Microphone Quotes

A good microphone is an essential thing for a singer.

We saw very little of the real Jack Buck behind the microphone. He would touch people in ways that we will never know. Jack was much more than just an announcer.

Yes, I always say that we’re a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.

It’s weird but I’ve never really been the type to have fixations on the leading man actor. I’ve always been drawn more to the rock star. I love a guy on the microphone commanding an audience.

If there’s a microphone and a couple of Pink tracks, I’ll step up. ‘Get the Party Started’ is a great start to any karaoke.

I’m lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on – I do stand-up comedy, and I have ‘SNL.’ That’s where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I’m in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it’s in the hands of the reader.

I hate being up onstage with a microphone.

We’re given this platform and this voice and this audience. We can either use it for ourselves or we can use it to bring awareness to issues that are going on in the world. I’m definitely on the side of using that microphone for good because you can touch so many people.

‘Begum Jaan’ was such a very different zone for me. After the filming was complete, I got immersed in voice modulation. I had to shout my lungs out into the microphone and then dub for it to get that hoarseness in my voice.

A wonderful innovation of the Occupy Wall Street movement was the use of the human microphone – the name given to the body of the audience repeating, amplifying, each statement made by the speaker.

I know what it is to win and to lose, and the last thing you want when you’ve lost is to have a microphone stuck under your nose.

I become a better actor after I step on a stage in front of, like, 500 people when it’s just me, a microphone and my guitar. You don’t get as nervous walking into a room in front of 3 or 4 people and to do a scene or to walk on a set. You gain confidence.

With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it’s getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.

Oh, I’m a great believer in the power of the pause. Radio is a bit brasher now. My style was slower. I just used to go in, open the microphone and say the first thing that came into my head.

I’m better on the pitch than with the microphone.

For years, I was stuck behind a keyboard rig. When I started playing guitar onstage, it was a bit of a release – not to be stuck in one spot the whole night. It’s really enjoyable having the freedom to move around. You just have to remember to end up somewhere near a microphone.

I want to get to the point where one day I don’t have to have anything but a rug and a microphone stand on stage and still be able to sell out places like Madison Square Garden, like Bruce Springsteen does.

I once did a gig at an office Christmas party in the showroom floor of a friend‘s father‘s home appliance shop in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was to a much older crowd. Without a microphone. Or a stage. With the queue for the buffet behind me.

For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms – you can get away with using four mikes.

When MLW first called me, they said, ‘Take a look at the product, see what you think, and see if you can make it even more edgy and more dangerous,’ and give me a live microphone and I’m going to do that.

Some shows feel very reverent – when you’re in a seated theater, no one really sings. I love it when people sing! I wish people would sing all the time. Because one of my favorite things when I get to do as a musician is step away from the microphone and listen to everyone sing together.

Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn’t have to act out somebody else‘s words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It’s the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.

The Doctor character originated from playing Halo 2 on the Xbox and it had proximity chat where you could engage with someone in real-time on the microphone, and I loved that; I ate that up.

I’m only just learning what language to use when I want my microphone turned down, you know, because it’s all so new to me. It can be quite difficult on a daily basis to communicate with the people I work with, so I’m just looking forward to knowing more.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.

You have to go through a big process with the Directors Guild in order to get co-direction credit. They sit you in front of this microphone in front of like 40 legendary directors, and they start grilling you.

It’s all about being comfortable, forgetting there’s a microphone in front of you.

I worked flipping cheeseburgers and Big Mac’s at McDonald‘s, purchased a microphone, and cleared all the stuff out of my basement and started making music.

When I sing, it’s the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It’s not about notes or scales, it’s all about emotion.

Take a microphone out of my hands, and I’m just plain folks.

Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.

It is easy to criticize me from behind a pen or a microphone, from someone who never set foot on a football field.

The worst thing that happened to me at a gig was when the microphone wasn’t on one time, and for the three lines of the verse with Chipmunk, you couldn’t hear me.

I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.

You’re stuck in front of the microphone. You can’t use your hands. I like to do things.

Sir one more comment like that and I will strangle you with my microphone wire!

Diesel coming down with shades, being seven feet tall with an all-black outfit on and the gloves; The Rock when he was wearing $800 Versace shirts; and Stone Cold, obviously, with the way he carried himself and the way he spoke and holding the microphone – these are the things that made me want to become a pro wrestler.

To be a great band it’s like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player‘s in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player‘s coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.

I’m where I’m supposed to be. In that purple chair, by myself, yip yapping. I am. I didn’t fall into it, you know. I wanted to be a newscaster or a radio broadcaster since I was six years old. When I went to college, I majored in communications. When I touched a microphone, I fell in love.

A lot of time, we get ourselves in trouble, especially people who have a microphone and start to talk about things we assume.

Sinatra‘s melancholy was the melancholy of mass (old) media technology – the ‘extimacy’ of the records facilitated by the phonograph and the microphone, and expressing a peculiarly cosmopolitan and urban sadness.

I am all for everyone having a voice; I just don’t think everyone has earned the microphone. And that’s what the Internet has done.

I would just sweat so much. I’d be dry when I run on the stage. By the time I got in front of the microphone, it just, just like a river pouring out. I don’t know what made that happen. It took five years for that to stop happening to me.

Whether it’s with a microphone in your face or if it’s just a friend having coffee with you. It’s really nice for somebody to ask, ‘How are you? Are you OK?’

There are a lot of comics at the top end making staggering amounts of money and selling out stadiums. I think stand-up is a more intimate thing than that. Maybe because of the kind of comedy I do. It’s like a discussion, but I’m the one with the microphone.

Well, once you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you’re past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I’ll do it, you know.

Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.

