Andrew Bird Quotes

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Andrew Bird

Profession : Musician

Birth : July 11, 1973

My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you're still learning language. It's using the same part of the brain.

Andrew Bird

I don't want technology to take me so far that I don't have to use my brain anymore. It's like GPS taking over and losing your internal compass. It's always got to be tactile, still organic.

Andrew Bird

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.

Andrew Bird

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

Andrew Bird

Guitars are kind of just, you know, sexy, especially old vintage ones.

Andrew Bird

Since I first picked up the violin, I've been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin.

Andrew Bird

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

Andrew Bird

Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.

Andrew Bird

The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.

Andrew Bird

There was a fascinating handmade poster scene in Chicago in the '90s, and I became friends with many of the artists; the posters were often more impressive than the bands.

Andrew Bird

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

Andrew Bird

I write a lot more when I'm happy, because you're hopeful, you're motivated.

Andrew Bird

What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.

Andrew Bird

Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.

Andrew Bird

I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

Andrew Bird

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

Andrew Bird

Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since I was a little kid.

Andrew Bird

I mean, you still can't jump offstage and go read a book. But I'm getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.

Andrew Bird

In school I was painfully shy. But as soon as I had to get up in front of the class and give a book report, it was alarming - I'd suddenly be very articulate.

Andrew Bird

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

Andrew Bird