just allowing yourself to noodle without any structure will enable you to stumble upon great new ideas, culminating in creating your own distinct voice on the instrument.
Anything you can do to express yourself is a form of art. That’s why I love my craft so much. I always wanted to play other artists. If I can’t play an instrument, then I want to play a character that can. There is an artist behind everything, and I think that’s beautiful.
My mother was a dancer, so I like to use the body as part of the instrument of acting.
I think having musical training as a child was really, really important. I studied piano as a child. Piano is a great instrument to understand musical theory on. I think I have that in my brain somewhere.
Don’t try to follow any trends, just concentrate on writing great songs and knowing your instrument. All the other stuff will fall into place.
I collect many ethnic instruments, and as a guitarist, I’m usually able to play any sort of instrument – as long as it has strings. That’s why I like to experiment with different sounds.
Just really be yourself, and if being yourself means you play two snare drums and nothing else, then play two snare drums and nothing else! Really figure out who you are and how you want your drums to feel because it’s a very emotional instrument.
It’s the old-school jazz mentality that I connect with the most. I dig the idea of the seeker, the guy who’s always trying to figure out why he is doing music and trying to understand and make sense of his instrument in a world which deals with rigid instruction.
You don’t know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don’t think you really do. It’s great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what’s gonna happen. It’s the most challenging thing I do.
I would say when you’re dealing with live musicians and musicality, the warmth of a live instrument brings a certain feel to a song that is really hard, sometimes, to get from synthesized instruments.
Credit ratings and risk weightings must undergo a thorough process of review and revision. No security or instrument on the planet should have a zero risk weighting.
The Pleasure Seekers eventually turned into Cradle, when we started writing our own material. My younger sister Nancy was brought in as singer and I kind of stepped aside as main lead singer and concentrated on my instrument.
My voice is an instrument.
Playing an instrument is such a wonderful pleasure.
Voice is the first instrument.
I got my first instrument for Christmas when I was three or four years old. My parents got me a mandolin because it was the only instrument that would fit me because I was so small. I went straight from that into the drums when I was six, and then I started playing guitar when I was seven or eight.
Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed.
All I’m trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.
In ‘Boondien’ I worked with a band where everyone had their own instrument to play.
I wanted something that had the feel of a complete band and a variety of instrument. Apart from doing the album for musical satisfaction, I felt it was an important statement for other women – showing you don’t have to rely on other people to do things for you.
The police force has repeatedly demonstrated an inability and unwillingness to carry out its fundamental mandate: to serve and protect the people of Hong Kong. It has been reduced to a mere instrument of repression subservient to the political agenda of Beijing’s regime in Hong Kong.
I never really trained to be a musician, but I’ve been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I’ve played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don’t read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.
Spending eight to ten hours every single day practicing the instrument, starting from an early age, makes an instrumentalist spend his/her lifetime to hone the skill, and perhaps just as much time is spent to find a job too.
Your voice is like a very serious instrument that you have to tame if you want to be an amazing singer – Marvin Gaye or Michael Jackson.
I found it liberating of necessity to devise my own style and my own tactics and to look for a voice on the instrument because there weren’t really any that impacted strongly on me.
In the end, a gun is an instrument to make someone surrender to your will or die, and music is exactly the opposite – it’s seductive and invitational.
A painter has his brushes, a musician his instrument and as an actor you use your body.
I have had the view that cutting wages is not the path to prosperity, and one of the great myths propagated about my attitude to industrial relations is that I believe in lower wages. I’ve never believed in lower wages. Never. Never believed in lower wages, I’ve never believed in lower wages as an economic instrument.
I’ve always respected and taken care of my instrument.
Even at a McFly show, if I don’t have a guitar for a few minutes… and suddenly being on my own, without my band mates and on the dance floor with no instrument and not singing, it will be absolutely terrifying.
I don’t remember consciously not being able to play an instrument. It’s been kind of like a language for me.
