I didn't have to apply my mind to the aspects of scales and playing, and instead, I focused on creativity. I wrote music, but I didn't 'practice' it. So yeah, you can always get better and improve your technique, but hopefully, that comes through being a musician and composing and being a creative individual.
— Yngwie Malmsteen
I always have music playing in my studio when I design. It really gets me in the mood and allows me to focus.
— Yigal Azrouel
That's what a lot of people know me as: they call it party music.
— YG
Hip-hop is the only music in the world where you can take any instrument and make it hip hop. It's anybody's music. It's what you make of it. That's for anything you do in life.
— Yelawolf
I'm always gonna have the darker edgy music; it is always in my pocket because it comes so naturally to me.
I equally love both, classic rock and hip-hop. I love all music, really, and I really use classic rock a lot. I'm heavily influenced by that melodically in my music. I can't really separate the two.
You have to fall. You have to understand what that feels like. For what I want in my life, and for where I want to go with this music, you gotta be humiliated, man. You gotta understand what that feels like. It just makes you stronger.
I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.
— Yehudi Menuhin
When I started doing music, it was out of despair and boredom. I got passionate about it, and I felt that it allowed me to become somebody: an artist who explores her different identities.
— Yasmine Hamdan
Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say - Kate Bush and Radiohead - and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.
There should be no borders, race, colours, or ethnical considerations when it comes to music and creativity.
I was raised by strong women, and the role models I had in music and cinema were strong, too - liberated and provocative.
At one time, I was persuaded to want to make music, and people answered me that that was not possible.
— Yannick Noah
I do listen to a lot of music, but I don't listen when I'm writing.
— Yanni
When you do music concerts at Taj Mahal and the Acropolis, you have to be careful about your performance being appropriate with the place that surrounds you. It has to be appropriate to the culture - it should fit the building behind you, the environment you are playing it in and the culture of that place.
When it comes down to music, I have no balance. I am 100 percent. It is like full throttle. Five hundred miles an hour.
I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic.
I don't work with anybody on the music, of course. But my God, some of the lyrics that other people have written were so shallow: 'Hey baby this, hey baby that.' I need substance to the words, you know? Give me depth!
My music is just me, something people are gonna turn up to; the girls are gonna dance.
For real, some of my favorite music is Mexican. It's something about the bassline and the drumming. I can't even speak Spanish, but that's probably why I like it so much.
I love performing. I love getting out there. It's kind of like why I make music.
American music culture is black culture.
I just picked up a lot of classic-rock, melodic influence from my mom, music that she listened to, like 10,000 Maniacs, Led Zeppelin, REO Speedwagon and Yes.
I'm never scared what people are gonna think about music that I make.
Egyptians are quite incredible people. They have everything: the culture, the music, the scenes. So much of Arab music and art started there.
If you have a drummer who alternates between fast and slow drumming, it can negatively affect the music.
World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.
When I started, I didn't know how to sing in Arabic - it's a very complex and sophisticated music full of codes and modes and quarter-tones.
I was going to go to Europe to study, and that's when my mother's disease heightened, and it was really necessary that I step in. Then I said, okay, this is more important than my career in music.
— Yasmin Aga Khan
There is no gender to my music. There's no male or female voice, no trite lyrics or poetry. It's much more abstract, so it lives with you longer.
My music is based on melody and when I play the piano, it's as if I'm singing with them. When you try to transform that into a vocal, there was very little adjustment.
Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism.
While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.
Truth is the number one element in whatever you do with music.
If you look at somebody like Bach, he didn't need collaborators to write for keyboards, cello, violin or anything else. I feel the same way about my music. The times that I have worked with other people, I've been very unhappy with the results.
I just like music, bro. I listen to everyone.
I do so much music that it's like a fog, and I can't even remember all of it.
I just want to make a classic. Classic is the standard. I'm just trying to make music that will last a lifetime.
Where I'm from is like 'Hustle & Flow' versus '8 Mile.' It's that really grimy, box-Chevy, dope-boy, working-class music.
'Yela' represents hunger, life, light, fire, power. 'Wolf' speaks to my fighting spirit. The soul I put in my music.
Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.
I love Khaliji music; it's very inspiring.
The Arabic music I listen to is extremely edgy. Ironic, sarcastic, sensual, erotic.
Music liberated me.
It's complicated for my music to be accepted, even in Lebanon and the Arabic world - I sing in Arabic, but there's no lute, no classical instruments. Maybe with the Internet opening things up, things will change.
When I went to university, I was a music major. Timpani was my specialty, and voice.
With instrumental music, it is traditionally hard to get exposure.
I don't like to define my music. To me, music is pure emotion. It's language that can communicate certain emotions and the rhythms cuts across genders, cultures and nationalities. All you need to do is close your eyes and feel those emotions.
New Age is a very small box. It was a term that was brought in by the music industry to classify music that is neither jazz, classical, pop or rock. They didn't know what to call it or what to do with it. So they threw it all together under this one name.
I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.
