Aural Artistry Quotes

This is one of my favorite things to do, working with a symphonic accompaniment, because I don't sing - and this is as close as I will come to singing.

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.

I can play the harmonica with my nose.

When I make music, it's a very visual thing. Conjures up a lot of images.

I'm a painter in sound.

Music is everywhere and in everything! I draw my inspiration from the day to day activities of my life!

The music becomes something that is its own entity.

Sound is ephemeral, fleeting, but some sort of a physical manifestation can help you hold on to it longer in time. I'm sure of this; I've always thought the sound that you make is just the tip of the iceberg, like the person that you see physically is just the tip of the iceberg as well.

'Prima Donna' is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.

I use my hands like a sculptor, to mold and shape the sound I want, to clarify.

With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.

Jazz vision is a wordless conversation between musical notes and visual expressions.

Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.

The whole problem of the sound-work is distancing oneself from the dramatic.

I think the voice does that perfectly adequately without being imitated by other instruments.

If I could make noise with anything, I was going to.

My concept when making music is that there is no border between music and noise.

I don't have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it.