Musical Dissonance Quotes

Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.

I dunno... I feel out of step. Musically. Just out of step, not even behind or ahead. Just sort of like... I dunno, sometimes I feel like I'm still... just not... in sync. I don't know how to explain it. I just am.

Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.

I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it.

Music attacks my inner ear like an antagonist, it's not my world.

If you had to call it "unison", it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than "unison", it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.

Most music that you hear is in synch with itself. We were experimenting with the music falling out of synch with itself and even though it is out of synch you mind can still understand what it is meant to be doing.

Discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.

The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.

When I hear 'fusion,' I think of Tricky-Dick stuff - really hairy melodies played in unison. It's like, 'Why?'

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

There is no earthly reason why a solo string instrument or voice, having the possibility to play or sing pure intonation, should want, or try, to be tempered.

The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.

It always sounds more right to me when it's detuned. When it's right in tune, it's like there's something slightly off. But at the end of the day, it's all about frequencies and what they do to you. That's the real core.