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"Well I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C' which I wrote in 1964 at that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time."
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"There are so few directors who are musical who appreciate music."

"I can see me continuing to make the best music I can, and let the chips fall where they may."

"88% of what we call good songs aren't really good. They merely remind us of a good time we once had."

"I just really longed to do music that reflected me as an adult and music that I thought was for other adults."

"Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it."

"So all of the music had reference, or is inspired by something of the dharma that I've come in contact with."

"A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit."

"There's nothing to compare to live music, there just isn't anything."
Explore more quotes by Terry Riley


"I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India."


"I really didn't have a plan, I just went in and started playing. one of my specialties was to be able to play for a really long time without stopping and I would play these repeated patterns for hours and hours and I wouldn't seem to get tired."


"I had been interested in Indian music and I actually started studying Tableaus before I met him."


"Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns."


"Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays."


"It seems like we are moving towards something, some kind of point and it is probably going to be an important point in our development or dissolution. That is what everybody seems to be thinking."


"I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had."


"Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone."


"It is important that we are coming up on the millennium because what I am experiencing, just being one person out of billions, is the feeling of acceleration. I experience this through my contact with other people."
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