A Quote by Tony MacAlpine
Well sometimes I do not listen to music. But when I do it could range from Frank Sinatra to Copeland. I spend a great deal of time playing the piano because it really is my salvation at times. But I am perfectly happy just going on a long bike ride that takes many days to complete and staying away from music for a bit. It always feels so fresh when you return to the instrument with a different observation of things than when you were last there.
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It pleases me that Frank Sinatra's music still has an audience, because many people who have come into the music world and then passed out of the music world are long since forgotten. He has been able to enjoy this great longevity.
I spend a lot of time working and with my family, so I don't have much time around the edges to do much else. I don't really listen to a great deal of music. I love music, but since I spend a lot of time in the studio, we probably watch a movie rather than listen to albums. I get to hear stuff, but not on the grand scale.
I think there will always be great new music and bands. As long as there's people around, there's going to be great music. I think there's bands like Wolf Eyes, Q & Not U, the Evens and many others that are doing great stuff. The music that doesn't please you, you just don't listen. No one makes me listen to Nickelback, so long may they wave.
I came from being a singer going into jazz. And that's one of the things that polio did for me is it took away my ability to sing with a range because it paralyzed my vocal chords, so that was when I started playing. But I hear the music as if I were singing even when I am playing.
My music is just fresh. Everybody say it's a breath of fresh air because it's not like the normal Houston sound you would hear. I am from Houston and I use that same slang and I carry myself the same way as a Houstonian and I'm a Houston dude born and raised, but the music is a lil bit different due to the things I've seen and the things I've learned and put that into my music.
When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.
In the mid-'60s, AM radio, pop radio, was just this incredible thing that played all kinds of music... You could hear Frank Sinatra right into the Yardbirds. The Beatles into Dean Martin. It was this amazing thing, and I miss it, in a way, because music has become so compartmentalized now, but in those days, it was all right in one spot.
I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible. The last girlfriend I had, when we broke up, I remember being in a room for days on days on days with my music cranked up, playing songs like Kanye's '808's & Heartbreak.' That playlist just was long!
A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.
Instead of the metaphor of scales in balance, I prefer the idea of a jazz quartet: you're trying to make music that feels and sounds good, and sometimes you only hear the trumpet or just the bass and piano. Sometimes all four are playing at the same time, but perhaps at different volume.
As far as using electronics in my music, I have to do that as honestly as possible. Also, I have a broad range of listeners from a classical music base, as well as people, like me, who listen to a lot of different music. So I'm mindful of letting my sitar playing remain at the center of what I do.
I've been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I've seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.
And just everyone in the 40s, you got to realize, for his time period, take Justin Bieber and put it on steroids - there was no one like Frank Sinatra before that. And you didn't have the amount of outlets that you have today and the variety that you have today. So, the Great American Songbook united the nation unlike any other music, because there weren't so many different kinds of communications.
It's not so much less pressure, it's less work, which is really exciting to me. I'm just personally looking forward to being able to spend a little more time doing different things, so that's really great. Jay and I are writing a book this year which is really fun and so yeah, I am very excited to spend less crazy 12-hour days on set. Those were taxing times.
Music to me was never something that I could listen to while reading a book. Especially when I was studying music, if I was going to listen to music, I was going to put on the headphones or crank the stereo, and by God, I was going to sit there and just listen to music. I wasn't going to talk on the phone and multitask, which I can't do anyway.
The relationship that people have with music is entirely different now. People spend much less time experiencing music on a one on one level than they could have if they were a part of a different generation. I find this ironic since we have so many tools at our finger tips to be engaged by media in all forms.
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