Quotation:
"If you build something yourself, the end use of which is somebody is going to perform with it, then you always do the best that you can. But it is very hard to make a device that works perfectly."
More quotes from: David Tudor
- "A sound is something that you receive, but when you put sounds together, they are ..."
- "An electronic component can seem to have a personality very much in the same way ..."
- "As a pianist in the 50's and on into the 60's, I was using more ..."
- "As long as there are people who realize that machines are not interesting and that ..."
- "At one point John Cage needed a pianist, to perform not his own but someone ..."
- "At one point when I was working on an electronic set-up, the thought came into ..."
- "By manipulating the threshold controls to all the modifiers in sequence, rhythms began to appear ..."
- "By simply pointing the microphones in space and then having the sound moving between the ..."
- "Determine if the loudspeakers themselves are just pumping something canned or whether they are really ..."
- "Electrodes are placed on the head at certain points and from that you get alpha ..."
- "Especially in America, you have so many schools teaching electronics and they are teaching with ..."
- "For awhile I was working in laser display. I spent considerable energy developing it. I ..."
- "For me, the concept of observation is primary... I need to observe something in a ..."
- "I always wanted to be a faithful interpreter and my whole early training was for ..."
- "I am perfectly willing for my music to exist with somebody else's taste. "
- "I began to think about sound sources. It was repugnant to me to use the ..."
- "I can understand why it's possible to gain unpredictable results from something which has predictable ..."
- "I don't compose in a straight line. I always compose around the periphery, you know. "
- "I feel that many people don't read John Cage's score in the sense that they ..."
- "I have an ear for sound that's, I think it's different from other peoples'. "
- "I have since learned that the waveforms are different, you know. There are even other ..."
- "I know it seems that electronics is mundane in many respects because of the computer ..."
- "I love India, and I love Indian cooking, but two months was enough. I needed ..."
- "I made certain decisions as to what was important and that enabled me to make ..."
- "I persist in performing. "
- "I recall my own astonishment, years ago, when I attempted to explain the kind of ..."
- "I started with this idea that sound could be obtained from sculptural material or actually ..."
- "I still would be unable to call myself a co-composer. I call it my electronic ..."
- "I think of analog technology as a medium. It certainly sounds very different from computer-produced ..."
- "I try to find out what's there and not to make it do what I ..."
- "I use the principle of making the sound outputs different enough that you could not ..."
- "I wanted to gather new works to take back to New York where I was ..."
- "I was searching for a way to generate sound without any input source material. "
- "I'm careful to make sure that the unpredictable element is in my music. "
- "I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that ..."
- "I've had my share of friends who, who look askance at the fact that I'm ..."
- "I've never been able to arouse any interest in myself for digitally produced sound, and ..."
- "If I take short sounds and lengthen them and I use long sounds on the ..."
- "If you don't like the sound that the computer produces, then it's a matter of ..."
- "If you have a musician performing a piece who is in the same space, who ..."
- "If you put yourself in a situation of unpredictability and then find that it's completely ..."
- "If you send sound through materials, the resonant nodes of the materials are released and ..."
- "If you work very seriously in electronics there is a point where a certain sound-world ..."
- "In 1973 I made Rainforest IV where the objects that the sounds are sent through ..."
- "In a sense there was only one principle of sound generation, so I decided to ..."
- "In a way, you could say that I'm still building instruments, but actually my focus ..."
- "In my electronics, I work with an instrumental principle. They become my friends. They have ..."
- "In the musical world there were many composers who were doing things that they didn't ..."
- "It was a joyous experience to find out that you were actually doing somebody else's ..."
- "It would be very tempting to make an orchestra of instruments that you could play, ..."
- "It's important that each person makes their own sculpture, decides how to program it, and ..."
- "John Cage started the project. He decided he had to immediately make the composition. It ..."
- "Just recently I've been speaking about my first electronic piece. I never put it on ..."
- "Loudspeakers should be made to be destroyed and... disposable. "
- "Most electronic equipment uses the principle of amplification. You need filters, modulators and mixing equipment ..."
- "My father played the organ. Since my mother had died, I very often went with ..."
- "My first purpose in going to Europe was to play American music. "
- "No matter what I touch, my approach is a complex one which works, so to ..."
- "Nowadays students are coming to me from schools working with computer technology and they find ..."
- "Part of my interest in life is spiritual endeavours. "
- "Performing is very much like cooking: putting it all together, raising the temperature. "
- "Take the classic experiment of using ordinary feedback: just take the output of something and ..."
- "The basic notion was the idea that the loudspeaker should have a voice which was ..."
- "The idea was to have a sounding outdoor sculpture, so I took transducers and attached ..."
- "The next piece was developed from experiments that I was making with feedback amplifiers. Already ..."
- "The piece was commissioned for the Donaueschingen Festival. They insisted on what Europeans love to ..."
- "There were many common interests that brought me and John Cage together, and that causes ..."
- "We had a piano at home and my mother had played piano very well when ..."
- "When I was 20 or 21 I decided to give up the organ. I decided ..."
- "When I work with other people we try to make do with very simple resources. "
- "When the sound appears to be live in the space, then it's free; it seems ..."
- "When things are going very well, I might smile. I have been known to laugh ..."
- "When you look at a score and you see that you are following the instructions ..."
- "You see, I hear sound off the page. "


