Instrumental Music Quotes

• After all my years of doing instrumental music I still like just a simple instrumental song with a nice catchy melody and an opportunity to play a solo over a harmonic structure.

  Stanley Clarke

  Song, Nice, Opportunity

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• Instrumental music can spread the international language.

  Herb Alpert

  Music, Jazz, Language

  Twitter post from Oct 18, 2017

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• The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.

  Franz Liszt

  Real, Character, Shining

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• Where words fail, music speaks.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Inspirational, Music, Art

  Hans Christian Andersen (1876). “Stories for the Young”

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• Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

  David Sanborn

  Music, Jazz, Marginalized

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• Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.

  Confucius

  Music, Wisdom, Art

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• Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument... actually, you are singing inside.

  Ali Akbar Khan

  Play, Singing, Important

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• Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

  David Sanborn

  Media, Outlets, Music Is

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• Music is the universal language of mankind.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Music, Appreciation, Teacher

  1835 OutreMer. Also attributed to Christopher North (1865-1954).

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• I probably listen to more instrumental music than music with lyrics, but at the same time I do love both.

  Flume

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

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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 your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Jazz And Life, Boundaries

  "Bird: the legend of Charlie Parker". Book by Robert George Reisner, p. 27, 1977.

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• I really love the fact that instrumental music can have you do your own inner-movies or your own visuals to the sound. There's not lyrics dictating what you should feel.

  Trentemøller

  Sound, Facts, Should

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

  Richard Wagner

  Essence, Able, Tone

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• If music be the food of love, play on.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Romantic

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

  Carlos Santana

  Long, Language, Speak

  "Carlos Santana: 'My daughter beat me at Guitar Hero'" by Peter Robinson, www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2012.

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• If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Art, Reality

  Quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

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• I really feel instrumental music can speak - can contain tremendous amounts of information - but it's speaking to your subconscious.

  Glenn Branca

  Information, Speak, Subconscious

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way.

  Stephen Malkmus

  Memorable, Guitar, Play

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female.

  Charles Darwin

  Sex, Singing, Males

  Charles Darwin (1871). “The Descent of Man: And Selection in Relation to Sex”, p.99

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• You look back, and it was important to bring back instrumental music, and it was great to be a part of that wave of instrumental rock music. And clearly it was something I was destined to do.

  Stuart Hamm

  Rocks, Important, Looks

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• The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

  George Crumb

  Development, Remarkable, Idiom

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• I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words.

  Rosanne Cash

  Painting, Language, Miles

  "Rosanne Cash Lists Influences, Including Famous Father’s, in New Memoir". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. August 17, 2010.

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• It's always made me feel odd when I'd get a Dove Award for an instrumental album that has nothing to do with gospel. When I think of gospel music, I think of spreading the Good News with words. But maybe it's just because I was heralded once upon a time as one of theirs. The category of instrumental music seems sort of important to the big picture, but I felt a little embarrassed at the same time.

  Phil Keaggy

  Thinking, Awards, Once Upon A Time

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• The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself.

  John Zorn

  Heart, Mean, Thinking

  "'Masada Songbook': Zorn Redefines Jewish Music". "Weekend Edition Sunday" with Liane Hansen, www.npr.org. November 13, 2005.

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