Since I've grown up I really wanted to be able to create something different. In Persian music, opposite, again, to classical music, that the instrument developed and evolved over, like, hundreds of years, our instrument all remained the same.
I've been musically inclined since I picked up an instrument in the fourth grade. I just really appreciate music. I love to listen to it; I love to sing. I wouldn't consider myself, like, a natural singer. I just developed it over time, honestly, just listening. I'm a great listener to music.
Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument. When you think about the fact that the instrument has changed significantly since he wrote for it and his music still really works, it's brilliant. He was definitely ahead of his time. There's something so satisfying about his music. It's beautifully organized and emotional at the same time. I find it highly exciting.
Music is monophonic in the Eastern world, especially if we're talking about Indian music, Persian music. What we have in classical and Western world is harmony. So I think it's a great idea to be able to bring the best of two together and create something new.
I actually think that bass is probably the instrument that has evolved in a quantum leap compared to other instruments. It's the instrument that's evolved the most, especially with how it's perceived. And even how it's played, and how it's viewed from a point of view of commerce, like with the music industry.
Violin for me is a great instrument because you can use it as a rhythmical instrument and also as a melodic instrument. ... You can pretty much do everything with the violin. Sometimes I feel classical music limits the violin.
I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument.
I think of music a lot when I paint. The theme of it to a degree is music. So instead of literally putting in music or literally putting in a musical instrument, I use only a hint of the instrument, but the brocaded pattern is like a line of Bach because of its order and the leaves going up are like passages from Vivaldi, and the emphasis on drapery is where the sound comes.
Learning to play old instruments was a challenge. How do you learn an instrument no one has played in hundreds of years? The ones that are used today, I was adamant not to hear anyone else play that instrument. I want to approach them as a child and on the basis of each instrument. I wanted my voice to come through, not someone else's.
My father was able to play a number of musical instruments and I fell in love with classical music in my teens and I allowed it to influence me. I like to think I took and still do from classical music and various techniques, I have made classical albums and recorded seven different pieces of Bach on different albums and its all music too me.
The basic idea of a hyper instrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how its being played - literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is.
Ever since I was like 13 and 14 writing music, I said, I have to be able to do different types. Because if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again, it will just get boring.
I got into one of the Scottish classical styles called piobaireachd, which is a very old music that started around the 1700s or something. I really got into this music. After that, I started to compose bagpipe music in my notations. Then I started building bagpipes by myself, and then I started to perform with the instrument myself in the 1980s.
There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.
I have now transformed into a sensitive; a person who is able to detect when spirits are present. It's a skill that's evolved over hundreds of paranormal investigations and has taught me that the human body is the best means of paranormal detection. I've become a fine-tuned instrument of spiritual sensitivity.
I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again.
Don't be lazy. Learn your instrument and the kids should be learning that stuff. We have to get back to the musicianship of the music. It's called music, so at some point somebody has to learn how to play an instrument.