Instruments Quotes

• Essentially, your voice is an instrument; its a muscle, and you have to treat it like a muscle, and so you have to work it.

  

  Kevin Spacey
  • Work
  • Voice
  • Treats

• 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.

  

  J. Cole
  • School
  • Play
  • VIolin

• Frequently, I go straight into the studio and see what's around. I might hire a couple of instruments that I've never used - maybe a particular type of electronic organ or an echo unit. Then I just dabble with sounds until something starts to happen that suggests a texture. The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That's like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.

  

  Brian Eno Roxy Music
  • Song
  • Studio
  • Texture

• Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Spirit
  • Sense
  • Instruments

• I write songs, I play instruments, and I produce music that comes out for the world.

  

  Rex Orange County
  • Write
  • Songs
  • Produce

• A fierce and monkish art; a castigation of the flesh. You must cut out your imagination and not fly an airplane but regulate a half-dozen instruments . . . .At first, the conflicts between animal sense and engineering brain are irresistibly strong.

  

  Wolfgang Langewiesche
  • Imagination
  • Animal
  • Conflict

• Man is the metre of all things, the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms.

  

  Aristotle
  • Mind
  • Man
  • Form

• The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest.

  

  William O. Douglas
  • Violence
  • Protest
  • Persuasion

• External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

  

  Yusef Lateef
  • Instruments
  • Extensions

• In an inconspicuous way, Gretchen Parlato knows how to play the same instrument that Frank Sinatra played. There's no one out there like Gretchen.

  

  Wayne Shorter
  • Way
  • Play
  • Frank

• 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.

  

  Steven Siro Vai Alcatrazz
  • Play
  • Guitar
  • Electric

• The environment is rarely put on tape, or if it is, it's so abstract that most people never realize it. They just don't know what it means. But if you can show it to them, then that's what becomes the main instrument.

  

  Ry Cooder Buena Vista Social Club
  • People
  • Mean
  • Environment

• Men like M. de Talleyrand are like sharp instruments with which it is dangerous to play.

  

  Klemens von Metternich
  • Like
  • Dangerous
  • Sharp

• Learning to play old instruments was a challenge. How do you learn an instrument no one has played in hundreds of years? The ones that are used today, I was adamant not to hear anyone else play that instrument. I want to approach them as a child and on the basis of each instrument. I wanted my voice to come through, not someone else's.

  

  Einar Selvik
  • Learning
  • Challenge
  • Child

• I trust microphones, speakers and recordings less and less, and no longer buy into the idea that I can recreate at home, or in my earphones, the experience of hearing live acoustic instruments. The orchestra is already a set of speakers that react differently to each player, each room and each concert - it's that high level of uncertainly and unrepeatability that I like. The music is just soaked into the walls of a room straight from the instruments - and it's a one-off deal. The alternative - left speaker, right speaker - is kind of a compromise.

  

  Jonny Greenwood Radiohead
  • Trust
  • Player
  • Compromise

• A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that's true of a lot instruments; pianos sound like pianos, but there's something about the guitar - the range of possibilities is much broader.

  

  David Howell Evans U2
  • Guitar
  • Instruments
  • Trumpet

• The piano is a divinely inspired instrument, a mirror held up to its player's soul that captures the light and shadow of the performer and reflects them back to the listener.

  

  David Lanz
  • Player
  • Inspired
  • Shadow

• Being an actor means being an instrument for someone else. I want to give myself completely.

  

  Catherine Deneuve
  • Actor
  • Being
  • Someone

• In some ways, I feel like I've been such a dilettante for so many years, just picking up instruments and stretching myself so thin.

  

  Zach Condon
  • Up
  • Way
  • Years

• People have said to me, 'You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument.' But I've got 10 gold records.

  

  Sonny Bono Sonny & Cher
  • People
  • Writing
  • Song

• I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar. I think regular touring has forced me to play the guitar more than anything else, which is why I'm probably most confident playing that. And whist I'd be lost if I couldn't play it too, I dislike the totemic worship of the thing... magazines, collectors, and so on. I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play.

  

  Jonny Greenwood Radiohead
  • Play
  • Guitar
  • Radiohead

• Banjos, dobros, and acoustic guitars are not our first instruments.

  

  Winston Marshall Mumford & Sons
  • Instruments
  • Guitars

• ... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from

  

  Steven Siro Vai Alcatrazz
  • Music
  • Kind
  • Imagine

• When Simplicity is broken up, it is made into instruments. Evolved individuals who employ them, are made into leaders. In this way, the Great System is United.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • Leaders
  • Instruments
  • Broken-up

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