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In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.

Joanna Newsom

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Joanna Newsom
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: January 18
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Harpsichordist
Musician
Pianist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Grass Valley
California
Joanna Caroline Newsom
Break
Math
High
Forms
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Gave
School
Interested
Rhymed
Live
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Great
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Really
Respect
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More quotes by Joanna Newsom

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I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not.
Joanna Newsom
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You should listen to a lot of different music.
Joanna Newsom
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People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.
Joanna Newsom
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I had known that people would probably have strange reactions to my voice, because I have kind of an unwieldy, difficult voice, but I never thought that anybody would have a problem with the harp. I just assumed... C'mon, it's a beautiful instrument.
Joanna Newsom
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I can't play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can't do the key changes.
Joanna Newsom
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I have a voice that's obviously untrained - and I think untrainable - so I kind of secreted it away for a long time. Actually, I would write songs with lyrics when I was younger, but I would just sing in my head.
Joanna Newsom
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What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.
Joanna Newsom
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It broke my heart when I learned the moon had been passing the sun’s light off as its own.
Joanna Newsom
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We deserve to know light. And grow evermore lighter and lighter.
Joanna Newsom
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I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.
Joanna Newsom
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I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
Joanna Newsom
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The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.
Joanna Newsom
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I would happy for someone to download my music.
Joanna Newsom
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If I ever met Dolly Parton for sure, I would just not be able to say anything. I love her.
Joanna Newsom
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Families of privilege and money would have harps in their parlors, and their cultured daughters would learn to play. It's got such a strange history. But that wasn't the context that I learned it in, so the inherent friction between that history and the more humanist folk-y history wasn't in my conscience at all.
Joanna Newsom
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I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.
Joanna Newsom
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I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
Joanna Newsom
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I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.
Joanna Newsom
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I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.
Joanna Newsom
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Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.
Joanna Newsom