Top 100 Music Making Quotes
#1. Music-making as a means of getting money is hell
Gustav Holst
#2. I don't live for the accolades. I'm more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.
J. Cole
#3. I am equally excited about the possibilities that music making holds for all people and it's ability to heal what seems to me a chronic imbalance in modern life.
Paul Winter
#4. My interactions with musicians have been simply that: interactions with musicians. Issues of gender, or anything else beyond the music-making, have in my experience played no role in whether or not a musician has been able to articulate my intentions as a composer.
Michael Hersch
#5. Somerset desperately needs more high-end music making on its doorstep, so the chance to share great music spanning genres as diverse as orchestral classics, trip hop and jazz, in the utterly relaxed and cathartic environment of a Somerset field, is for me the fulfilment of a long-term dream.
Charles Hazlewood
#6. The Treorchy Male Choir - the very name is a song! May I thank the Choir, past and present, for all the glorious music-making they have shared with us.
Glenda Jackson
#7. The most unique thing about music making is sharing.
Igor Levit
#8. When it comes to the music making, that's when we completely are open and just let anything go down in the studio. It's nice to go with whatever's happening. It's really important to just let the music come out of you.
Georgia Nott
#9. Also, painting and animation are really solitary pursuits, so the collaborative aspects of music making and acting are pretty welcome sometimes.
Tunde Adebimpe
#10. For me, music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.
Luciano Pavarotti
#11. Hip-hop has survived as a sonic practice more than anything else. It's an approach to music-making based in sampling and rhyming over beats, that's proven far more versatile than its detractors thought it would.
Ann Powers
#12. What people really should be able to be confident in is that the standards of music- making that classically trained musicians present is elite, it is the best and all of us as artists should be committed to that.
Lesley Garrett
#13. For a long time in the 1970s, I was experimenting to build musical instruments and use them. I did a lot of ethnic music studies and other things, like electronic music. Making homemade musical instruments and performing was my major activity from the time.
Yoshi Wada
#14. The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users.
Douglas Rushkoff
#15. I can't imagine ever not making music, making albums, writing songs, doing shows. That's all I really know, and that's all I really do.
Pixie Lott
#16. It is an unfortunate irony that music-making intended in part to attract new listeners is usually the least well rehearsed and motivated.
Bernard Holland
#17. What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing.
Will Oldham
#18. If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
Nicholas Sparks
#19. I approach my music-making as an art-form
something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth.
Brian Wilson
#20. If you ask me about music and how things should be played, I believe that music-making is the combination of having learned how to do something right, what one feels is right to do in the moment, and the way the audience is listening.
Michala Petri
#21. With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.
John Burnside
#22. Like Jermaine was saying, it's a beautiful day, and we're just glad all of this is behind us. We can go on with our lives. And Michael can go on with his life and do what he does best, and that's making good music, making his fans happy, people happy all over the world.
Tito Jackson
#23. I enjoyed singing and playing guitar but didn't have the stamina to make music-making a career. In reality, writing was my real gift, and as soon as I figured that out I never looked back.
Ann Powers
#24. Although I am flexible and ready to take advice, I can't carry an umbrella of thoughts over my head that would distract me and affect my music making.
Zubin Mehta
#25. I think that what I'm interested with is the creative side of music-making, rather than all the travelling.
Michael Giles
#26. Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now.
Edward Norton
#27. As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.
Renzo Piano
#28. There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say.
Charles Hazlewood
#29. Traditional songwriting, to us, is where the experimental nature comes in. We're all involved with so much outside activity with really hardcore, experimental music-making.
Thurston Moore
#30. I love Shakira - she is such a beautiful person. She does so many good things for the world on top of making good music. And she is an awesome mom. When you are Latina, it is all about family, and to see that she prioritizes family and her career at the same time is really nice.
Becky G
#31. Making music is like being the president: You can't tell people you're going to make health care free to get them behind you, but when you get that role, you don't do it.
Tyga
#32. I don't think music can be held. I don't think artists can be put into boxes or places. It's all about creating and making the best music you can.
Trey Songz
#33. It's weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day - your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors - then it ends. It's like a circus life.
Dito Montiel
#34. I don't really understand why when I'm not making music, I feel like I can't breathe.
Son Lux
#35. Ain't nobody making music to not be heard and the easiest way to be heard is to be on the radio, but you should never compromise who you are, your values or your morals.
Talib Kweli
#36. I'm really not into the idea of just faking songs with a synthesizer. That just isn't the music I'm making at all.
Hamilton Leithauser
#37. What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.
Andrew Bird
#38. It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren't making music because they want to change the world; they're making music because they want to just make a ton of money.
Sinead O'Connor
#39. The ultimate thing I want to do in making music is to be able to inspire somebody else.
Kendrick Lamar
#40. It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.
Gavin Bryars
#41. I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.
Barry Gibb
#42. Making music and art is about expressing something that's universally human, maybe even beyond human, at best.
Cass McCombs
#43. Obviously when you're making music, you want it to get out to as many people as possible. You want to reach as many people as you can.
Jason Aldean
#44. I started growing my audience in small clubs through word-of-mouth. I started making music that isn't necessarily commercially viable, and it's not necessarily marketable to my peers to a certain extent.
Kat Edmonson
#45. The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.
James Vincent McMorrow
#46. Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.
Aldous Huxley
#47. Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.
Stephen Sondheim
#48. But it's not just "Do you want a hit?" More importantly, it has to be something we - the artist and I - like. If you go in just wanting a hit song, it's not going to happen that way. You have to first be committed to making music you like.
