Top 64 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Fripp
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English musician Robert Fripp.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.
Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can't accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.
Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.
I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.
If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.
However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.
I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'
The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.
Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.
Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.
But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.
Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.
I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening.
In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.
My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.
According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.
The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.
The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?
So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.
If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.
A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.
My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.
There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.
And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.
What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.
To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?
What we hear is the quality of our listening.
Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.
The aim is freedom conscience and truth
When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.
The only reward the musician receives is music: the privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes us into its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes real.
Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.
The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.
Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.
Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.
When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
Beginner's luck is great for beginners.
There is a difference between being a timekeeper and keeping the pulse or being in step with the pulse in the band.
I continue to explain that plot inconsistencies in B movies are consistent, and should not be allowed to undermine one's enjoyment of the action, nor the fundamental credibility of the storyline: the good & bad guys are clearly delineated & easily recognizable, the hero duffs over the baddies, things blow up loudly & spectacularly, the good guy wins. Entirely credible.
Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.
In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
I would like, with the sun shining through the window on a crisp early-autumnal mid-morning, with a sufficiency of Monster Cappucino flowing in my veins to prompt minimal sentience, to declare my view for the record that Drummer Jokes are a cruel and pernicious form of humour introduced to the world by under-humoured persons lacking in sensitivity and concern for other drummers.
The creative musician ... is ... the radio receiver, not the broadcasting station. His personal discipline is to improve the quality of the components, the transistors, the speakers, the alloys in the receiver itself, but never to concern himself overmuch with putting out the program. The program is there; all he has to do is receive it as far as possible.
Music never goes away. It is always available, but we're not always available for music.
To me, art is the capacity to experience one's innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable.
The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it's going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it's more likely to happen.
The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.
The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry.
Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.
Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
What has changed in 40 years? It’s very simple: 40 years ago there was a market economy. Today there is a market society – today everything, including ethics, has a price.
Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.
We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.
That certain feeling happened to me in a big way quite often with the first King Crimson. Amazing things would happen-I mean, telepathy, qualities of energy, things that I had never experienced before with music. You can't tell whether the music is playing the musician or the musician is playing the music.
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