"It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born, And was always his treasure and pride; But it stopp'd short never to go again When the old man died."

"I think we'll soon see a new breed of musicians who have both a modern chordal sense (jazz) and a high comfort level with synthesizers and new breeds of sounds (from the electronica/techno/dj scene)."

"One of the most common failings [when writing a drum track] is repetition. Nobody wants to hear that same stupid 16-line bass-snare pattern throughout the WHOLE song. Didn't your mother ever teach you that variety is the spice of life?"

"I try to avoid categorizing music as much as I can, though. Everyone steals so much from everyone else these days, the lines between genres are very washed-out."

"I think [Britney Spears] is a perfect example of an artificial construct -- someone with a decent voice and a very marketable image, that producers and business people turned into a pop star. Unfortunately, I think it took a toll on her, mentally, and I feel bad for the trouble that success has brought onto her. However, her music is pretty disposable, and she doesn't have the intelligence and cultural impact of someone like, say, Madonna."

"The problem these days is again just the sheer amount of music available, and that music isn't as important an experience in people's lives in the 21st century as it was previously."

"There's a big difference between playing shows for fun, and playing shows because you're in desperate need of the money."

"I think there are some objective [musical] qualities... how complex something is, how melodic, how diverse the tonality is, et cetera. But I could also make a piece of music that contains all of those and yet isn't "good" from a subjective viewpoint. For example, take Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Beatles "Yesterday", and Underworld's "Born Slippy", and play them all on top of each other at the same time. Great music in their own right, but terrible sounding together."

"If anything I probably gravitate to things with great melodies/harmonies, and interesting/syncopated beats."

"A lot of my tracked music was written when I was very young, relatively speaking. I was very optimistic, I had finally discovered some sort of public musical outlet, it was generally a very happy time. So, the music of that time sort of reflects that, I think? By the time I started the Alpha Conspiracy project, I was older, a bit more sophisticated (and, well, cynical), and so the music got more complex."

"Music is nothing but ratios and harmonic math, anyways."

"Ideally, a song should contain both elements of high melodic tension, and low melodic tension. No listener wants to sit through a totally high-energy 180 BPM non-stop 6-minute ride through synth mania unless they are already busy grooving madly on some dance floor in a smoky club somewhere. Also, unless your listener is on heavy sedation, he or she will not enjoy your sparse 18-minute ambient tune which consists of the same languid piano riff repeated over and over again."

"Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over 400 years."

"Today, he uses music as an accompaniment to his conducting."

"It was hard not to pay attention to Lenny, who made sure that was always the case by always being fascinating."

"Callas? She was pure electricity."

"Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?"

"The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. The opposite of a Greek drama. Act one: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act two: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act three: Greed and hypocrisy … I don't dare continue."

"To Bach, notes were not just sounds but the very stuff of creation."

"Any great work of art … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air."

"The trouble with you and me, Ned, is that we want everyone in the world to personally love us, and of course that's impossible; you just don't meet everyone in the world."

"Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence.""

"A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future."

"The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together — with a thin paste of flour and water… I don’t think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky… but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter."

"Temporal was the first recording that captured my true guitar sound (dinosaurs slipping and blocks of wire whittled with a feather). The mood of the world was different and yet music (sculpted time) always is there waiting to be manifested."

"I love Bach, I listened to him for 25 years, all my life, so I never get tired of Bach. And to learn Bach and play it is such a joy, even if no one ever hears it, just to play it sitting alone at home it makes you feel good, it's like a form of meditation. You can play it over and over and never get tired of it, it's a miracle. Bach I think is the greatest of all western musicians. Probably most people come to that conclusion. (laughs)"

"They're creepy and they're kooky, Mysterious and spooky, They're all together ooky, The Addams Family."

"And those three sisters, three little sisters, They stayed home and read their magazines, And you can tell it to the army, tell it to the navy, And tell it to the marines."

"Green Acres is the place to be; Farm living is the life for me."

"There were three sisters, three little sisters, And each one was only in her teens, And one loved a soldier, and one loved a sailor, And one loved a man from the marines."

"I know what it feels like to have a broken nose. And ain't nobody hit you in it. It's really cause that shit that you snorted and put all in it. That time you thought I was finished no I just experimented and it helped me adjust and be ok, with being demented"

"No I'm not no loser, I'll see you in Hell."

"Can't we just all get a bong and tag along."

"Birds seen flying around, you never see them too long on the ground, You want to be one of them..."

"You can’t, can’t be, where I,I be Follow me and you’ll see and you’ll see."

"I hope they understand that I really understand That they don't understand"

"you don't really care about the trials of tomorrow, rather lay awake in a bed full of sorrow"

"Cause day and night, the lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night, he's all alone through the day and night, the lonely loner seems to free his mind at night"

"And if I die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take but please don't cry, just know that I have made these songs for you, and if I die before I wake I pray the lord my soul to take cause I'm ready for a funeral"

"This is my story, this is my song If you feel it, muthafucka, you can't go wrong to the screw-face niggaz, whatch you on? Get off that, get a goal and focus dawg"

"I know it's easy to imagine but its easier to just "do" If you can't "do" what you imagine then what is imagination to you?"

"Salutations my niggas, I'm aware that I'm different, you can still keep it hood while you're smoking just listen, it don't matter your race just take a blunt to the face"

"Blood sweat and tears homie I'm made of it"

"For even in hell, I still have faith to one day be free with my father at the gates but make no mistakes, I'll show you what time takes to be a success on earth, mixed with all the hate"

"I never gave a fuck, I never gave a fuck what niggas thought about me. I mean, I did, but like fuck it. You know what I'm sayin'?"

"I've got some issues that nobody can see and all of these emotions are pouring out of me I bring them to the light for you it's only right"

"if I fall if I die know I lived it to the fullest, if I fall if I die know I lived and missed some bullets"

"I am what I am I am my own special creation So come take a look Give me the hook or the ovation It's my world that I want to have a little pride in My world and it's not a place I have to hide in Life's not worth a damn till you can say Hey world I am what I am."

"Nowadays, all students have access to and indeed most own computers and are comfortable with the software used to compose music. There are probably too many musical options for them now and the trick is to limit the number of musical ideas so as to develop structure and continuity in their work."