“Those who have expressed doubts and misgivings about their ability to live this kind of life shouldn't try, because being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are.” TryingKindAbilityDoubtMusicianMisgivings Author:Billy Joel
“I know some people really try to avoid music when they're writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn. I sit around and try to play along to certain songs that I really love. It helps you explore new territory. I don't think I listen to enough.” PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsWritingTryingDifferentEnoughPlayHelpingCertainSongMusicianInspiredTerritoryNew TerritoryVery Inspired Author:Devendra Banhart
“I'm such a copycat."I want to try and do this like the Donovan song 'Changes'," or "I want to do this bit from Van Morrison." I don't know how else to illustrate something, because I'm not a super-great musician. In that way, I'm more like the producer.” KnowsWayWantTryingSongBitsKnow HowMusicianProducersVansGreat MusicianCopycats Author:Eleanor Friedberger
“I was working as a cocktail waitress in a heavy metal bar. Then, my manager said I should try some acting, which led to an audition Satisfaction, where I played a musician in an all-girl band. That movie is where I met my future ex-husband Jody Porter.” ShouldTryingSaidGirlActingMetsBandHusbandMusicianSatisfactionHeavyBarsManagersMetalsAuditionsExesMy FutureCocktailsWaitressHeavy MetalEx Husband Author:Britta Phillips
“You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste.” TryingTasteMusicianShock Author:Bradford Cox
“The fact of playing an instrument and singing... that I can try to make my dream of singing and becoming a professional musician come true is linked probably to the fact that I traveled a lot, which gave me an open mind and an ability to push my limits.” TryingMindI CanFactsDreamAbilityBecomingLimitsMusicianSingingInstrumentsTraveledLinkedOpen Mind Author:Rokia Traore
“Sometimes, I think the way the music business has been destructive and the way the fans are been put through it and try to navigate through it, so much is so foreign to what musicians would actually want to do or what would be natural to them.” ThinkingWayWantTryingHas BeensSometimesWould BeNaturalFansMusicianDestructiveMusic BusinessNavigate Author:Beck
“That’s why I make music. When I listen to my favorite music made by other people, that’s what it does to me. So as a musician, I’m just trying to do the same thing with music I make. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when someone comes to me and says the music I’ve made has affected them emotionally, that’s the most gratifying part of my job.” PeopleTryingDoeMadeSometimesJobsMusicianMy FavoriteAffectedFavorite Music Author:Moby
“If an ensemble - I don't care if it's a duet or a forty-piece orchestra - the musicians, the two of them or the forty of them, are all trying to play as tight as possible, as one person. They're trying to play like they are one person.” IfsTryingPersonsTwoPlayCarePiecesMusicianDon't CareI Don't CareFortyOrchestraEnsembleDuets Author:John Densmore
“Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.” NeedsTryingTwoCausesBehindsStyleBandConflictMusicianJazzSingersTunesSongwritersSinger SongwritersBallads Author:Van Morrison
“I'm going to be a better actor, or I'm going to try to be a better actor. I'm going to try to be a better musician. I'm going to be an artist instead of just this one thing.” TryingArtistActorsOne ThingMusician Author:Lola Kirke
“I think all musicians and producers, they know the real goal is to come up with a record that is entertaining and not boring, that's the goal. I think if everyone agrees that that's the goal then it doesn't matter who's the band and it doesn't matter who's the producer. It just means that that you try to realise the ambition no matter what the situation is or who the people are.” PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsTryingMeanRealMatterGoalSituationRecordsBandAmbitionMusicianNo Matter WhatAgreeCome UpBoringProducersRealisingEntertaining Author:Black Francis
“I read an interview with a Japanese freestyle jazz musician once, and he said something like, "Everything I'm going to tell you is not going to be true." He's not saying, "I'm trying to lie to you." But he's kind of saying that you can never say what something really is.” TryingKindSaidLyingMusicianJazzBeing TrueInterviewsJazz MusicJazz MusicianFreestyle Author:Paul Beatty
“I had success early on where I'm able to try to keep it fun, and I don't have to do things just for the sake of making a living, which a lot of my musician friends don't have that luxury of course.” TryingAbleCoursesFunMusicianSakeLuxuryMaking A Living Author:Norah Jones
