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We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.

Leo Kottke
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It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.
Leo Kottke
Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is not to try too hard.
Leo Kottke
I would say that if you don't feel like talking to the crowd something is wrong and if you force yourself to talk to them things will happen and to that extent things aren't choreographed.
Leo Kottke
I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming, but I haven't been that hip since.
Leo Kottke
I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there.
Leo Kottke
The first music I was exposed to was Stravinsky and I loved it but I don't remember it.
Leo Kottke
Yes and for two reasons: one, I couldn't find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn't bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar.
Leo Kottke
That was when I found out that you could talk to them and it was a whole other way to blow your stack, and it's so much fun to perform that you want to do it again and the more you get out of it the better.
Leo Kottke
Yeah I do and I don't mind, in fact that is one of the real encouraging things about this whole career of mine is that there are tunes I wrote almost thirty years ago that I will still play in front of an audience and I still like the old tunes.
Leo Kottke
I was taking a nose dive somewhere between eleven and twelve because my sister had died and I was practicing something that siblings do which is follow in their footsteps and die as well.
Leo Kottke
I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play, I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville, I think I have an audience by performing a lot!
Leo Kottke
It was a kind of paralysis you would get from tendonitis and I would last about five to ten minutes into the set and it would set in and I really couldn't play.
Leo Kottke
I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers.
Leo Kottke
It's true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren't really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it's the best.
Leo Kottke
I do have a library of events I can talk about and I always expect to find a different point of view on it so even if I talk about the same event in the same town it's fresh.
Leo Kottke
We had a day off here yesterday and I just sat in my room and played.
Leo Kottke
I seem to find different material every four to six months and I frequently forget it which is a shame because it would be nice to have a bigger library.
Leo Kottke
The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.
Leo Kottke
The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up.
Leo Kottke
I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.
Leo Kottke
I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.
Leo Kottke
You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.
Leo Kottke
I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.
Leo Kottke
It was almost two years after I left Capital that I put out the first one on Chrysalis and that was really instructive because it was no better in particular than any other record I'd done.
Leo Kottke
It depends on the time of the year and who I've been talking to, I try to put people in the studio I like.
Leo Kottke
When a record company looks at me I'm very hard to market, I don't really fit anywhere, It's hard to get me on the air, and I'm hard to demography, but! because of that I'm not subject to trends like you pointed out.
Leo Kottke
There are nights when you can feel stale because you've fallen into a pattern by touring too much, but it's easy to get out of it by deliberately getting in trouble and playing yourself into a corner to then see if you can get out of it.
Leo Kottke
We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.
Leo Kottke
I am evidence that you don't have to sell a lot of records or succeed in the usual way to have a big audience and a job.
Leo Kottke
When the audience is awful you can still have a great night and people will walk out thinking they had a great time even though there was loads of loudmouths and the sound was terrible.
Leo Kottke
I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.
Leo Kottke
I will literally open my mouth not knowing what is coming out.
Leo Kottke
When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.
Cliff Richard
Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.
Peter Tork
When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.
Matthew Sweet
You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.
Ornette Coleman
Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.
Billy Joel
Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.
Glenn Danzig
When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.
Dinah Shore
I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.
Russell Simmons
There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.
Earle Brown
The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.
Erykah Badu
If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.
Paula Cole
Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.
Elliott Carter
My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.
Taryn Manning
I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.
Bill Monroe
I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.
Nusrat F. A. Khan
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
Ray Charles