Keith Jarrett Quotes

I think Beethoven means dissonances to be more stressed than consonances - it's the shock tactician in him.

Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.

I think dissonance in music makes you think. It isn't, 'Oh, that's a pretty melody I can whistle.' You have to sit down and listen to tell it apart from other things.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

I seen a lot of changes. You got to make changes. I even make changes in my blues.

You make a record like 'Jump,' people are stuck in that world. They want you to keep making records like 'Jump.' People don't understand that you got to move on; you got to do something else. You have to evolve and go to something else. And most of the time, when it's time for you to move, other people are not prepared for that move.

I wonder what would have happened if automation and computers had existed when 'Oklahoma!' was having its out-of-town try-out, and three days before closing in Boston, when it was still called 'Away We Go,' they added a new song called 'Oklahoma!' I don't think that could happen today. It's almost impossible to change musicals on the go now.

Even though I loved the Fifties doo-wop, you couldn't hold on to it. You had to change, or you was gon' be antique real quick, like the Ink Spots. And then we were at Motown and you had the Rolling Stones, simple rock & roll became the new thing.

I'm just growing so quickly, so my songs are quickly changing on me. But it's fine. I love them for what they are and what they were, to me.

I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.

I'm a guy where my perfect pitch has been altered by the fact that I usually tune up to what's going on. When I was a kid, it was horrible! If two notes were playing right next to each other, and they were dissonant, it would drive me nuts. If it was something that sounded like it was in between notes, it'd make me cringe.

One thing I have found over years is that if you change direction, the initial reaction tends to be very polarized, but as the music gradually filters through and fans start engaging with it on its own terms rather than comparing it to what went before, the appreciation and acceptance of it increases.

I just feel like bands with the same people, no matter how different the band themselves thinks it is, the listeners go, 'Oh, yeah, it's another Nirvana record.'

Music is always gonna change; it's just a matter of keeping up with the times.

I will stop nasal singing. I will change if the time comes. I am 100% sure about it. The day I feel people are loving some different kind of music, I will opt for it and change myself.

I found my way back into music and realized that it's not that the music went away after losing my hearing, I just get the privilege of enjoying it and experiencing it differently.

The code of life is like a Beethoven symphony. We have not yet learned how to write music like that. But evolution does it very well. I am learning how to use evolution to compose new music.

The Manchester move was OK. I was still in England and I knew I could go back home.

So the language of musical harmony is an absolutely extraordinary one. It's a way of navigating one's emotional frameworks, but without the need to put things into words, and I think that, as with many other languages, it doesn't matter how much you know about a language.

I think where a lot of the stuff came from is that it started as something else and then it was transformed into something that worked in the context of a song that I might have been working on.

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 never want to make a complete, 180 reactional record. I wanted a connection to what I've done in the past but still move forward and evolve.

To listen to my first record, it doesn't sound like me.

Whenever you are in a new system, and you go on summer break and come back for training camp Day 1, you don't know how much is really going to stick.

Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has changed, clothes have changed, food habits have changed, so why should music remain the same?