“Patti [ Scialfa] was an artist and a musician and she was a songwriter. And she was a lot like me in that she was transient also. She worked busking on the streets in New York. She waitressed. She had - she just lived a life - she lived a musician's life. She lived an artist's life. So we were both people who were very uncomfortable in a domestic setting, getting together and trying to build one and seeing if our particularly strange jigsaw puzzle pieces were going to fit together in a way that was going to create something different for the two of us. And it did.” PeopleIfsWayTryingTwoDifferentTogetherArtistPiecesSeeingStreetsNew YorkStrangeFitMusicianSettingLike MeSettingsUncomfortableSongwritersPuzzlesTransientJust LiveTwo Of UsJigsawJigsaw PuzzlesPuzzle PieceBusking Author:Bruce Springsteen
“Many people, including myself, thought of Jobs as an inventor, an Edison-like figure, but he wasn't. I did a documentary on James Brown recently; and, oddly, I found a lot in common between Jobs and Brown. Jobs was also a fantastic performer, put on an extraordinary live show at his product launches, but he could also be ruthless, cruel and totally self-aggrandizing. And just as Brown surrounded himself with the very best musicians, Jobs understood the importance of hiring the absolutely most talented people and knew how crucial they were to the success of what he was trying to do.” PeopleTryingSelfShowsJobsFoundCommonFiguresProductsMusicianUnderstoodImportanceExtraordinaryIncludingFantasticBrownPerformersCrucialDocumentariesInventorRuthlessHiring Author:Alex Gibney
“The good thing about playing with other musicians is that it's much easier to make the translation to playing live. It's much more difficult if you're trying to take something you've overdubbed alone on stage. But again, there are some benefits.” IfsTryingDifficultStageEasierBenefitsMusicianGood ThingsTranslations Author:Steve Winwood
“When you get in the middle of a career and you're successful, people come and offer you things. My biggest fear was that if you try to do something else and you're trying to build your music career, and then you say, "I'm going to go do a movie," and you're terrible, you can really hurt your music career because as a musician, the goal is to be cool. You're playing the guitar and you're in front of all these people and your vibe is to be as cool as you can possibly be.” PeopleIfsTryingGoalHurtCareersSuccessfulMiddleFrontsTerribleOffersMusicianGuitarSuccessful PeopleBeing CoolBiggest FearMusic Career Author:Tim McGraw
“My attitude towards my time as a musician, is that I really wanted to completely reinvent myself and not be one of these people who, twenty, thirty years later, is trying to recreate something that happened. I'm glad that Neil Young still makes records, but I don't know that everybody needs to be frozen in time forever. I think it's good that pop music is ephemeral.” PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsTryingYearsStillsWantedYoungAttitudeForeverRecordsHappenedMusicianMusic IsTwentiesPopsGladThirtyMy TimeFrozenPop MusicThirty YearsMy AttitudeEphemeralFrozen In Time Author:Kurt Ralske
“I think a lot about writing and I try to read a lot. Being a musician, I don't take the words lightly; they are very, very important to me. At the same time, the words have to be musical and have to fit.” ThinkingWritingTryingImportantFitMusicianMusical Author:Steve Gunn
“I came to writing kind of late. I was an engineer, and the one thing I've learned is that you have to steer a project in the direction of the maximum fun for you. You could say lively energy, or you have to try to be intrigued. Basically, if you were a musician and you were playing joylessly, nobody would want to hear you.” WritingTryingKindEnergyFunMusicianLivelyIntrigued Author:George Saunders
“I was not part of the golden age of the record industry, when musicians and producers were making real money. So I have no nostalgia about that time and I enjoy trying to build a new economy, a more humble one. And since I expect to sell only niche music, I feel quite solid, in this little economy. I know we will not become rich with this, but this is not the goal.” TryingRealAgeEnjoyGoalEconomyRichMusicianHumbleNostalgiaProducersNiche Author:Gaspar Claus
“As a musician you fall into certain patterns that you're not conscious of, unless you start listening to yourself on tape a lot. If you do that you start recognizing habits; then you have to try and break them.” TryingFallBreakListeningHabitMusicianConscious Author:Jerry Garcia
“I think a lot of electronic musicians are drawn to starting with texture because the whole reason we're working with electronics is to try to create new sounds or sounds that cannot be created acoustically. When you're doing that, it's nice to be able to just create a different palette for every single song. I feel like a lot of electronic music sounds like...Each album sounds like a compilation more than it does a band.” ThinkingTryingDifferentReasonSongNiceMusicianElectronic Music Author:Dan Deacon
