Sayings about Musicians
A good guitarist will play on one string. ~ South American Proverb
You hear little from the drummer that is paid in advance. ~ French Proverb
Gossipers are the devil’s trumpeters. ~ French Proverb
From a broken violin do not expect fine music. ~ Greek Proverbs
A tent without a woman is like a violin with no strings. ~ Romanian Proverbs
If you beat my drum, I will blow your whistle. ~ Lebanese Proverb
One string is good enough to a good musician. ~ Mexican Proverbs
The drum makes a great fuss because it’s empty. ~ Trinidadian Proverb
If you’ve enjoyed the dance, pay the musicians. ~ German Proverbs
There is no woman who sleeps so deeply that the sound of a guitar won’t bring her to the window. ~ Spanish Proverb
The musician who is paid in advance does not play so well. ~ Catalonian Proverb
The big drum only sounds well from a distance. ~ Iranian Proverbs
When it sees money, the flute will play itself. ~ Turkish Proverbs
Quotations about Musicians
Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them. ~ Louis Armstrong
Guitar is the best form of self-expression I know. ~ Slash
In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead. ~ David Amram
If we were all determined to play the first violin, we should never have an ensemble; therefore, respect every musician in his proper place. ~ Robert Schumann
One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen. ~ Paul McCartney
Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it. ~ hom Yorke
Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk. ~ Oscar Wilde Quotes
The guitar is harmonic structure. ~ Paul Simon
You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing? ~ Kahlil Gibran Quotes
I can whistle with my fingers, especially if I have a whistle. ~ Mitch Hedberg
As humans we like to laugh at our fears, we like to whistle in the dark. ~ Jeff Dunham
When I had nothing else, I had my mother and the piano. And you know what? They were all I needed. ~ Alicia Keys
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. ~ Benny Green
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~ Wassily Kandinsky
There is two kinds of music; the good and bad. I play the good kind. ~ Louis Armstrong
Some people are drawn naturally – there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town. ~ Hugh Laurie
Play the music, not the instrument. ~ Author Unknown
The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there’s times when you should play and there’s times when you gotta hold back. It’s an extremely dynamic instrument. ~ Steve Vai
To stay a great singer or guitar player, you’ve got to do it 24/7. That’s what I do. ~ Sammy Hagar
Life is like a trumpet – if you don’t put anything into it, you don’t get anything out of it. ~ William Christopher Handy
Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: ‘I’ll do this for now, but I’m really a drummer. That’s what I’ll put on my passport application. ~ Jack White
Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent. ~ Johann Gottfried Von Herder
My first love was the sound of guitar. ~ Boz Scaggs
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~ Gustav Mahler
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven
We love playing music but we’re too weird to play music. ~ Wayne Coyne
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~ Leopold Stokowski
Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum! ~ Omar Khayyam
The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth. ~ Andres Segovia
I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it. ~ Jimmy Page
Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano. ~ Frederic Chopin
I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. ~ Oscar Peterson
When you play the 12-string guitar, you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune. ~ Pete Seeger
I’ve always wanted to smash a guitar over someone’s head. You just can’t do that with a piano. ~ Elton John
It’s really important for the bass and the drums to somehow blend. ~ Mike Gordon
What has keys but can’t listen to the beauty it unlocks? A piano. ~ Jarod Kintz
Prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you’re listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time. ~ Kelsey Grammer
To succeed means that you may have to step out of line and march to the sound of your own drummer. ~ Keith Degreen
When you play, never mind who listens to you. ~ Robert Schumann
You know the drum was the first instrument besides the human voice. ~ Billy Higgins
What we play is life. ~ Louis Armstrong
These fingers of mine, they got brains in ’em. You don’t tell them what to do – they do it. ~ Jerry Lee Lewis
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. ~ Abraham H. Maslow
Life is like a piano; the white keys represent happiness and the black show sadness. But as you go through life’s journey, remember that the black keys also create music. ~ Author Unknown
Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn’t get bored anywhere. ~ Keith Richards
If I’m going to Hell, I’m going there playing the piano. ~ Jerry Lee Lewis
I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes
The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice. ~ Andres Segovia
Without a piano I don’t know how to stand, don’t know what to do with my hands. ~ Norah Jones
I just go where the guitar takes me. ~ Angus Young
What’s really good is African drum music. ~ Fiona Apple
When you play a guitar for a long time, you get your hand oils in there; it starts feeling good and behaving, and you just don’t want to mess with that. ~ Mac DeMarco
With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds. ~ William Christopher Handy
A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument ~ Eddie Van Halen
The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind. ~ Maria Cristina Mena
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. ~ Tom Lehrer
The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you’re bound to do great things with it. ~ Frank Iero
When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music. ~ Dave Grohl
I’m not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I’m a drummer that sings a bit. ~ Phil Collins