Music Producers From The United States

"But, wait, Oh, it's much too late Oh, and I cannot be walking home Until I've found my love."

"I think ur a contra, And I think that you’ve lied. Don’t call me a contra Till you’ve tried."

"His Honor drove southward seeking exotica, Down to the pueblo huts of New Mexico, Cut his teeth on turquoise harmonicas, Oh, Oh, Oh..."

"Sit on a park wall Ask all the right questions "Why are the horses racing taxis in the winter?""

"Every dollar counts And every morning hurts We mostly work to live Until we live to work"

"As Otis Reading once said: "Try a little tenderness." He understands much better than most sociologists do."

"Respect is something Otis achieved for himself in a way few people do. Otis sang "Respect when I come home." And Otis has come home."

"So I guess I'll remain the same Sittin' here restin' my bones. Wish this loneliness would leave me alone. For 2,000 miles I roamed Just to make this dock my home. Sittin' on the dock of the bay Watchin' the tide roll away. Sittin' on the dock of the bay, Wastin' time."

"Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all. Sad songs is all I know. I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all. Sad songs is all I know. It has a sweet melody tonight Anybody can sing it any old time. What's in your heart puts you in a groove And when you sing this song, It'll make you're whole body move."

"Sittin' in the mornin' sun, I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comes. Watchin' the ships roll in; And I watch 'em roll away again. Sittin' on the dock of the bay, Watchin' the tide roll away. Sittin' on the dock of the bay, Wastin' time."

"There were times and you want to be free My love is growing stronger, as you become a habit to me. Oh I've been loving you a little too long I don't wanna stop now, oh. With you my life, Has been so wonderful. I can't stop now."

"You call me Mr. Pitiful; Baby that's my name now, oh. They call me Mr. Pitiful; That's how I got my fame. But people just don`t understand, now What makes a man feel so blue, now Ooh, they call me Mr. Pitiful; Cause I lost someone just like you, now."

"These arms of mine, They are lonely. Lonely and feeling blue. These arms of mine, They are yearning. Yearning from wanting you. And if you would let them hold you, Oh how grateful I will be."

"Ole man trouble Go find you someone else to pick on. I live my life now you see. Ole man trouble, Please stay away from me, now.Oh I look like I'm down in my luck. Please send faith to help pick me up. I've lived this way so many years Ole man trouble, Please wash away all my fears."

"[Huh]I can't turn you loose now. If I do I'm gonna loose my life. [Ooh]I can't turn you loose now. If I do I'm gonna loose my life. I can't turn you loose to nobody I love you baby, yes I do. Give shakin' mama, I told ya I'm in love with only you. [Gotta] Baby do it baby why don't ya I'll give ya everything you want."

"What you want, Honey you've got it. And what you need, Baby you've got it.All I'm asking Is for a little respect when I come home."

"A human is a complicated organic/electrical system, which is immersed in a culture. Try raising a monkey like a human, it won't work, you need the human's certain brain characteristics (including self-reflection) in order to create a truly intelligent creature. The brain processes inputs and perception in very particular ways, and I think until we understand the underlying processes better, there is no way to really simulate it in software. Computers will continue to be good at simplistic analysis, and raw processing power, but the subtlety of emotions is something intrinsic to the human organism and culture."

"There may not be a high-level purpose for humanity, but that doesn't mean we can't find inspiration in the world. I think there is a combination of psychological and environmental factors that combine to create various urges in humanity -- most importantly the urge to create, to contribute something to the world, to express your personal worldview and see how the world responds. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and if it were only for personal gain then nobody would ever release music to the public. The process changes you, and also changes the world itself, creating ripples of inspiration which flow between the artist and the listener."

"Somewhere there's a happy harbor far from the storm. Out where the sun shines there is someone I'm meant to adore, and I know the day I find her, I'll smile once more."

"I think much of the conflict in the world is directly the result of people's varying interpretations of reality, or perhaps you could term it the "distortions" in their lenses. The best one can do is to try to consume as much knowledge as possible, both from your experiences, and from the words of others, in order to try to form a complete picture of the world."

"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."

"If someone gave me a million dollars to run a music label, I would focus on creating a specific artistic point of view, and creating some channel to build a fanbase. Warp Records was a great example of a label that had a particular style, and many people would buy records just because the artists were associated with the label."

