But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.

What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.

So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.

I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening.

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.

The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can't accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.

However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.

But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.

I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

The constant attention is what is so difficult.

As a scientist, my attention became totally focused on global warming some 15 years ago by the elegant and powerful measurements of carbon dioxide trapped in ice cores taken as much as 2 miles deep from the great East Antarctica ice sheet.

Anytime you have a difficult encounter with your child, there is a good chance that at least one of these factors is bringing out the worst in him or her: transitions, time pressure, competition for your attention, conflicting objectives.

I think it would have been a lot better for him to say, I did it and I'm sorry, McGwire was never one to show a lot of emotion on the field, not a player who sought attention and craved to be thought of as a nice guy.

I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer's attention.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.

I don't want to come off like the jealous brother who wasn't getting the attention, but it was like no one was really into me anyway. I wasn't really a priority.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

There's a lot of other movies I like, but I don't even pay attention to directors to tell you the truth.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real.

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.