Music Theory Quotes

• Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

  Neil Diamond

  Nice, Different, Would Be

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• We must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.

  Marvin Minsky

  Music, Art, People

  "Music, Mind, and Meaning". Computer Music Journal, Vol. 5, Number 3, web.media.mit.edu. Fall 1981.

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• Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Men, Order

  Igor Stravinsky “An Autobiography”, Library of Alexandria

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• 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.

  Johann Sebastian Bach

  Music, Keys, Play

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• Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Knowledge, World

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.

  Quincy Jones

  Class, Play, Peers

  The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org.

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• The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Music, Beauty, Art

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• You are the music while the music lasts.

  T. S. Eliot

  Music, Dope, Jazz And Life

  Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 5 (1941)

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• Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots. Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Spiritual, Art, Real

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.9, Penguin

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• Music can change the world.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Music, Peace, World

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• Do everything you can to learn your craft. Score student films for free, attend conferences, learn music theory - do anything and everything you can.

  John Keltonic

  Crafts, Anything And Everything, Students

  "A Conversation With Prolific Music Composer & Producer John Keltonic". Interview with Norm Goldman, www.bookpleasures.com. July 21, 2015.

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• I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

  Zooey Deschanel

  Thinking, Jazz, Hart

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• Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Playing Music, Arithmetic, Music Is

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• Sound is what drives my solos, not verbal concepts, I never think 'I'm going to use a Lydian Dominant scale and then go up a half-step', even though that might be exactly what I end up doing.

  John Scofield

  Music, Thinking, Sound

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• It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.

  Albert Einstein

  Music, Discovery, Perception

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• My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.

  Edward Elgar

  Music, Art, Air

  Quoted in Robert J. Buckley, Sir Edward Elgar (1905)

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• I don't know anything about music theory at all. Zero. But I don't really need to.

  Amos Lee

  Zero, Needs, Theory

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• Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Music, Piano, Different

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• There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

  Frank Zappa

  Love, Music, Marriage

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• There are tools that help sharpen freestyle skills like having a diverse vernacular, some sense of music theory, being outspoken, phrasing, spacing, cross word puzzles, thesauruses, the ability to expand on an issue and embellish that with more descriptive terminology.

  Myka 9

  Skills, Issues, Tools

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• I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

  Wes Borland

  Unique, Player, Guitar

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• Rock stars are idiots. You know that! Remember this moron never went to music school, never learned music theory and can't read or write music. So why not be suspicious of everything this idiot says?

  Gene Simmons

  Stars, School, Writing

  Source: www.noise11.com

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• I took music theory in high school and dropped out halfway through the semester because it was ruining music for me.

  Blake Judd

  School, Theory, Halfway

  "Don't Call It a Rip-Off". Pitchfork Interview, pitchfork.com.

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• Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

  Robert Browning

  Music, Solitude, Inspirational Music

  Robert Browning, William Lyon Phelps (1910). “Robert Browning's complete works”

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• I'm maybe too rude with myself but the fact is that I don't know music theory so I can't tell myself "it's ok now I make good stuff," I need to improve more and more.

  Marilou

  Rude, Needs, Stuff

  Source: sleepingbagstudios.ca

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