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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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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
Still
Hour
Look
Anybody
Firsts
Especially
Harp
Play
Expression
Harps
Looks
Takes
Expressions
First
Hours
Tune
Trying
Half
Tunes
People
Stills
Nervous

More quotes by Joanna Newsom

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You should listen to a lot of different music.
Joanna Newsom
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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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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 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 give away CDs at shows if someone wants a CD but doesn't have any money. I wouldn't want to do that forever.
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'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person.
Joanna Newsom
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I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
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 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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I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.
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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There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.
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 would happy for someone to download my music.
Joanna Newsom
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I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.
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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What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.
Joanna Newsom
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I am producing sounds that people are not used to hearing from the harp.
Joanna Newsom