"If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no"
About this Quote
Fripp’s line lands like a Zen koan disguised as shop talk: perception isn’t just a private experience, it’s the operating system of a musical world. He’s not arguing that reality is fake; he’s arguing that musical reality is tiered. What the master “hears” isn’t only more notes, or better ears. It’s a trained attention that reorganizes the sound into meaning: micro-timing, harmonic gravity, the way a phrase implies its next move, the discipline behind “feel.” In that sense, the apprentice’s “no” is brutally practical. If you can’t perceive a quality, you can’t respond to it, learn from it, or build with it. It may as well not exist.
The “yes and no” is the tell: Fripp refuses the comforting democracy that all listeners are equal while also refusing elitist mysticism. The quality can be present in the music as an objective feature of performance (a choice, a tension, a relationship), but it only becomes musically real when it enters someone’s field of awareness. That’s the subtext of apprenticeship: not talent worship, but worldview transfer. You’re being taught what counts.
Context matters: Fripp’s career is built on precision, repetition, and systems (King Crimson’s exacting interplay, Guitar Craft’s discipline). He’s talking about music as a craft with standards that don’t care about your feelings, but also as a practice that expands your capacity to hear. The sting is motivational: if you want the master’s world, you have to earn the ears.
The “yes and no” is the tell: Fripp refuses the comforting democracy that all listeners are equal while also refusing elitist mysticism. The quality can be present in the music as an objective feature of performance (a choice, a tension, a relationship), but it only becomes musically real when it enters someone’s field of awareness. That’s the subtext of apprenticeship: not talent worship, but worldview transfer. You’re being taught what counts.
Context matters: Fripp’s career is built on precision, repetition, and systems (King Crimson’s exacting interplay, Guitar Craft’s discipline). He’s talking about music as a craft with standards that don’t care about your feelings, but also as a practice that expands your capacity to hear. The sting is motivational: if you want the master’s world, you have to earn the ears.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
