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.
