Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It seems like if they'd given Bob Dylan a pen and paper in the cradle that he would've come up with a great song. I'd love to write songs like that.
I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.
The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.
The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.
I didn't have stage parents and sometimes I've envied people who did because I felt like, I guess, I'm compulsively worried I'm not accomplishing enough.
I'm really not handy. I'm not good at things like changing a light bulb. If something is broken, the chances of me being able to fix it are slim to none.
Everyone talks about how depressing Radiohead are. I don't hear it. They've created their own universe and it is dimly lit, but it's not inherently dark.
I was trained completely by ear. And it was actually diving into the Bach that led me to get - there was like a Mel Bay "Teach Yourself How To Sight Read..."
It was kind of sort of the heavens opened up and I realized that Bach, at least, you know - out of all the classical music - needs to be a big part of my life.
The darned thing about mandolins is they're really hard to turn up as loud as you would need to be to play with a drum set. They cease to sound like mandolins.
My grandmother got me recordings of the 'Goldberg Variations,' in addition to the 'Brandenburg Concertos,' the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony.'
There's something about a variety show, I think, that disarms us as consumers of something. We're laughing, and there's this sense of anything goes, anything could happen.
Calvin is a constant reminder that I'm not always as present as I want to be. His go-to state of being is present. So I'm really grateful of that part of being his parent.
You need to put yourself in the way of the music that stood the test of time. You're doing yourself an incredible disservice not be interested in the width and breadth of it.
The constructive criticism that I take very seriously is from people I know and respect, and they don't have to be musicians. But I do have to know where they're coming from.
I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.
The real question is, do you root for the fox in that song? Or are you horrified that the goose and the duck are being dragged off to their death, which is described in detail?
My folks were and are devoted public radio fans, who started listening to 'A Prairie Home Companion' in the 1980s; Garrison and Co. were the permanent headliners of their weekends.
Having small children, you start thinking about how everything in your life revolves around doing the best you can for this little being, trying to make a good life for that person.
Great music is the only genre that actually matters, and the members of that club are far more similar to each other than they are to any genre they might be commonly associated with.
Hats off to musicians who just want a pure escape. I have a lot of fondness for pure escapism. I don't feel like it's irresponsible, I think sometimes you really need to take a breather.
I can't listen to music while I'm doing something else. Well, unless I'm working out. But I, like, fall off the treadmill all the time if I'm listening to something that I like too much.
I'm a massive tennis fan! I love it to bits. I wish I could play, but I am worried that the muscles required for tennis are sort of in direct opposition to those required for mandolin playing.
You know, I look at Twitter as kind of a roomful of people who are interested in what you have to say. The people who follow you are, presumably, somewhat interested with what you have to say.
Really the greatest music I've ever heard I've hated the first time I heard it. It's been abrasive at first; it's been something that challenged me in a way that I wasn't fully comfortable with.
I play the mandolin, which people don't often expect great things from. But it has it's charms, and it's my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.
I think what people call genre is just a question of orchestration. So, for instance, with Punch Brothers, you look at that band and say that's a bluegrass band, when really it's an orchestration choice.
Growing up in a bluegrass or acoustic-oriented world, the musicians become so focused on performance, as far as playing. We tend to overanalyze the notes, so you're always trying to sharpen everything up.
The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.
I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.
I love music with everything I have, and when I am in a front of a classroom talking about music sometimes someone will ask me a question and it reminds me to really think about something, to really feel something.
I was introduced to classical music by my grandparents - my parents were mostly into folk and jazz. Even as a young man, I was literally unaware of the distinctions between any of that, and I still think it's pointless.
If you're sitting there going, 'Well, these particular genres are the only genres I like,' that's like saying, 'I only like books with this particular kind of cover.' Because that's all genre is. It's a discussion of texture.
I think people are largely proud of being musically on the risk. Any time you talk to someone about music, I feel like everyone is kind of always underlining just, you know, how voracious their appetites for various things are.
I'll never feel as comfortable singing as I do playing. The mandolin is my real voice. My actual voice is sort of my secondary voice, but I love to do it and I love giving people relief from playing with a little bit of singing.
There's a lot of steps between there not being music and there being music. Composition is one part of that, but if no one performs it... It's like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I've always taken a lot of joy in my work, but it's also been very results-oriented. It's kind of like, making the thing, and taking a lot of joy in that, as opposed to allowing myself to be transported by the work of my fellow musicians.
Improvisation is an important part of bluegrass, and I would hasten to add that classical music wasn't always such an improvisational void. Back in the day, everyone's cadenzas were improvised, and improvisation was taught in conservatories.
I'll often order a cortado and stand there quizzing the poor barista about the extraction time, how much pressure they are applying and how many grams are in it. I am that guy. It's reprehensible to the max, but it's how I go through my life.
For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That's a lovely thing, but you can't rely on that.
I'm a massive Roger Federer fan, and sometimes I can see in his game the willful development of a tactic or technique that doesn't come as naturally to him, like fixating on improving the backhand. And I'm thinking, Hit the forehand! It's what you do!
People who are happy with their neighborhoods in New York always say the same thing: 'It's such a neighborhood!' And that's how we feel about Carroll Gardens. We see all the same people who have been there a long time and are very friendly and welcoming to us.
It's like wine and food, or coffee and a pastry - coffee's awesome and a chocolate croissant is awesome, and together, they're transcendent. To me, music is the same way. Chris Stapleton is transcendent. Julien Baker is transcendent. Together, they're going to be euphoria.
I'm a musician, and I feel like musicians owe it to themselves and owe it to music to concern themselves with as much of music as interests them. Even if you decide that you're never going to compose, you will be a better performer if you concern yourself with the craft of composition.
I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.
For years, my actual listening activity has been governed by what I perceived to be good for me as a musician, almost like the way an athlete trains for a given sporting task. I'd listen to something if I felt it would improve my sense of harmony or counterpoint, or whatever I was working on.
Bill Monroe is not singing about life in America. He's singing about life in Kentucky and Tennessee. And yet it's had this tremendous impact, not just in America but in the world. Why is Bill Monroe's hyper-regional music so universal? We can be so different and yet still share a tremendous amount.
I went through a political shift when I was nineteen or twenty. I felt a certain way, and after the shift, I felt the opposite way. And never once did someone yelling at me or making me feel stupid do anything other than reinforce the convictions I had. What did get to me was people listening to me.
Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.
The name 'Clara' is significant in my life. When I was an adolescent and started thinking about my place in the world as an adult and growing up, I knew I would have an eventually new outlook on things and eventually meet someone and have a kid. In my mind, I was like, 'If I have a daughter, I want to name her Clara.'