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"I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it."
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"Music is the highest form of philosophy of the conscious mind."

"The conception of background music is changing. You use less and less of it these days."

"Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing."

"Speaking unspoken words,music is a good way to say."
Explore more quotes by Ken Burns

"I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts."

"I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on."

"When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things."

"You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time."

"I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content."

"The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts."

"You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living."

"I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films."

"Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say."
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