Top 1200 Great Musician Quotes & Sayings

I'd rather be just a Korean musician as opposed to, you know, a K-Pop musician.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician.

Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.'

I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

My grandfather is a musician, my son is a musician and a singer. My mother played the piano too.

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace.

Solo, you don't have compromise. It gets back to what's great when you're a musician.

A great musician is just a thief who doesn't get caught

I was an independent musician for ten years before I became a musician for movies.

You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician.

Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.

I’ve always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I’ve never lost sight of that.

I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

If you're a musician, you're a musician; you don't ever get that out of your bones.

The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.

He has a method that likens the musician to an athlete, so I do physical exercises designed to keep a musician in shape in order to perform the function, which is to play music.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

Jay Ashby is simply a great musician!

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

I've been given the tools necessary to be a great musician, a great entertainer, and great person that's gonna inspire everyone.

I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid.

My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career.

Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.

I'm a great songwriter, but I'm not the most talented musician.

Just because a musician writes a great album doesn't mean they don't want to continue writing great music.

He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one.

'Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.

Solomon was a musician and David was a musician, so it's a profession that I take seriously.

I'm a keen musician. Me and my mates have a great times jamming and recording stuff. We have a great band behind us and have turned my nursery-rhyme songs into quite credible pieces of music.

Yeah, we try to get the best musicians possible, and Justin [Robinson] is a great musician, man, a great player. You must have been surprised to see him out there, then.

When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

My dad is my biggest influence on me as a musician, even though he's not a musician.

I'm not saying that in order to be a great jazz musician you have to be a great classical pianist first. But I am saying that it makes things easier when you can get around the instrument, and you have some idea of how to approach the various hurdles.

I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.

I'm a horrible musician, but I've been fortunate enough to play great songs.

Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician

I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player.

I'm a musician, I always was a musician, and now I've got a song on the radio, so I'm definitely a musician.

I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available.

If it takes me 10 years to be the musician I want to be, great.

As a working musician, your first instinct is to try and do your job. It wasn't always my aspiration to sing; I just wanted to be a great working musician. But then Flying Lotus suggested I try, and nothing has ever been the same since.

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

One musician listens to another musician, and you get inspired and then you do your thing, but it's yours.

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.

I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

I think one of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

As a musician, basically the masses never thought I was a musician.