For ‘Lonerism,’ I really wanted make a non-psychedelic record. That’s why the dominant instrument is the synthesiser, but maybe it didn’t quite turn out that way.
The human voice is the most perfect instrument of all.
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I’m continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don’t, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.
I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of the people.
Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument.
A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.
It is within your power at this very moment not only to consumate an act of enlightened statesmanship, but, as the instrument of the Almighty, to restore to freedom a race of men.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Interreligious dialogue is extremely important for religious people as well as secular people or non-believers. They should participate, and they should be encouraged to have interreligious dialogue, because dialogue is a channel or an instrument to promote intimacy between individual.
I want to enjoy the magic of the instrument which is my body.
I want to make the music that’s not there anymore. I’m so passionate about the singing voice… What I’m trying to do actually with my album is show that it’s my voice that’s leading. It’s my voice that’s the instrument.
I had to learn about how to use my voice as an instrument, like a muscle in my body when I dance. I had no idea how much you could do with your voice and how much you have to look after it.
I decided to play the saxophone because it was the most obvious instrument in my family. There were a lot of saxophone players in my family, and there were extra saxophones, so that was an easy one to pick up. It was fun – it was okay – it just wasn’t me. It didn’t feel like my instrument, so I never followed through.
The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.
I originally wanted to be an opera singer. I studied classical voice at the University of Washington but soon realised I didn’t have the instrument or the discipline. The road for opera singers is more difficult than for actors.
The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional.
The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let’s face it.
Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.
It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.
I believe that musical instruments are created because they are supposed to be played. There’s not an instrument that’s been designed to not be playable – it kind of defeats the point.
A lot of guys picked up an instrument because they couldn’t get girls to pay attention to them in high school. They turned to the guitar as a sure-fire aphrodisiac. And most of the time, it did the trick.
My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn’t blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it – not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
A singer starts by having his instrument as a gift from God… When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy.
Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.
I’m the only person in my entire extended family that plays an instrument or sings, really. Which is kind of weird. I don’t know where I got it from.
I came from somewhat of a musical family. I had an uncle on Broadway. My dad kind of knows how to play instruments. Although, I always find it annoying when he does play an instrument.
I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.
It’s true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren’t really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it’s the best.
Whenever you face a man who’s playing your instrument, there’s a competition.
It’s not really that I’m interested in filmmaking. I’m interested in the instrument of it, you know.
I just would use any instrument known to man in any combination as long as it describes an emotion.
I was given this music programme called Cubase, one of the first multi-layering programmes, when I was seven, and I graduated to Logica at 11, and that became my primary instrument.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
As the heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory, perception, judgment, emotion, and will, differ from the brain which is the instrument of thought.
What I like about the piano is that it’s a beautiful hybrid instrument in the sense that it can sound very warm but also very cold.
I always wanted to do a song with a violin; I always loved the sound of the instrument, especially for melodic stuff.
Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
In this context, social consensus, and institutions that embody this consensus, must be made effective in order for democratization not to be abused as a provisional instrument to establish an anti-democratic regime.
I don’t think I’m even close to fulfilling my potential. And I think also that, unlike a pianist or a flutist, an actor has an instrument that is constantly changing.
God gives different people different gifts, and there are some people that can listen to an instrument and within a fraction of a second tell, you know, where it’s off key or what note doesn’t resonate correctly.
I like computers as a tool. I like them as an instrument. I think they’re just pretty.
But somehow, I felt no inclination to be interested in it in any amateur way, let alone professional, until suddenly I became interested. And the first thing I did was to compose: not play an instrument, but to compose.
My voice is my own instrument that I use to rap.
My parents are music fans, even though neither of them play an instrument. I was exposed to their record collection, so I love everything from Joni Mitchell to Bruce Springsteen.
I detest talking about myself. There is a reason why people pick up an instrument and put it between themselves and the rest of the world.
I think any song should sound good just played on a solitary instrument with the vocal. If you have those basics you have all you need. The production then just polishes that idea into the finished thing.
