A Quote by Vijay Iyer

When I give a concert, I know they're not going to hear everything; there might be a lot going on. My individual perceptual and cognitive path through the music is just that: one path through music. My experience will be probably at some level different from other people's, and that multiplicity of experience has to be supported by the music. I might just focus on the cowbell the whole time - maybe I have a fever for more cowbell!
I feel like, these days there's so much music and so many bands, that it's exciting to hear when people go through the whole process with their own sort of system of making the music. It gives it a much more personal individual feel, like unique feel, when somebody has a really idiosyncratic set-up, or they just have what might be considered strange ways of going about the process that yields results that are not just cookie-cutter sounds like everything else... and I think that can only be a positive thing.
Flamenco is Arabic music and rhythms filtered through centuries of gypsies making music. The gypsies themselves came originally from India. And then there is the Caribbean influences... This whole idea that there is any such thing in music that "purity" is bunk, it just doesn't exist. I love that I am playing these rhythms to people. And the next time they hear something that's maybe a little more exotic, I have created a little bridge, and they are going, "Oh, this actually sounds really cool. It reminds me a little bit of that, but it's something different."
Music is generally important to blind people, and most of the blind people that I have come into contact, through my parents, music is very special to them. Obviously, because it is more salient, you know? We might like going to the movies, and of course we like music too, but when the eyes don't work then the ears pick up slack. Music is all the sweeter at that point.
We hope that by sharing my experience - our experience, Lennon and I - that somebody who is going through this process or helping their loved one through it might feel less alone, and might even have some better information for their cancer care.
It's not music you can evaluate in traditional ways. If you look around at a concert, you might see what look like bored people, or maybe they're drifting, but they're just having another kind of experience, an inner thing.
The New Kids took some hits for, you know, not writing their own music. But on a songwriting standpoint, I mean, I'd never written music before when I was in the group, ... Now the music is my music, so it's kind of like my baby, and that was a whole different experience.
I left Starbucks in 2015. When I was younger, I remember looking at Justin Bieber and wishing I had all these fans, but you know what? Everyone has their path, everyone's path is different, and this is where mine's going. I just didn't want to work at Starbucks. I wanted to be writing music all the time.
Music should elevate you. You can be raised, or left stranded. You can't be raised all the time, in my experience. This might be a rare moment. You might just go up to that level but that's always good.
I feel like everything I write about is a gift I need to share because there is somebody out there going through a similar thing that might need to hear it. I know music helped me a lot. And still does.
I love 50 Cent. I know it sounds weird 'cause a lot of kids might not say that right now, but I definitely want to work with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Coldplay: I want to work with different artists that are going to push my music to a new level. Not just in urban music.
I think I was annoyed going through the '90s just as a guy who loves music. There wasn't a lot of music for me. Everything was groove driven. We lost the plot with the melody. There's no more melody.
That authentic experience that happens both in the artist and in the audience you can classify as a mystical experience. You can classify it as aesthetic shock, or even a psychedelic experience. Some people seek to recreate that experience through drugs. But the other way that you can do it is through art, and through spectacle. We have those experiences when we go to rock shows, or when we listen to a piece of classical music, or read a particular poem, or see a painting.
I love the cowbell. I think it's awesome. My family got the cowbell app on their iPhones. It's a classic part of ski racing.
I could be going through something in my life that I might not want to talk about in my music because my music is the way that I escape some of those things.
It's really a lot of fun to see that this music can actually survive, that it can be concert music. My solo shows are already going along that path. You have the freedom to basically push to party, or you can tell a story from nothing with soundscapes, moving images, to a real party mood. At some concerts, people get out of their seats and start dancing after a while.
You might pick up some influences from another type of music that you wouldn't normally think of, but, you know, maybe as a guitar player, it will come out in your improvisational style, maybe as a song writer it might come out in your note choices, or in your melodic choices, and it just helps to making your music that much more original and unique.
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