Lukasz Gottwald
#49. My process in making a music video is pretty much a formula of talking to the artist. I've never made a video where I didn't talk to the artist before I wrote the treatment. Basically, I enter into it knowing we are collaborators.
Adria Petty
#50. One of the reasons we survive as a band is that we are seen as a band of today. We don't want to be seen as a band that tours and plays old songs. We feel that we are making the best music of our careers.
Andrew Fletcher
#51. I don't feel comfortable making empty music.
Talib Kweli
#52. There's no real outlet for making Hip-Hop in Alabama. You need to travel to get heard. You really need to be working though. You need to be going at it every day and getting yourself seen, getting yourself out there on the road, doing shows, making music. It's all about being on your grind.
Yelawolf
#53. I'm so happy. I am able to see the world just by making music, just by doing the thing that I loved doing when I was five years old.
Lenny Kravitz
#54. I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most.
Beck
#55. Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.
Iris Dement
#56. In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.
Kelis
#57. Our music's kind of about taking something ugly and making it beautiful.
Jerry Cantrell
#58. Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.
Mark Ronson
#59. I think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.
John Varvatos
#60. The Who had a great sense of humor. And they were also very serious when it came down to making music.
Jason Reece
#61. Finally, I was no longer a student and was making music for myself.
Kenny G
#62. Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!
Kelis
#63. I wasn't making music consciously when I was younger. I was a musician, but that has its own stigmas. Anywhere on the planet, it's one of the more undervalued positions.
K'naan
#64. Even if I'm making music for people for $20 a night, at least I'm making music.
Rachel Platten
#65. I mean, it's pretty hard to fight and hate and be angry when you're making music, isn't it?
Jerry Reed
#66. In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.
David Friedman
#67. If you're someone who's making film or TV or music, or any kind of art form now, there's a billion outlets and they all have an opinion.
Andy Samberg
#68. At the end of the day, I think that I'm making music for me as that 12-year-old kid in front of my boombox every day. I try to think about, if I'm that little kid, what would he like?
Danny Brown
#69. Making music for Radiohead is like going to the bathroom, I'm just going to the bathroom constantly, and millions are watching me go to the bathroom.
Thom Yorke
#70. I have fun when I'm making music, and I want people to have fun when they listen to it.
Becky G
#71. Everyone has a fantasy of what they want their band to sound like. However, because I knew nothing about making music, I was unable to describe what I wanted properly.
Joe Casey
#72. And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.
Philip K. Dick
#73. I just had to find something else to fulfill me. Always being a singer and writing, it was a blessing. My brother started making music that was the kind of music I always saw myself singing.
Taryn Manning
#75. All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty.
Neil Peart
#76. As long as I'm blessed and/or cursed to be alive, it's hard to see a time when I won't be making music.
Kyp Malone
#77. Sheet music, recording, radio, television, cassettes, CD burners, and file sharing have all invalidated, to some extent, the old model of making a living making music.
Kent Beck
#78. If anybody had a sense of history, it wasn't me, I'll tell you that. I, I was just enjoying life and, and making a living and, and, you know, listening to all this good music. No, there was never in my mind any kind of sense of history, nothing.
Cosimo Matassa
#79. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
David Byrne
#80. I am very aware now that music is a business, but there is also a way to go about making music that is true to yourself as opposed to doing, you know, just going through the motions and making things that would just be commercially successful.
Ronnie Montrose
#81. My mom used to sell fabric and lace when I was younger. She would bring back these elaborate fabrics from Nigeria. I always enjoyed being around it. However, it wasn't until I started making music that I started taking a vested interest.
Tinie Tempah
#82. We're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing.
Dave Grohl
#83. I've never been able to relate to apathy. I've always been doing stuff, been in action, making music or working just to get by.
Beck
#84. I'm really just concentrating on making good music, whether it's using a sample or doing an original track.
Rahki
#85. When I started making my own music, I was more about recreating what I was hearing. I noticed that I had some control over what I was saying, and the effects that it's going to have on people. I wanted to focus more on the positive side of things, which are more in tune with my morals and ethics.
Lupe Fiasco
#86. But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.
Rob Sheffield
#87. I'm just saying stupid, funny things when I'm hanging out on the TV show. When I'm making music I'm in a completely different zone.
Chanel West Coast
#88. I love making music so it's important for me to keep doing that even if the schedule is busy.
Michael Kiwanuka
#89. From day one when you're singing, you're dreaming about making that first album and making your break into whatever music you want to break into.
Brett Eldredge
#90. In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in - Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff - there's almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.
Trent Reznor
#91. Just as there is a difference between playing a musical piece well and making music, there is a difference between knowing about regular expressions and really understanding them.
Jeffrey E.F. Friedl
#92. Having solidarity is important and having conviction and sticking with it and also consistency. You can't just have one good record, or a couple of good singles, you have to continue making good music to be considered to be a great band. Having some degree of integrity, that's it in one word.
Ryan Jarman
#93. When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.
Nick Offerman
#94. That would be awesome, to be totally making records whenever I want and to play a show and have a few hundred thousand people there at any city you go to because people know you and your music.
Gin Wigmore
#95. And I'll look back at him because I shan't be able to help it, remembering about being young, and about being made love to and making love, about pain and dancing and not being afraid of death, about all music I've ever loved, and every time I've been happy.
Jean Rhys
#96. I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.
Macklemore
#97. Making music is a total hassle, really.
Max Tundra
#98. Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.
Tom Petty
#99. He was making music - Howells, Finzi, Holst - so you could see the sounds in the serried air.
Serried. Then just as suddenly empty when his sound-proof right hand closed off the notes.
Craig Raine
#100. Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.
Elvis Costello
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