Basically, I try to treat the electric guitar like an acoustic guitar. What you have to do is attack the instrument and know that your feelings aren’t controlled by the controls of your guitar.
The unique instrument to eradicate poverty and usher in prosperity is our youth.
I want to learn how to play an instrument. I want to break a world record. I’m just a very determined, motivated type of person.
I like to work my camera as if it were a musical instrument.
Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it’s almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.
As for reputation, though it be a glorious instrument of advancing our Master’s service, yet there is a better than that: a clean heart, a single eye, and a soul full of God. A fair exchange if, by the loss of reputation, we can purchase the lowest degree of purity of heart.
My parents were very musical in the sense that they were, you know, music lovers and avid buyers of records, but none of them actually play an instrument.
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
Being an actor means being an instrument for someone else. I want to give myself completely.
If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.
I play the baritone horn – which is like a mini tuba, and is the least sexy instrument you can choose, and I generally say I don’t play one so I don’t have to acknowledge it. I also play fife.
Main Street investors, who cannot trade credit default swaps, should not be tempted to trade an instrument with the same risk profile simply because it has been given a different name.
We knew we wanted to have our own tone for the show. And then the big instrument that actually we came up with was the cello. It has a big range. It can play really low. It can play high. And it has a dark sound, and ‘Game Of Thrones’ is obviously – it’s a dark show, and the cello became the featured instrument.
As a people of faith, we know that prayer is a powerful instrument. And as one Nation under God, we know that many times our most powerful tool is prayer.
I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life, and it’s myself at eight. Because that’s when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world, when they’re an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared, and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.
I grew up playing about 15 instruments and the way that I was able to accomplish that was by cutting my classes, hanging out in the band room all day, and going from one instrument to the next to the next, until I learned how to play everything by ear.
The cello is such a versatile instrument. It can rock like the hardest rock guitar, and it can sing like the human voice. We couldn’t do what we do without the classical training. It’s a hard instrument to play. There are no frets, and it takes finesse and technique to play.
Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao’s China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.
People love to hear a guy who is really good on his instrument. They love to watch him go.
Needless, heedless, wanton and deliberate injury of the sort inflicted by Life’s picture story is not an essential instrument of responsible journalism.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
I got a little baby grand piano off Craigslist for, like, $500. It’s a beautiful instrument that you hear on a bunch of the songs. That’s that piano on ‘Keep Your Name’ and ‘Work Together’ and ‘Little Bubble.’
‘Terrorism’ itself is not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has been used that way ever since.
Becoming a musician is a strange thing. It’s not all cupcakes and ice cream. You’re trying to master an instrument, and you sometimes can’t tell if you’re getting better. You love it, but you also hate it.
I’m usually torn by, ‘What’s the role of government to cure injustice?’ Families, churches, and schools can be more of an instrument of change.
The GFTUK is a powerful political instrument for training its members, including the working class, into Kimilsungists-Kimjongilists with unfailing loyalty to the Party and the leader and mobilizing them to implement the revolutionary cause of Juche.
When I go back to seek inspiration – whether it be from Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan – it’s from the performance. Those artists are in the studio playing their instrument and singing. There’s no going back and redoing the vocals.
I’ve always been obsessed with the grain of the human voice. It’s the ultimate instrument, there’s this whole level of virtuosity and poetry, a sort of athleticism, of controlling your voice.
The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony.
Basically, if you work hard and practice an instrument every day, you’ll learn how to play like a professional. You’ll get better and better each day. And that’s how it works for me. I wasn’t magically inclined to play. I had to keep practicing and practicing to train my fingers.
The Democrats have prevailed because, at heart, we have embodied a great idea, which is that an elected government can be the instrument of the common purpose of a free people; that government can embrace great causes and do great things.
It was pretty radical to go from the Eagles to being the only melodic instrument. You have to play a certain way. It’s like the Who. It was a great kick in the pants for me to get my chops up and to improvise a little more.
I’m not really into EDM music; I really like when someone plays their instrument and stuff. But I saw Deadmau5 at a festival, and it was pretty tight, I have to admit. He’s got the giant mouse head on and tubes coming out of the ceiling and giant mirror glass things.
An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?
I’m more a percussion instrument than a dancer.
I never played a musical instrument growing up but I knew kids who did and took it very seriously.
For me, learning is a continuous process and an all-inclusive one – reading a book, learning a musical instrument or learning the martial art called taekwondo. Teach myself something new – that’s my prayer.
I like to keep experimenting – singing, dancing, acting. I want to learn an instrument, dive. I want to do everything. I will keep pushing myself into as many things as I can.
My father always wanted me to play a musical instrument, and I never had that type of skill.
Like his countryman, Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen has a voice that’s 10 years older than he is – a combination of world-weariness and exuberance, an instrument that he’s mastered for specific comic shadings.
For the greater beauty of the instrument, the balls representing the planets are to be of considerable bigness; but so contrived, that they may be taken off at pleasure, and others, much smaller, and fitter for some purposes, put in their places.
You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch, but the best crutch I could have.
I’m a flutist so I know what they can deliver in terms of texture and sound and blurriness and softness. It’s a very soft instrument.
After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.
I do go back and listen to my songs. I’m biting my fingernails the whole way through, but I do listen. I have a lot of songs I’ve wanted to re-record just because of how advanced technology is and the different instrument sounds that I’m more experienced with.
If Pakistan claims to be a crucial partner in the international coalition against terrorism, how can it continue to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy against India?
Italy advocates the adoption of a legal instrument on cultural diversity, guaranteeing every country the protection of its own historical identity and the uniqueness of its physical and intangible cultural heritage.
I was always a visual artist my whole life, and I came to music really late – when I was 21 or 22 was the first time I ever touched a musical instrument. For me, it was always this fun side hobby.
I always tend to think that composing is not playing an instrument, composing is having something in your head that’s steaming and it has to go out. It has to become sounds and be written. It’s an emotion that you can’t repress.
My body is an instrument for me to use.
When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don’t – there’s no bass part, there’s not that much depth. That’s why I’m attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It’s like playing in a rainforest.
There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, ‘You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.’
The trumpet was not a lyrical singing instrument.
Henry VIII Clauses allowing the Government to change almost any law of the land by statutory instrument, if needed, to implement Brexit must be properly restricted.
At the Grammys, how many performances were with women playing instruments? Is it still surprising that a female can play an instrument proficiently?
The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people’s attention for two hours.
The real producers back in the day didn’t sit there and play every single instrument. They made sure the record had the best performance out of everyone involved possible.
What I like about ‘Game of Thrones’ is that there’s such a wide range. We have everything from very small, just solo instrument pieces, just the solo violin or solo cello, and then we go all the way to these bigger action moments.
The key demand for me from the public across the 34 provinces is to transform the state into an instrument of the rule of law, transform the economy into a productive system and change the education system.
Rather than lose the public because television is here, wouldn’t it be smart to adopt television as our instrument?
I think there are always people who, when they get the bug to play an instrument, they want to get as good as they can with it rather than just be simply adequate at it. You run into them every once in a while – some kid who wants to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, for whatever reason, and plays exactly like him.
Some photographers take reality… and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
I got into television because I hated it so. I thought, there’s some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.
My first instrument was a little blue ukele.
A band asked me to go on tour when I was 22 and asked me to play drums, and I taught myself so I could go on this trip with these people. The drums found me; I didn’t find them. When I started playing, I realized how appropriate an instrument it was for me.
When I look at the web, it’s clear that the web is a fantastic instrument for all of us. It’s clear that we have the dark web and the deep web and all the problems of cybersecurity, etc. And the question of regulation is a very complex question in relation to this.
I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.
I just loved stand-up comics as a kid. I’d watch them on ‘The Tonight Show,’ and I thought what a great craft it was to come out on stage with no instrument or anything and be able to entertain people.
What matters is that there is somewhere for those who are troubled, threatened or afraid to turn to in their darkest hour. What matters is that there are those who are willing and able to use the law as an instrument of inclusion, of protection, and of freedom.
