Daniel Levitin Quotes

Because you've been exposed to Western tonal music, you know after a certain chord sequence what the next possibilities are. Your brain has compiled a statistical map of which ones are most likely and least likely. If the song keeps hitting the most likely notes, you'll get bored, and if it's always the least likely ones, you'll get irritated.

Daniel Levitin

• Music
• Song
• Brain
• Bored

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Quotes to Explore

• The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.

  

  A. R. Rahman
  • Music
  • Lead
  • Him

• Basically hated everything made in the '80s, music television - it was really about the '90s for me. 'Encino Man' was a big hit. 'Robin Hood: Men in Tights.'

  

  Kate McKinnon
  • Music
  • Men
  • Man

• If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.

  

  Imelda May
  • People
  • Music
  • Long

• The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.

  

  Xavier Rudd
  • Music
  • Believe
  • Change

• If there's anything that would unite the world, it would be music.

  

  Leighton Paul Walsh
  • World
  • Music
  • Unite

• With Ghost Tunes, you just try to do what's right. And what's right is whatever the copyright owner wants to do with their music, they do it.

  

  Garth Brooks
  • Music
  • Try
  • Ghost

• I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

  

  P. J. Harvey
  • Work
  • Music
  • Together

• I don't really have an aversion to watching myself. I think I've been doing it for long enough that I have a system of separating it in my brain from my egotistical neuroses for the most part.

  

  Mae Whitman
  • Long
  • Myself
  • Brain

• I like to release music the way I feel it, as opposed to having a date. The idea of dates, boxes, categories are very scary for me.

  

  Usher
  • Music
  • Way
  • Idea

• I really like Ariana Grande, Jessie J, and Nicki Minaj's song, the 'Bang Bang' song. It's the new 'Lady Marmalade.' So good.

  

  Becky G
  • Good
  • Song
  • New

• Gospel music always relaxes me and calms my nerves.

  

  Gabby Douglas
  • Music
  • Me
  • Always

• Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Time
  • Music
  • Best

• It is such a gift to be able to write songs in general, but when you can share it with somebody, it is just such a pleasure. It is such a happy moment when you finish a song, and you are just like, 'Wow - that was great.'

  

  Valerie June
  • Great
  • Happy
  • Song

• Sports without music is just a game. Music makes it entertaining.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Music
  • Game
  • Sports

• If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

  

  Barry Mann
  • Song
  • Inspiration
  • Plumber

• Music is really something that makes people whole.

  

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  • People
  • Music
  • Something

• A man's brain has a more difficult time shifting from thinking to feeling than a women's brain does.

  

  Barbara De Angelis
  • Time
  • Thinking
  • Women

• There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Writing
  • Think
  • Song

• I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.

  

  Carlisle Floyd
  • Music
  • Literature
  • Theater

• We are neurologically hardwired to seek out people like ourselves. We start forming cliques as soon as we're old enough to know what acceptance feels like. We bond together based on anything that we can - music preference, race, gender, the block that we grew up on.

  

  iO Tillett Wright
  • People
  • Up
  • Music

• Chasing the sensation. Whether it was drugs or sex or whatever. Those things had become my main focus in life.

  

  Rick Allen Def Leppard
  • Life
  • Drugs
  • Sensation

• When I was growing up in New York, we were the anomaly. Our family stayed, but back then families didn't stay. Once you had a second kid, you immediately left, so the kids could run around outside.

  

  Mike D The Beastie Boys
  • Family
  • Kids
  • Grow Up

• If I get a song - a good song - I just sing it the way I hear it in my head. If anybody else wanted to add whistles and bells and chains rattling, that's fine. Just not too much. I actually just do things as straight ahead as possible.

  

  Glen Campbell
  • Good
  • Song

• Because you've been exposed to Western tonal music, you know after a certain chord sequence what the next possibilities are. Your brain has compiled a statistical map of which ones are most likely and least likely. If the song keeps hitting the most likely notes, you'll get bored, and if it's always the least likely ones, you'll get irritated.

  

  Daniel Levitin
  • Music
  • Song
  • Brain