A Quote by Vijay Iyer

What I've learned from my gurus is that when you hear music, you hear a person, or you hear people, and you hear everything about them in those moments. They reveal themselves in ways that cannot be revealed any other way, and it contains historical truths because of that. To me, that is the most important thing. It shouldn't be a footnote, or the last chapter. It should be the complete thesis about a book on listening.
Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.
When people ask me about my dialogue, I say, 'Don't you hear people talking?' That's all I do. I hear a certain type of individual, I decide this is what he should be, whatever it is, and then I hear him. Well, I don't hear anybody that I can't make talk.
There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. I want to hear that artist; I don't want to hear me - that's the last thing I want to hear. There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.
I just want people to hear the music the way it's suppose to sound, the way we meant for them to hear it. You sit in the studio all this time and make the music, tweak it, try to get it perfect. They should be able to hear it that way.
All songs have those X factors. I couldn't even explain or describe what will grab me about them but it's all music that I'm usually listening to. I'm always looking there to hear new music and see what's going on so that's usually when I'll hear something and be like "Wow, that melody is really crazy.
You hear as many things as you would imagine. I hear voices of people I loved once. I hear moments that took place. I hear silences.
Man, I'm 31 years old and a husband with four kids; I hope I'm no thug. I hear all those negative things and don't hear anything positive. I think that's all those people feel... that way that's all they hear about when you hear Allen Iverson did something negative or something.
It's always interesting to me that we all hear music differently. It's an awesome experience to hear what other people hear.
It is raining and you can hear the pattern of the drops. You can hear it with your ears, or you can hear it out of that deep silence. If you hear it with complete silence of the mind, then the beauty of it is such that cannot be put into words or onto canvas, because that beauty is something beyond self-expression .
You may hear the most beautiful things, you may hear promises, you may hear everything you want to hear but if the person you're dating is not following up with their actions then they're just words.
I knew it straight away when Twitter first came around, and also Facebook, where it was so easy to post, that this was another way to speak directly with people listening to my music. If they found my music and they like it, most likely they want to hear more from me and hear what I'm about. I've put an enormous amount of time into that and it's played out well for me.
You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues.
When you write songs for your best friends and maybe two other people to hear, and then realize that a million other people are going to hear them, it can be a bit worrying. You get concerned about what you might reveal.
If you can hear music, you can hear the musicality of the way someone speaks. It's easier to nail down the way that they talk. So much of it is listening, just like in acting. If you're listening, you pick up the nuance of why a person behaves the way that they behave.
The way I look at music, what I'm interested in is not necessarily creativity - in many ways I think creativity is overrated, actually. What I think is important is authenticity. I want to hear music that has the resonance of the people. I want to hear music that is an amplification of them. Because then, I can experience the people. But because the music has become so institutionalized, everyone is learning and regurgitating the same material in the same way.
I think right now is when we need to hear different voices coming out of all parts of the world. You can't just hear the politicians and the military leaders. You have to hear from the taxi drivers. You have to hear from the painters. You have to hear from the poets. You have to hear from the school teachers and the filmmakers and musicians.
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