Music Producers From The United States

"The emerging picture from... studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of master associated with being a world-class expert—in anything."

"Memory strength is also a function of how much we care about the experience. ...If I'm playing an instrument I like, and whose sound pleases me in and of itself... caring leads to attention, and together they lead to measurable neurochemical changes. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with emotional regulation, alertness, and mood, is released, and the dopaminergic system aids in encoding the memory trace."

"The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human."

"Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. ...Joni will talk compellingly and passionately about alternate tunings for hours, comparing them to different colors that van Gogh used in his paintings."

"This mind wandering mode turns out to be very different from the task engagement mode, because it's where thoughts that are loosely connected seamlessly flow into one another like in a dream. ...And you begin to see connections between things that you didn't see as connected before. ...non-linear kinds of thinking ...This is the mode of thinking where your most creative acts are likely to occur and where problem solving is apt to occur."

"A good rule of thumb is every couple of hours take fifteen minutes off. Naps are also very helpful, short naps. Even a ten or fifteen minute nap in the middle of the day can be the equivalent of an hour and a half of extra sleep the night before, and it can raise your effective IQ by ten points."

"Multitasking is a myth. ...What's actually happening in the brain is sequential tasking. ...the brain is rapidly shifting ...so quickly and seamlessly that you don't really notice... What you end up with is attention that's been fractionated into little... bits and you're not able to actually sustain attention on any one thing. ...You're not saving time. You're wasting time."

"The brain is very good at self-delusion."

"You’d think people would realize they’re bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great."

"Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye."

"The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world."

"Former secretary of state George Shultz, reflecting on forty years of United States foreign policy from 1970 to the present, said, “When I think about all the money we spent on bombs and munitions, and our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world . . . Instead of advancing our agenda using force, we should have instead built schools and hospitals in these countries, improving the lives of their children. By now, those children would have grown into positions of influence, and they would be grateful to us instead of hating us."

"In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%–85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store."

"An organized mind leads effortlessly to good decision-making."

"Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done."

"Most of us have adopted a strategy to get along called satisficing, a term coined by... Herbert Simon... to describe not getting the very best option but one that was good enough. ...Satisficing is one of the foundations of productive human behavior ...we don't waste time trying to find improvements that are not going to make a significant difference in our happiness or satisfaction."

"Evolution doesn't design things... The brain is... like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction."

"The information age has off-loaded a great deal of work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us."

"I think we will see personalized music stations in the next few years... controlled by computer algorithms... I think it will be important that... listeners have an "adventuresomeness" knob that will control the mix of old and new, or the mix of how far out the new music is from what they usually listen to."

"Thinking about one memory tends to activate other memories. ...If you are trying to retrieve a particular memory, the flood of memories can cause competition... leaving you with a traffic jam of neural nodes... leaving you with nothing."

"Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it."

"Music moves us because it serves as a metaphor for emotional life. It has peaks and valleys of tension and release. It mimics the dynamics of our emotional life."

"The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography... between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. ...it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times of our lives. Your brain on music is all about... connections."

"Studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand... increases in size as a result of practice."

"So much of the research on musical expertise has looked for accomplishment in the wrong place, in the facility of the fingers rather than the expressiveness of emotion."

"One hundred years from now Beatles songs may be so well known that every child will learn them as nursery rhymes, and most people will have forgotten who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they've always existed, like Oh Susannah, This Land Is Your Land, and Frère Jacques."

"Music changed more between 1963 and 1969 than it has in the 37 years since, with the Beatles among the architects of that change."

"“I broke my heart for every gain, to taste the sweet I faced the pain.”"

""I finally faced the fact that it isn’t a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems.”"

"I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow; if I fail, or if I succeed at least I did as I believe."

"You can fool people. You can fool anybody any time of the day, but you can't fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you've got to be straight up with you."

"I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside."

"Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. And that's how I have to deal with it."

"You've got to know who you are before you step into this business, because if you're trying to find it, you'll probably wind up being somebody else, that you probably don't even like."

"Success doesn't change you; fame does."

"It’s an increasingly rare case for a solo artist to see exponential success from back to back decades, and Whitney Houston was certainly that exception."

"Girl, you can tell everybody Yeah, you can tell everybody Go ahead and tell everybody Reveal the man, I'm the man, I'm the man Yes, I am, yes, I am, yes, I am Reveal the man, I'm the man, I'm the man"

"I believe every lie that I ever told Paid for every heart that I ever stoll I paid my cause and I didn't fold Well, it ain't that hard when you got soul (This is my world) Somewhere I heard that life is a test I been though the worst but still I give my best yeah"

"Hold the door, say please, say thank you. Don't steal, don't cheat, and don't lie. I know you got mountains to climb, but always stay humble and kind. When the dreams you're dreamin' come to you. When the work you put in is realized. Let yourself feel the pride, but always stay humble and kind."

"I'll always be a fan of ol' stray dogs and guitars playin'. One room churches, back road walks and front porch swingin'. Sunset skies, bonfire nights, I love the simple things. That's how I'll always be."

"'Cause when you got love, like we got love. I'm holding on to heaven, holding onto you. When you got one, like I got one. Anyway you looking, it's a hell of a view. Don't know where we're gonna be, but I know we're be sitting on top of the world. So keep hanging onto me. Yeah, don't you wanna be sitting on top of the world? Top of the world."

"Meanwhile back at mama's. The porch light's on, come in if you wanna. Supper's on the stove and beer's in the fridge. Red sun sinkin' out low on the ridge. Games on the tube and daddy smokes cigarettes. Whiskey keeps his whistle wet. Funny the things you thought you'd never miss. In a world gone crazy as this."

"I don't ever wanna wake up, looking into someone else's eyes. Another voice calling me baby on the other end of the phone. A new girl putting on her makeup before dinner on Friday night. No, I don't ever wanna know. Oh, oh. No other shotgun rider, beside me, singin' to the radio. Oh, oh. Oh, oh."

"It ain't like midnight and cigarette smoke. It ain't like watered down whiskey and coke. I guess some things just don't mix like you hope. Like me and you. And diamond rings and old barstools."

"Kisses sweeter than Tupelo honey. Little bit crazy like New Orleans. Memphis blue and Daytona sunny. Soft as cotton in some cut-off jeans. Don't you know, ain't nothing in the whole wide world like a Southern girl."

"She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green. Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven. She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous. Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights."

"Smooth as the hickory wind that blows from Memphis down to Apalachicola. It's "Hi, y'all, did you eat well? Come on in, I'm sure glad to know ya." Don't let this old gold cross and this Allman Brothers t-shirt throw ya. It's cicadas making noise with the Southern voice."

"Ooh, ooh, ooh, I wanna go crazy, you can go crazy too. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I wanna go crazy, I wanna go crazy with you. Everybody sayin' "Woah, how sweet it is. Woah." Yeah, it felt good on my lips."

"I ain't no angel, I still got a few more dances with the devil. I'm cleaning up my act little by little. I'm getting there. I can finally stand the man in the mirror I see. I ain't as good as I'm gonna get, but I'm better than I used to be."

"And all I wanna do is let it be and be with you and watch the wind blow by. And all I wanna see is you and me go on forever like the clear blue sky. Slowly, there's only you and I. And all I wanna do is watch the wind blow by."