Robert Fripp Quotes

Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. As a guitarist for the progressive rock band King Crimson, Fripp has been the only member to have played in all of King Crimson's line-ups from their inception in the late 1960s to the present. He has also worked extensively as a studio musician, notably with singer David Bowie on the albums "Heroes" and Scary Monsters , Brian Eno, David Sylvian and contributed sounds to the Windows Vista operating system. His complete discography lists more than seven hundred releases over four decades.He is ranked 62nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2011 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time after having been ranked by David Fricke 42nd on its 2003 list. Tied with Andrés Segovia, he also is ranked 47th on Gibson's Top 50 guitarists of all time.His compositions often feature unusual time signatures, which have been influenced by classical and folk traditions. His innovations include Frippertronics, soundscapes, and new standard tuning.

✵ 16. May 1946

Robert Fripp photo

Sean Coon from Greensboro, USA, robert fripp / CC BY-SA 2.0

Robert Fripp: 17 quotes6 likes

Famous Robert Fripp Quotes

“It is difficult to exaggerate the power of habit.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“We begin with the possible, and move gradually towards the impossible.”

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

“Creative work is serious play.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.”

“The Vinyl Solution.” in Musician, Player, and Listener 24 (April-May 1980): 34.
Elsewhere

“A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable, and never acceptable.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“There is no such thing as making a mistake. Only one thing is compulsory, only one mistake: and that is not realizing your mistakes.”

Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)

Robert Fripp Quotes about music

“Music so wishes to be heard that sometimes it calls on unlikely characters to give it voice, and ears. This wishing-to-be heard calls into existence the Performance Event; where music, musician and audience may come together as one, in communion. This communion has six different forms of being and experiencing itself (plus an invisible seventh); and these forms, or principles, are simultaneously present within the Performance.
I - When people get together with music, something happens.
II - In a performance, things come together, mysteriously; and go better than we might anticipate; and better than we deserve.
III - A performance can take on a life and character of its own.
IV - Any one performance is a multiplicity of performances.
V - The possible is possible.
VI - The impossible is possible.
The Seventh Principle resides within Silence.
Trust the event.”

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

“The musician is as rich as the music they give away.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are called the harmonic series…As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand…”

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 114, 0-679-74275-1]
Elsewhere

Robert Fripp Quotes

“We are able to be with others only to the degree that we are able to be ourselves. This being so, we can only be in the performance to the degree that we can be ourselves: to be who we are.”

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

“If we don’t know where we’re going, we’ll probably get there; if where we are going is how we get there, we are already where we are going.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“I woke at 9:57 having got to bed at 6:30 subsequent to spraying burning guitar over David Bowie's new album and not leaving the studio until 5:00.”

In the road diary which accompanies the CD release of the 1980 League Of Gentlemen album "Thrang, Thrang, Gozimbulx", about Bowie's album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Elsewhere

“Act with courtesy - Otherwise, be polite, but always be kind.”

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

“You see, the thing is, I’ve been in jams like this. The feeling is totally there among the musicians (and whoever else happens to be sitting around, whether they’ve paid for it or not, probably, and preferably, not). You are close to silence, Silence with a capital S. You are in tune with silence, the deepest sound of them all. Every sound, therefore, that you make, make with intention, sensitivity, and awareness, has a meaning, an ineffability, a significance. You are listening, Listening with a capital L. You hear what everyone else is doing; you do whatever is necessary, which is usually as little as possible. It has nothing to do with self-expression: it has to do with a group mind.”

Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)

“Normality is what we might achieve, given who we are, what we are, the conditions and limitations of the world we work within.”

Quoted in Robert Fripp's Online Diary, Thursday, 4 June 2009 <br class="br">The Six Principles of the Performance Event <br class="br">Source: http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?artist=&show=&member=3&entry=14777

“Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.”

Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)

“A principle is universal, a rule is inflexible, a law is invariable.”

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

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