Quotes on Chords

After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four- And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us ... Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that’s what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.

I bid the chords sweet music make, And all must follow in my wake.

There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains.