Robert Fripp
There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.Collection: Failure
A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.Collection: Forgiveness
The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.
My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.
Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.
What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.
I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'
Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.
Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.
I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening.
The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on or not?
According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.
And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.
But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.
Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.
However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.
If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.
In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it.
Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.
So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.
Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.
To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can't accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.
I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.
My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.
I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.Collection: Music
Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.Collection: Thinking
Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.Collection: Doors
What has changed in 40 years? It’s very simple: 40 years ago there was a market economy. Today there is a market society – today everything, including ethics, has a price.Collection: Simple
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.Collection: Silence
The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.Collection: Thinking
In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.Collection: Love Is
Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.Collection: Simple
Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.Collection: Party
The only reward the musician receives is music: the privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes us into its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes real.Collection: Musician
Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.Collection: Music
Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.Collection: Mean
When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.Collection: Kings
If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?Collection: Music
I would like, with the sun shining through the window on a crisp early-autumnal mid-morning, with a sufficiency of Monster Cappucino flowing in my veins to prompt minimal sentience, to declare my view for the record that Drummer Jokes are a cruel and pernicious form of humour introduced to the world by under-humoured persons lacking in sensitivity and concern for other drummers.Collection: Morning
What we hear is the quality of our listening.Collection: Music
When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.Collection: Mistake
We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.Collection: Knows
Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.Collection: Wine
The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry.Collection: Stupid