“I don't consider myself very principled. As a travelling musician, you have to adapt and adjust to different contexts every day. It is always difficult to connect preach and practice. For instance, I fly more in a year than I had hoped to do in my whole life. I eat what people serve me, not what I think is right. I tried writing songs that were principled, but always ended up contradicting myself when trying to convert the principles into practice. In fact, these days I try not to be too principled, but rather be pragmatic.” PeopleThinkingWritingTryingDifferentSongDifficultMusicianWhole LifePragmaticContradicting Author:Moddi
“I just like so many different kinds of music that I like experimenting. I don't want to keep making the same record over and over and over. I'm an 'evolve or die' kind of a musician. I think it's cool to try new things.” ThinkingTryingKindDifferentMusicianDifferent Kinds Author:Alan Cooper
“I can't get very excited about a musician who can do Art Tatum because I've got the Art Tatum records. I want to hear him take that and do something that hasn't been done. And there's enough of that going around that keeps the music very exciting. There's so many great young players coming out. I think we're in some kind of renaissance, especially in the rhythm section. I mean the musicians on drums and bass and guitar are really trying to figure out different ways to bring a rhythm section together.” ThinkingTryingKindMeanArtDifferentDoneEnoughTogetherPlayerMusicianExcitingExcitedRhythm Author:Gary Giddins
“What we're doing now, is to try to eradicate the limited notion of how people are interacting with each other through hyper-racialized ideas. A lot of it deal with, as an example, genre. If I ask you to visualize a trap musician or a hip-hop musician, you'll see one thing. If I say visualize a western classical musician, you'll see a very different thing. A lot of how music is disseminated to us is hyper-racialized. It's not something that we think about all the time, but if you take a minute to look back, it's why you get this argument when there's a white rapper.” PeopleThinkingTryingDifferentMusicianMusic IsArgumentWesternRapperClassical MusicRap Music Author:Christian Scott
“A lot of musicians are super - insecure and they take forever and they obsess over the minutia and it's really stifling. It's not that the band The Black Keys is that confident, it's that we're not striving for perfection. We are just trying to have fun. None of the music that we like is perfect. It's good. And real. We just want to make real records, flaws and all.” TryingRealFunBlackPerfectForeverMusicianPerfectionStriveHaving FunFlawsInsecure Author:Dan Auerbach
“As far as trying to make it terms of social hierarchy or status and all that in art and music - I've always felt that that stuff was bullshit. It's got very little to do with reality, and reality is where things live. You look at a painting and think, "Oh, it's beautiful. It inspires me," whatever. But it's never going to inspire you like reality. A lot of these artists and musicians who prioritize skill over experience, they sit around masturbating themselves over knowledge and intellect rather than just going to a place.” ThinkingTryingArtRealityBeautifulArtistTermInspirePaintingMusicianIntellectBullshitPrioritize Author:Willis Earl Beal
“There's a part of me, and I'm sure every single musician that writes for themselves has this: there's a layer of precious that you have to shed. I'm constantly trying to let go of, "Well, what about this, this would be cool." Some of that is needed, but a lot of it is total BS.” WritingTryingLetting GoMusicianShedBeing Cool Author:Sarah Jaffe
“You should form your own opinions, and I think that's why social media is good because it's an alternative source of information that can help you form your opinion, that might not be your parents, and might not be what the media is trying to force down your throat. So that's why it's important for artists and musicians to speak up, because for those people who have an inkling that their parents' views aren't right or that their parents don't have any views or whatever, that's an alternative source of information that can help them form their own opinion.” PeopleThinkingTryingImportantHelpingArtistSpeakParentOpinionMusicianSocial Media Author:Ellie Rowsell
“If you're listening to a symphony, you're getting all the information, including the audience around you, the delay from the sides of the concert hall, the whole thing. If one of those musicians is sharply out of tune or starts to play a different piece of music than all the others in the orchestra, you immediately notice. When you analyze systems by listening, you can just listen, and you can tell whether the system is healthy or unhealthy. What I've created for you is a perfect model of how we should be listening to our stock market, rather than trying to see it graphically.” TryingDifferentPerfectAudienceListeningHealthyMusicianJust Listen Author:Gordon Hempton