"I love philosophy. It's fascinating to try to discover how perception, or experience, or memory works. I've always been a diehard relativist at heart, and I find it very interesting to read other people's philosophical ideas and how they see the world through their particular lens."

"Imagine presenting a Nirvana or BT track to someone from the 1850's, they would probably see it as noise and not much else. Society as a whole has a much more nuanced and wide view of what music can be now. It still usually contains various rhythmic, melodic, and vocal components, but they can be combined in so many interesting ways now."

"The usual problem with progressive rock is that the band can get so wrapped up in their own fantasy land that their music becomes completely inaccessible. "Wanky", if you will."

"I have a love for cheesy music. I don't want to list any bands and embarrass myself ;D"

"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."

"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."

"Religion is a simplistic answer that society has created in order to make people feel better, but there is little evidence as to its validity. There are thousands of religions in the world, each with their own "correct" answers, and each contradicting each other. For now the most sensible explanation to me is that we are the result of a lucky combination of cosmic factors, we're the "mold" that has grown on this particular planet and in a universe as vast as ours, it's expected that somewhere this would happen."

"We started out in the middle ages creating music which had certain desirable physical properties (for example, a major chord sounds "nice" because the frequencies are in integer ratios to each other). And then as society evolved, we created these emotional contexts for certain instruments and progressions. Major-chord arpeggios sound "happy", minor chords sound "sad", chromatic scales can sound "scary", et cetera. In the 20th century, film soundtracks reinforced this point as people associated certain kinds of music with certain visual and emotional experiences. It's a giant feedback loop, really; once you grow up in a given culture, it leaves this musical fingerprint on you which colors your experiences."

"To impact someone emotionally, [a musical piece] has to contain "interesting" melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic content, and what defines "interesting" is up to the listener."

"You could argue that there's maybe some mathematical interest in a Bach fugue, say, but the only thing that music does really well is "move" people -- make them feel something."

"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."

"Unfortunately Sting's jazz work isn't nearly as inventive as his rock songs."

"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)."

"So, if you played a C major chord to pretty much any person on the planet, they'd say that it sounds "harmonious" (or pleasing, or happy, etc, etc). But now when you want to put chords and melodies in an ordering and make a larger piece called a "song", then that is a much more difficult process, and gets very subjective. At that point, it's not just the chords, it's the lyrics, rhythms, instrumentation, tempo, intensity, any number of other things that goes into a song... so many variables that it's almost impossible to predict how a song will affect a given person."

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

"Every musician, I guess, wants to alter the world to his or her taste in some fashion... That's part of why I write music."

"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."

"Stylistic evolution comes from listening to what other people have done and making a Darwinistic modification."

"Sometimes if you polish too much, you rub off the shine."

"Certainly there are songs out there that are massively popular, and you can use some reverse analysis to see how they're put together, but it's difficult to reliably engineer a "hit". Add to this the constantly swirling winds of cultural taste, and you can see that the music industry is more akin to playing the lottery than anything else. Having some talent or taste can give you a bit of an edge, but it's still a huge roulette wheel.."

"I'm much more into 'electronica' (yeah, I know it's cliche these days)."

"A lot of [my] songs have various strange oddities in them - usually this is the result of late-night dementia."

"I'd like to see people try to sample the sound less and try to sample the style a bit more. Some people see this sort of 'copying' as offensive... I'm inclined to think the opposite - all music is built on imitation and expansion."

"I'm not a big fan of asynchronicity just for its own sake - a lot of people push rhythmic variation so far that the basic pulse of the music gets lost (and the listener is confused)."

"Unfortunately, as technology has improved, that which was 'underground' now heads towards obsolescence."

"I think that the public judges a song on the overall feel, not individual samples. If a sample contributes too heavily to the song, and the sample is recognized, the opinion of the piece goes down."

"Usually musicians have egos and personality quirks which makes it difficult to form collaborative efforts (for long periods of time, anyways)."

"I've been fascinated with arcane chord progressions since I was young. The trick is to keep them interesting, while still in the realm of 'normality' (otherwise the listener has no context to appreciate the progressions in)."