Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
I was aware of that theme of mortality in my music since around 2009. The decaying and the disappearance of the piano sound is very much symbolic of life and mortality. It's not sad. I just meditate about it.
To record the perfect album. That is my dearest wish.
I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.
It was a very rare moment in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Ordinary people went out to the streets to speak anti-nuclear sentiments.
I'm a terrible drummer; I almost cannot play the guitar nor sax nor trumpet.
In Japanese culture, there is a belief that God is everywhere - in mountains, trees, rocks, even in our sympathy for robots or Hello Kitty toys.
I easily fall asleep during a movie.
Our body is part of nature. Our creations, they're not natural. We build things that aren't natural, but our bodies, they're part of that system.
The first music I got really into was Bach.
I have been a long time fan of Jean-Luc Godard. It's my dream to work with him.
I have a longing for violin or organ. Is it too simple to say those sustaining sounds symbolise immortality?
The key concept is to open your ears. Music can be here and there, anywhere surrounding you.
It's a very intimate, closed universe, doing my own music. It's just me, basically. I have to inspire myself; I have to do everything by myself.
The piano is the instrument I can play the most.
I always think about music horizontally and vertically at the same time.
I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, 'Nature tuned it.'
Ever since I was 18 or 19, I've wanted to question the sound, tones, and scale associated with the piano as an instrument symbolic of modern European music.
I'm trying to relax, but it's hard.
I want to be lazier. This is the luxurious dream I have: Doing nothing all day, just watching the clouds and DVDs.
Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.
Although I don't understand Russian, I like the sound.
I had never really liked the music by Gabriel Faure, but just by chance, listening to some pieces by him, I got very interested. So I listened to almost everything. All the pieces written by him. I was digging deeper and deeper. I'm not sure I still like his music or not, but it's interesting.
Time is the main subject for any musicians, music writers, composers.
I've worked with the same Prophet 5 Synthesizer by Sequential Circuit synthesiser for 40 years.
Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'
The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.
Time in our universe is always one way: no going back, no reverse. In music, you can reverse it!
Japan used to be an animistic society before Shinto imperialism was established. But most of us still have an animistic sense.
I don't really know about the art world.
I hope to record the perfect album, my masterpiece, before I die.
Looking back at my early career, I had a positive view of technology and its potential. It was a happy time, that's for sure.
When we went to see the first rough cuts of 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence,' I fell to the floor because my acting was so bad. I wrote music to compensate for my bad acting.
I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.
My concept when making music is that there is no border between music and noise.
I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was quite busy!
Japanese people can feel some attachment in what they are making, whether it is a car or a TV or a computer.
Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.
We musicians often get inspiration from films and books or photographs, not only by music.
For making music for myself, I just need to be happy. I'm the producer, the director, and the listener.
I don't get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good - Bach, Beethoven - yes, good.
I honestly like any sound. Birds. I have a very broad space to accept or enjoy anything except quiet.
I think there's a genuine difference between the real and the virtual in music.
Playing jazz in restaurants is too stereotypical.
Hopefully, we will become a stronger democratic society and avoid falling into xenophobia. Hopefully, we build good relationships with our neighboring countries and, rather than acting for profit for the current generation, acting in a way that will ensure we leave natural resources for future generations.
You're changing every day, right? Your curiosities and ambitions change, your ear changes, the music you like changes - and the music you want to make, too.
I'm fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: a sound that won't dissipate over time. Essentially, the opposite of a piano, because the notes never fade. I suppose, in literary terms, it would be like a metaphor for eternity.
Music is like nuclear plants. In a way, it's true! Music is totally artificial. Still using some material from nature, a piano is assembled with wood and iron. Nuclear power uses material from nature, but it's been manipulated by humans, and it produces something unnatural.
I wanted to hear sounds of everyday objects - even musical instruments - as things.
In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.
As soon as I choose the timbre of an instrument, that dominates how I compose.
Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.
Each time I work on a film, I say to myself, 'This is it. This is the end.' Because it is so stressful, it's like torture.
I'm very shy about seeing my own face on the screen.
Piano symbolizes interiority.
For me, change doesn't happen on a linear basis; it zig-zags back and forth.
I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
A young musician needs a powerful laptop and a good analogue synthesiser.
When I imagine some music in my mind, almost automatically, I imagine the piano keys.
I know Brazilian music. I have worked with Brazilians many times.
My main interest in synthesizers when I was an older teenager was to escape from the spell of the 12-tone system or, in a more broad sense, the spell of the European modern-music system. That led me to explore towards electronic music and ethnic music.
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