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

topic: Nice, Different, Would Be, Music Theory

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

topic: Music, Art, People, Music Theory

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

source: Igor Stravinsky “An Autobiography”, Library of Alexandria

topic: Music, Men, Order, Music Theory, Coordination

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

topic: Music, Play, Keys, Jazz Musician, Ignorance Is Bliss

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

- Ludwig van Beethoven

topic: Music, Knowledge, World, Music Theory, World Music

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

topic: Class, Play, Peers, Music Theory

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

- Gottfried Leibniz

topic: Music, Pleasure, Arithmetic, Music Theory

You are the music while the music lasts.

- T. S. Eliot

topic: Music, Dope, Lasts, Jazz And Life, Musical Life

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

topic: Spiritual, Art, Real, Music Theory, Real Story

Music can change the world.

- Ludwig van Beethoven

topic: Music, Peace, World, Music Life, Music And Life

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

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

topic: Crafts, Anything And Everything, Students, Music Theory

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

topic: Thinking, Jazz, Hart, Music Theory, Gershwin

... 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

topic: Music, Thinking, Sound, Music Theory

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

topic: Music, Discovery, Perception, Blues Music, Music Theory

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

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

topic: Art, Air, Ideas, Music Theory, Art And Music

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

- Amos Lee

topic: Zero, Needs, Theory, Music Theory

Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

topic: Music, Piano, Different, Music Theory

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

- Frank Zappa

topic: Love, Music, Marriage, Music Theory, Famous Musician

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

topic: Skills, Issues, Tools, Music Theory, Spacing

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

topic: Unique, Player, Guitar, Music Theory

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

source: Source: www.noise11.com

topic: Stars, School, Writing, Music Theory

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

- Blake Judd

topic: School, Theory, Halfway, Semester, Music Theory

Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

- Robert Browning

topic: Music, Solitude, Feels, Spiritual Music, Writing Music

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

topic: Rude, Needs, Stuff, Music Theory

I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days.

- Isao Tomita

topic: Senior, Art, School, Ymca, Music Theory

Which is to say that culture is not a reflex of political economy, but that society is now a reflex of key shifts in music theory and practice.... [Sampladelia is] the sound made by those early-twentieth-century discoveries in particle physics and relativiity theory, the projection of the minds of Einstein, Heisenbery, and Bohr, their fateful explorations of liquid time, curving space, uncertainty fields and relativity theorems, into densely configured and fully ambivalent android music tracks

- Arthur Kroker

topic: Space, Keys, Discovery, Music Theory, Reflexes

I always wanted to be a musician, 100 percent, my whole life. I went to school, I did music theory, I did voice training and piano lessons, and while I was a decent musician, it didn't seem like enough for me. I felt like I wanted to make more than just music.

- Adria Petty

topic: School, Voice, Piano, Music Theory, Piano Lesson

I studied voice when I was at school, and I was in the chamber choir, and I studied music theory as well, so I guess a lot of it came from being taught at school.

- Lily Allen

topic: School, Voice, Taught, Music Theory

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.

- Moby

topic: Rocks, Guitar, Years, Music Theory, Classical Guitar

Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.

- Zooey Deschanel

topic: Mean, Writing, Player, Instrumentalists, Music Theory

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

- Black Francis

source: Interview with Scott Gordon, www.avclub.com. October 19, 2006.

topic: People, Style, Musician, Music Theory, Writing Style

I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition.

- Rohinton Mistry

source: "Touched with fire" by Angela Lambert, www.theguardian.com. April 26, 2002.

topic: Music Theory, Piano Lesson

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

- Leonard Bernstein

topic: Music, Joy, Should, Music Theory, Musical Composition

When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music.

- Moby

source: "Exclusive Premiere of Moby’s New Video, 'The Last Day'". Interview with Jaeah Lee, www.motherjones.com. September 2, 2014.

topic: Rocks, Band, Punk, Music Theory