Top 115 Quotes & Sayings by Chris Thile - Page 2

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

Different people need different things.

The world's music is at our fingertips, so if we like music, we kind of owe it to ourselves to check in with all of that.

The fact that I'm a fifth of Punch Brothers... that's lucky for me because I feel like I get to operate in the context of one of the great string bands. There's just not another string band I would rather be in, and i'm just compelled to make music for and with string bands. It's what I know, and it's kind of like who I am.

I'd say playing with a group or playing solo are equally rewarding, but in a different way.

It's important to allow people to affect you. If we kept that at the forefront of our minds, maybe we wouldn't be as divided as we are.

I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and now I'm not that. It was not an act of rebellion or anything. For me, it was about being in a line of work where I was meeting so many different people and feeling like they all had legitimate points of view that I needed to consider and occasionally these were at odds with ideas that I was raised with.

Great music is the only genre that actually matters, and the members of that club are far more similar to each other than they are to any genre they might be commonly associated with.

I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.

There are two genres of music: there's good music and there's bad music.

I'm always going to need to play in front of people.

I'm a massive Roger Federer fan, and sometimes I can see in his game the willful development of a tactic or technique that doesn't come as naturally to him, like fixating on improving the backhand. And I'm thinking, Hit the forehand! It's what you do!

I just love getting as many experiences making music for and with people as possible.

I'm obsessed with the idea of genrelessness and generationlessness.

I'm slow by nature; even if I write something fast, I'll let it sit for a month and hem and haw over it.

I guess I am working pretty much all the time.

For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That's a lovely thing, but you can't rely on that.

I've always taken a lot of joy in my work, but it's also been very results-oriented. It's kind of like, making the thing, and taking a lot of joy in that, as opposed to allowing myself to be transported by the work of my fellow musicians.

New York will make you feel small. I think that's good. At least, it's good for me.

I love music so much. It's like the one thing I'm good at.

I'm a musician, and I feel like musicians owe it to themselves and owe it to music to concern themselves with as much of music as interests them. Even if you decide that you're never going to compose, you will be a better performer if you concern yourself with the craft of composition.

There's a lot of steps between there not being music and there being music. Composition is one part of that, but if no one performs it... It's like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound?

I obviously love music very, very much.

I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.

I love music with everything I have, and when I am in a front of a classroom talking about music sometimes someone will ask me a question and it reminds me to really think about something, to really feel something.

There's something about a variety show, I think, that disarms us as consumers of something. We're laughing, and there's this sense of anything goes, anything could happen.

The name 'Clara' is significant in my life. When I was an adolescent and started thinking about my place in the world as an adult and growing up, I knew I would have an eventually new outlook on things and eventually meet someone and have a kid. In my mind, I was like, 'If I have a daughter, I want to name her Clara.'

Musicians and non-musicians alike are priding themselves on the width and breadth of their musical interests, which I think is to be encouraged.

Improvisation is an important part of bluegrass, and I would hasten to add that classical music wasn't always such an improvisational void. Back in the day, everyone's cadenzas were improvised, and improvisation was taught in conservatories.

My favorite bar in New York City is called Milk and Honey, a great cocktail bar.

There is a certain immortality in the change that another person effects on another person.

I was introduced to classical music by my grandparents - my parents were mostly into folk and jazz. Even as a young man, I was literally unaware of the distinctions between any of that, and I still think it's pointless.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

Tradition matters. To me it's not a limiting force; it's a springboard.

I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.

For years, my actual listening activity has been governed by what I perceived to be good for me as a musician, almost like the way an athlete trains for a given sporting task. I'd listen to something if I felt it would improve my sense of harmony or counterpoint, or whatever I was working on.

I'm just done downplaying how much I love Radiohead and how massive of an influence they are on what I do, because it's pretty obvious.

Everything in our lives is encouraging us to turn inward with all the technology that we have available to us.

I think what people call genre is just a question of orchestration. So, for instance, with Punch Brothers, you look at that band and say that's a bluegrass band, when really it's an orchestration choice.

The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.

I think people are largely proud of being musically on the risk. Any time you talk to someone about music, I feel like everyone is kind of always underlining just, you know, how voracious their appetites for various things are.

I think people react so strongly to hearing the human voice, you can't give them too much of it or else they want it all the time.

Kill your television. Throw it out the darn window. Watch PBS in a bar.

If I was any happier, you'd think I was on crack.

I was trained completely by ear. And it was actually diving into the Bach that led me to get - there was like a Mel Bay "Teach Yourself How To Sight Read..."

I really love how the andante from the "A minor Sonata" sounds on the mandolin.

I'll never feel as comfortable singing as I do playing. The mandolin is my real voice. My actual voice is sort of my secondary voice, but I love to do it and I love giving people relief from playing with a little bit of singing.

It was kind of sort of the heavens opened up and I realized that Bach, at least, you know - out of all the classical music - needs to be a big part of my life.

The real question is, do you root for the fox in that song? Or are you horrified that the goose and the duck are being dragged off to their death, which is described in detail?

I say if you're not obsessing about something, you might not be into it quite enough.

My thesis statement would be—Bach didn't write Baroque music. He wrote great music.

I celebrate three holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Telluride.

The minute you make a record because you think somebody's going to play it on the radio is the minute you ought to quit.

The purists are small in number but, you know hardy of voice.

If you want to be happy, you listen to the music; if you want to be sad, you listen to the words.