Musical quotations:
Other than your tutor, no one really cares how well you can play scales or exercises. An audience just cares about how well you use the skills you acquired by playing them when you are performing. - T.M. Samuel

 "If I don’t practise for a day, I know it; if I don’t practise for two days, the critics know it; if I don’t practise for three days, the audience knows." – Jan Paderewski

"Every artist was first an amateur." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You practise in order to learn skills and polish technique. Practising is often messy: it sounds messy because that’s when you get to work through your mistakes... it's called learning - T.M. Samuel

In visual art there is the concept of horror vacuii - the fear of empty spaces – which results in every inch of painting’s surface being filled by the artist. The result is often intensely disturbing.  In music it is reflected in pieces by artists who have yet to understand that silence is as much essential as sound. – T.M. Samuel

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.  - Robert Schumann

Writer George Plimpton (The X Factor) notes that there are two consistent threads in stories of successful people:  1. they fail far more often than unsuccessful people; 2. they accept failure as part of the learning process that will lead to success. That is, they realise that a failure is not a final result, just a step towards a final result. (This works for musicians as well.)

Musical skills are just that – skills. They can be mastered. How successfully depends on how important those skills are to you. The more you play, the better you get. You don’t learn to walk by trying it for an hour once a week. - T.M. Samuel.

It is practising if you are alone or with someone who is also practising. If anyone else is in the room and just watching, you are performing and that is something very different. - T.M. Samuel

Modern research has shown that success in all areas of learning requires quick and constructive feedback.  When was the last time you heard an online video guitar site tell you whether you are playing the riffs from the last lesson correctly. - T.M. Samuel

I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
- Alfred Hitchcock

Some people say that in the age of the web guitar tutors are obsolete. After all, there are so many free lessons on the internet why would you need a tutor? The answer is that music is not simply an abstract discipline: it requires physical training, co-ordination and development.  Learning guitar from the internet would be the same as learning how to play hockey from the internet. You might understand the game but you would suck on the ice. - T.M. Samuel

How does one tell if one bird of a species is a “better” singer than another? - T.M. Samuel

A tutor doesn’t need to be a star, but should be a damn good astronomer. - C.E. Jackson

"Nothing worth achieving is achieved quickly.  The only thing haste achieves is superficiality." - Goethe

 "I'd rather be a musician than a rock star."  - George Harrison

Whether you say you can or can’t, you are right. In the first case you will persevere until you succeed; in the second you won’t even try. (with apologies to Henry Ford.)

"If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to know. " -- Edgar Cayce

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." -- Berthold Auerbach

"Muzak goes in one ear, and out some other opening."
-Anton Kuerti

"Without music life would be a mistake."-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song." – Louis Armstrong

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife." -- Kahlil Gibran

"Being a natural born musician is about as probable as being a natural born brain surgeon or a natural born parking lot attendant. " -- C.E. Jackson

"If you sound great in the practice room, you're practicing the wrong thing." - Anonymous