He spoke nine languages. You know some people can just pick up an instrument and play. My father was like that with languages.
The big thing in my family growing up is that everybody had to play a musical instrument. We were like the von Trapps.
I’d actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument.
In the heat of the Russian summer a sleeping car is the most horrible instrument of martyrdom imaginable.
I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement.
My body is an object of work. That’s why I think to be an actor is one of the most violent jobs. If you’re a pianist, you have your piano. If you’re a guitarist, you have your guitar. But if you’re a dancer, or you’re an actor – your instrument is your body.
For me, the keyboard is always an additional sound to the piano. Piano is the main instrument; I can’t go anywhere without acoustic piano. It’s been my best friend since I was 6 years old.
I really enjoy listening to players on the cusp of swing into bebop like Charlie Shavers, Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. They balance immense facility on their instrument with rhythm, melody, and more complex harmonies of the time.
You can be a great father if you are willing to let God use you as an instrument.
Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.
When you hear a solo piano, there’s a solitude about just one instrument playing. It can be beautiful; it can be sad.
Let no one refer to the sword of Napoleon I as the instrument of progress and civilization!
I think there is no better way to invite a human being to view their body differently than by inviting them to be an athlete, by revering one’s body as an instrument rather than just an ornament.
I keep saying if I ever get a good amount of quiet time that I want to learn to play cello. It’s a very warm instrument. The tone of the cello and the movement – I don’t know what is; I love it so much.
It’s the things that you notice when you’re not actually with your instrument that, in fact, become so interesting, and that you – you want to explore, through this tiny tiny surface of a drum.
You know, when you really connect with the instrument and everything just comes out on an emotional level very naturally through your playing. That’s, you know, a great night. And I think the reason I love touring so much is you’re chasing that high around all the time, trying to have another good night.
The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
I’m not sure I am a politician. I would say that I am still an artist, and I’m trying to use politics as an instrument for change.
I preferred not to be laden down with a big instrument. If you’re behind a guitar, you get used to being behind a guitar, and you don’t really perform because you can’t. I wanted to be able to just hold on to the mike and sing.
When I write for an album, I’ll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.
A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.
Having the facility to have this multitrack at home, I could try experiments with sort of all of the instruments, giving them different treatments so they didn’t actually sound, necessarily, like the instrument itself.
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
Roots’ was the first album on which I recorded a berimbau. After that, I recorded it a bunch for Soulfly and other projects. I really enjoy the instrument even though it’s only one string. It’s really unique-sounding. It’s very striking, and you know right away that it’s a berimbau – it’s one of a kind.
What it is now is basically I’ll sit on my computer; I basically kind of play the computer as an instrument, I guess you could say. I guess I play the Mac.
Few occupations pass the solitary hours more fruitfully than the playing of a musical instrument.
We wanted to make a powerful cello sound in order to show to the world the possibilities of the cello and to use it in a different way than the classical way they are used to. We wanted to play something exciting, something crazy, something to draw younger generations to this great instrument.
I can play any instrument if you give me 20 minutes.
I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, ‘Well if you go out and save your money.’ So I went and got – I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I’d bring whatever I made.
The basic notion was the idea that the loudspeaker should have a voice which was unique and not just an instrument of reproduction, but an instrument unto itself.
I always say that music is a small drop in the ocean of life. I was told a long time ago that your horn, or whatever instrument you play, is a means to be in the world.
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.
Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!
Every contrivance of man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, evolved from a very simple beginnings.
Ever since I was 18 or 19, I’ve wanted to question the sound, tones, and scale associated with the piano as an instrument symbolic of modern European music.
My mother always wanted to play an instrument. Her parents never gave her that. Then it got to a point where I’d been playing for 18 years, and to give it up would make me feel guilty. But my parents also knew that realistically, I wasn’t going to become a concert pianist.
For me it’s the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don’t know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me.
