Well I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C' which I wrote in 1964 at that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time.

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Well I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C' which I wrote in 1964 at that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time.

Terry Riley

Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

Terry Riley

Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.

Terry Riley

Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex. But its highest vibration for me is that point of taking us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at. It is a spiritual state of oneness.

Terry Riley

It seems like we are moving towards something, some kind of point and it is probably going to be an important point in our development or dissolution. That is what everybody seems to be thinking.

Terry Riley

It is important that we are coming up on the millennium because what I am experiencing, just being one person out of billions, is the feeling of acceleration. I experience this through my contact with other people.

Terry Riley

Acceleration is finite, I think according to some laws of physics.

Terry Riley

Everyone seems to be in a kind of accelerated time mode that is beyond their own control.

Terry Riley

So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

Terry Riley

We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.

Terry Riley

Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone.

Terry Riley

I had been interested in Indian music and I actually started studying Tableaus before I met him.

Terry Riley

I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had.

Terry Riley

Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays.

Terry Riley

I really didn't have a plan, I just went in and started playing. one of my specialties was to be able to play for a really long time without stopping and I would play these repeated patterns for hours and hours and I wouldn't seem to get tired.

Terry Riley

I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India.

Terry Riley

The incredible thing about the human mind is that is didnt come with an instruction book.

Terry Riley

The incredible thing about the human mind is that is didn't come with an instruction book.

Terry Riley

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

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

Ville Valo

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

Billy Connolly

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

Gary Oldman

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Trevor Horn

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

Harvey Keitel

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

Herbie Hancock

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

Derek Bailey

There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them, just to make the music more of a sanctuary.

Daniel Johns

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

Ken Burns

We used to listen to all the marvelous operas on records. Music was a very important part of our lives.

Charlotte Rae

Drums just always sounded like the most fun part of that good music for me.

Levon Helm

Record covers helped me discover a lot of music that I wasn't aware of.

Martin Gore

It was very interesting for me because DNA made music without much technical knowledge at all.

Arto Lindsay

So it was out of necessity that Blackheart was born. I think it's great that now, 25 years later, we're not only putting out our own music, but are able to put out music by other bands. That's really exciting for us.

Joan Jett