“I hate having my photograph taken and I try to keep that in mind when I'm photographing other people. But the best photos that I've taken are the ones when people have forgotten that I'm there. If I'm in a recording studio with a musician, for example, maybe I'm not photographing them in the middle of a take but I can just get that stolen moment of them resting and they glance over to me.” PeopleTryingMindMomentsHateTakenMusicianI HatePhotographForgotten Author:Devendra Banhart
“I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.” TryingSongEnjoyStruggleMusicianWork Out Author:Dave Gahan
“You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.” TryingKindMusicianAmbiguous Author:Bradford Cox
“I want to change and try new ideas - allowing your sonic identity to evolve in your music and not being afraid of that. You see musicians hit upon something that works, and then go, "Let's keep doing that for 10 years." And that idea kind of terrifies me a little bit. It becomes like a day job then.” TryingKindIdentityMusicianEvolveBeing Afraid Author:Alex Kapranos
“I think most cartoonists are solitary, lonely kids who use their work as a way to try to connect with the world. If I had any other skills that were more performative - if I could have been a musician or an actor - I'm sure I would have pursued that instead in order to get that instant feedback and to hear applause.” ThinkingWorldTryingKidsMusicianLonelyInstantSolitaryFeedbackCartoonist Author:Adrian Tomine
“When you're a touring musician, you're always turning over new rocks and there's always a certain level of tension in your life. The music business, and the travel that comes with it, is stressful, challenging, redundant, exhausting, exciting, and often very depressing. After all of these years, I'm still trying to cope with aspects of it.” TryingChallengesMusicianExcitingTensionDepressingMusic BusinessStressfulRedundant Author:Mark Kozelek
“There are certain records from the 80s and early 90s that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production. Over the last 20 years, myself and a lot of other musicians my age have tried to discover things in 50s, 60s, and 70s recording techniques that were lost or discarded. We've all been trying to crack this code. It's been an important period in the last 15 years, reclaiming some of those lost approaches to making records.” TryingImportantAgeSongLove IsMusicianCode Author:Beck
“In general, the musicians we met that made the most sense just said to do what feels right and try not worry about what other people think. I know that sounds stupid and simple. I feel like Neil Young has done that and he's still making albums. He's one of the people I really look up to as someone who has kind of stuck to their guns their whole career. Just making music for music.” PeopleThinkingTryingKindDoneSimpleWorryStupidMusicianGunStuckLook Up Author:Andrew VanWyngarden
“Black musicians were either trying to be American or trying to play down their Caribbean roots.” TryingBlackMusician Author:Jazzie B
“I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.” IfsThinkingTryingLooksPersonsMightFunHoursRoomsImagineMusicianTwelveLocked Author:Leo Kottke
“I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.” ThinkingTryingStillsMusician Author:Geddy Lee
“I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theater. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth.” PeopleTryingKindChildrenArtArtistGrowthLinesCreativeClearExpressionMusicianTheaterRaisedPhotographerPainterHippieCreative Expression Author:Jared Leto
“These people are artists. These people are musicians. They're taking it out and trying to express it that way.” PeopleWayTryingArtistMusician Author:Marilyn Manson
“Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.” TryingEndsStarsMusicianPopsObjectivesThe End Of The DayAbandonedAestheticPop StarsPertinentAnd At The End Of The DayGreatest Musician Author:Wynton Marsalis
“There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.” TryingBelieveStillsDoneMillionsRichRecordsHugeMusicianSellsMarketingCampaignsSellingGet RichDelusionalMarketing Campaigns Author:Moby
“There's a fairly extensive network of musicians on tour who are all trying to stay sober, and we generally reach out to each other and offer support when and where we can.” TryingSupportOffersMusicianReach OutSober Author:Moby
“When I decided to be a musician I reckoned that that was going to be the way of less profit, less money. I was sort of giving up the idea of making a lot of money. It was what I loved to do. I would have done it anyway. If I'd had to work at Taco Bell I'd have still been out at night trying to play music.” IfsWayGivingTryingStillsIdeasDonePlayNightMoneyGiving UpMusicianDecidedProfitBellsLots Of MoneyPettyTacosTaco Bell Author:Tom Petty