I probably wouldn’t be singing if not for Michael Jackson. When I started singing, I didn’t like my tone until my mom put me on to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, so listening to the way they used their instrument helped me get more comfortable with my own.
The rhythm, the sounds, the tonality, the chord sequences, the individual effect of each instrument and each section of the band – I’m talking about a whole continent in my music.
Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That’s traditionally how people learn.
Learn your instrument. Be honest. Don’t do anything phony. There is so much crap floating around. There is plenty of room for a bit of honest writing.
The piano is the instrument I can play the most.
Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.
I think I’m a songwriter. I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I’m not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.
Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.
It is at least 10 times more difficult to get a good synthesiser sound than on an acoustic instrument.
I went to a restaurant and sat at the bar and ate by myself. I have my iPad, which is my favorite instrument of all time. I talked to a few people next to me. I’m just trying to be out. It’s a little bit scary.
I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me – Cecil Taylor is an amazing character… Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.
My home studio is my private instrument for me only. It’s not intended to record anyone but me.
Why would you want to stand there waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?
I had a jazz trio, a rock n’ roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It’s the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It’s just hard to carry on your back.
The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.
I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.
There is only one instrument which is adequate to investigate the things of the spirit, and that is the Spirit itself. Just as it is necessary to train a man for scientific research in the physical world, so also is a long and slow process required to fit oneself for investigation of the spiritual world.
I always wanted to play some kind of instrument – piano, saxophone, whatever. I took it up for a while, then forgot about it because I didn’t have the time.
Being in a band is far more than playing an instrument. It’s surviving. It’s getting an album together.
In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.
Learning a musical instrument is challenging, it demands fine motor skills and coordination. It develops children’s listening, thinking skills, imagination and perseverance. It brings out the very best in the children as they work collaboratively with their peers and teachers.
I had a voice – I had an instrument – I loved singing and I had an inspired singing teacher, Miss Sleigh. I went to her every Saturday, and I now possess the upright Steinway piano beside which I used to stand in fear and trembling if I hadn’t done my breathing exercises.
You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.
I used to look at these pictures of trumpeters pointing their instrument to the ceiling. Stunning pictures, but if you play the trumpet and point it upwards, all the spit comes back into your mouth!
I get on a real serious health kick when I’m on the road, because as a singer, you can’t really get sick. If you get sick, your whole instrument stops working. I’ve done all these different vitamin drinks. I drink coconut water, and I run. I eat food. I juice.
I actually had a job while I was acting and was a nursing student, which I had to drop due to my 9-5 job at the time. I managed an instrument room at a hospital in the Bronx.
I love telling stories, whether I’m the human instrument that helps tell that story, or I’m the man behind the curtain.
We don’t make a distinction between an acoustic instrument as a source of sound and any sound in the air outside or on a manufactured tape. It’s all electric energy, anyway.
Just like using an instrument, a song calls for different things.
I don’t think that you can write music if you don’t know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.
A baseball swing is a very finely tuned instrument. It is repetition, and more repetition, then a little more after that.
I wish I played an instrument, but I could never decide which one, and I ended up playing nothing.
Even I haven’t downed enough L.A. Kool-Aid to believe that somehow Hollywood movies are an overt instrument of morality.
When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they’d teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician.
There is another common misapprehension that the magnitude scale is itself some kind of instrument or apparatus. Visitors will frequently ask to ‘see the scale.’
After my second-to-last record, ‘The Greatest’, I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn’t play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of – it’s not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself – but disappointed in myself that I hadn’t been challenging myself to learn musically.
I’m also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O’Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.
In the end, I didn’t think I was good enough to use sax as a stage performer to get where I wanted, and thank God I chose my voice as my instrument instead. You need to be honest with yourself, and I was.
I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you’re going to do it but when you do it.
As a melody instrument player, it’s all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything’s moving forward, and it’s all linear.
Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.
Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.
Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.
Since love first made the breast an instrument Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart Was molten to a mirror, like a rose I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang This mirror in your sight.
Revolution is an instrument, like a party is an instrument.
