Top 1200 Instrument Quotes & Sayings

The most important thing is to make a percussive instrument a singing instrument. Teachers should stress this aspect in their instruction, but it seems that very few of them actually do.

The cello is such a melancholy instrument, such an isolated, miserable instrument.

The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument. And I think that's probably a good thing.

The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.

I always think of a voice as an instrument, whether a voice is a trumpet, or violin, or bass. You know what I mean? A horn or wind instrument versus a string instrument. Horn instruments are definitely more toward jazz.

Revolution is an instrument, like a party is an instrument.

The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.

SoftBank is not a specialist on any instrument. We did not invent any instrument. Not the best player. But we would like to be a conductor of this information revolution.

Why then would people look to the United Nations as an instrument of peace, if instead all it is, is an instrument of putting out declarations that nobody intends to take seriously anyway?

In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed by study.

The cult of the instrument is O.K. for people who are mad about the guitar. But I love music. The guitar is just the instrument I happen to play.

Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.

My instrument is the studio. When I play my instrument, I'm creating music using the studio. All the other instruments serve it.

I think when you're learning an instrument, you are restricted because much of it is the noise of individual theory and your ability to play the instrument.

When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.

Piano was my first instrument, but it wasn't the instrument that I showed the most proficiency on.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life such an instrument ought to record something.

I regard myself as a beautiful musical instrument, and my role is to contribute that instrument to scripts worthy of it.

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.

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

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.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.

My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I'm not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.

Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument... actually, you are singing inside.

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication.

You must never lose the awareness that in yourself you are nothing, you are only an instrument. An instrument is nothing until it is lifted.

It is difficult to understand the fortunes of an instrument. There was music written for the guitar until the mid-19th century. Then the instrument declined in popularity.

Clarinet is an incredible instrument. It's a great, expressive instrument.

Using modern guitar techniques and modern methods on an early instrument is not a very clever thing to do, because it is the authentic spirit of the instrument that should dictate the quality and characteristic of the sound.

You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.

What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.

The first instrument is not the final instrument.

I think I spent more time on the mellotron than on any other instrument in the studio, and it got to the point where I was like, "Well, you can't write an entire album on this instrument." But maybe I would!

Government is not a substitute for people, but simply the instrument through which they act. And if the individual fails to do his duty as a citizen, government becomes a very deadly instrument indeed.

Growing up, the ukulele was always a respected instrument. It's a big part of our culture. It wasn't until I started traveling outside of Hawaii that I realized people didn't really consider the ukulele to be a real instrument.

I think it all comes back to the individual. My instrument's just a pile of metal and wood! If you listen to the way I speak I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument that concept comes through very clearly. In fact some people who've seen me play have noticed that I'm singing - but it's more that I'm actually speaking. So it's not really about the instrument. But for me, in my thinking, the music is all about the melody. When I compose, 99 percent of the time I start with the melody.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

You never can overwhelm an instrument. You will never get out all that's in an instrument. An instrument will bring you to your limits.

I wouldn't call that an instrument of music," Ragnor observed sourly. "An instrument of torture, perhaps.

I bought my first bass because I wanted to be in a Band, and heard that it was the easiest instrument to play. A friend told me that it was the sexiest instrument.

Alow immortality to work through you. Be but a mere instrument. And that instrument should be so absorbed in the perfect perfection of existence, that it knows not even that it is absorbed.

Man has received direct from God only one instrument wherewith to know himself and to know his relation to the universe--he has no other--and that instrument is reason.

Riches are but a means, or instrument; and the virtue of an instrument lies in its use.

He was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument, but my instrument needed tuning, and we had to split.

Most people don't even know what a trombone is. It's not that popular as a front instrument... I picked it up and fell in love with it as a kid. It's a difficult instrument, but I like doing things that seem impossible.

Preacher is an instrument of compassion, not an instrument of wrath.

The basic notion was the idea that the loudspeaker should have a voice which was unique and not just an instrument of reproduction, but an instrument unto itself.

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.

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.

A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.

No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.