When I’m on the microphone and I’m recording, or onstage, or shooting a video, I’m doing my job. When I’m not, I’m being myself.

You put a microphone in my hand on live TV, and that’s just an opportunity for me to get ahead in life. That’s the way I look at it.

There are few things quite so effortlessly enjoyable as watching an eminent person getting in a huff and flouncing out of a television interview, often with microphone trailing.

I made myself a promise that every time I turned on the microphone, no matter what it was, I was going to say something of value.

I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.

In America, we have bible-reading applications: every single one of those applications asks permission to turn on your microphone, your camera; it wants permission to read your e-mails and the right to send e-mails wherever it chooses.

My dad was always a great talker on the microphone, so I tried to learn a lot from him in that way, and he’s very old-school. He built the wrestling family that we have.

I did things with the microphone stand that no-one else has attempted to do.

We are the ones out there competing, and yet we read articles and listen to people making accusations about Jamaica, and there’s nobody there to take a microphone, be a big person and say, ‘What you’re saying is wrong, and it’s a lie.’

I believe samurai in the Edo period and modern hip-hop artists have something in common. Rappers open the way to their future with one microphone; samurai decided their fate with one sword.

When I grab the microphone, I am the greatest rapper, musician, and artist that ever lived, ever, in the entire universe – but when I put that microphone down, I am a man with so much to learn, personally and professionally.

In so many interviews, they bring up the sexual aspect of the record. I’ve had some journalists say it sounds like I’m lying down in bed singing with a microphone. It gets so old!

I’ve been fortunate enough to be given the blessing by Triple H down at NXT to start coming out to the ring with a microphone in my hand.

When I first started to beatbox on the microphone with the Get Fresh Crew, people were shocked. Some things are just supposed to happen and you have to roll with it.

Funny is not a color. Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone.

You can’t even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.

Dana White hides behind a microphone and behind a TV camera and spouts off and calls people names because he doesn’t like their opinion.

I’ll have the music, and then I’ll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.

That’s why I like the indies: because I like being who I am. I get to be who I am in the ring, on the microphone, everywhere. It’s great. I never have to get out of character because I am Matthew Riddle.

I like to feel the burn of the audience’s eyes when I’m whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone.

Bobby Heenan to me, he was the best. Of all the guys that have been managers that can pick up a microphone and talk, he was a natural and so good. His character like mine was so hated, it was like a little weasel.

The economics favour one-man comedy shows: all you need is one person, a microphone and a PA system. But I’m pleased so many people are making a living out of comedy – it’s a wonderful business to be in.

Sadly, there are a lot of ignorant people that have access to a microphone.

You can sell nothing for a mark-up for a while, but only until something starts eating away at it. Now I can go home and click on Yahoo, call my sister and talk over a microphone for free.

You know, I’ve never done karaoke, ever. It makes me nervous – I think it’s the lack of the guitar and just a microphone.

I’m a huge fan of voice memos. I put down many ideas there and sometimes I even use some of those audio files in my actual recordings. You get this really raw energy from voice memos that you can’t get when you sit down in a studio with a microphone. There’s this sense of immediacy, which I’m really drawn to.

You need to be able to build a character, you need to have time, you need to have a microphone and be able to talk so people can relate to you.

I’ve never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.

At the age of 15, I bought a USB microphone on a trip to the United States with my family, and that was my first recording studio.

I think what’s captivating about me on the microphone is my honesty.

I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody’s face, they’re going to say something that offends somebody.

In voiceover, you have to restrain yourself when you’re acting in the sound booth in front of the microphone. If you lean left or you lean right, you’re going to lose the voice. Yet you yourself become animated when you’re doing the part. So you’ll see a lot of flailing arms, but a very still face.

I was born with a silver microphone in my mouth, and that was an advantage. My father wrote books and was also a great broadcaster.

On the song ‘Step,’ the chorus is Ezra is singing into my laptop with the laptop microphone, and you can hear the trains going by my apartment, but we liked the quality of that recording.

When I first started to sing, people automatically asked what Barbi Benton was doing behind a microphone, and I’m determined to show them there is talent here.

Primarily I see myself as so much more than a rapper. I really believe I am the voice for a lot of people who don’t have that microphone or who can’t rap.

I didn’t know what kind of sound I wanted to make. I didn’t have no influences. I just heard my voice in the microphone and was like, damn, I like that.

It’s always been my dream to look like Mariah Carey in my photos with a microphone. I don’t know how she does it. When she sings, she looks perfect.

I think if you pick up a microphone and you rap, you’re a rapper.

I was a huge fan of Shane Douglas and how he used the microphone during a match.

You know, every time it comes, every time that light comes on or every time that camera comes on, every time that microphone comes on, the Mac Man seek and destroy.

It’s a briefcase with my laptop, my DSLR, a microphone, my mouse, and rechargeable batteries. I could set up right here and film an episode if I wanted to. And that’s how I like to keep it, small and compact, so I can do it anywhere in the world.

When you’re the person in the room with the microphone, you have a platform to talk about whatever you want, and it’s much more interesting if we’re discussing something that feels relevant.

When you get to the end of a TV series, you feel totally out of sorts as an actor. You feel unfit; your voice box has collapsed on you because you’ve spent all day muttering into a microphone that’s two inches from your head, and you feel desperate to spread your wings and do a bit of real thesping.

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.

I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.

When people heckle me, I have the microphone. And the press has the microphone.

Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues – communicating with an audience.

The greatest impact of ‘We Are the World’ seems to have been the video, which lets us see the singers take their turns at the microphone without any sense of star ego.

What we do every day onstage, there’s lights, there’s lots of other musicians, there’s an audience, there’s a microphone and mic stands – layers of the onion we have to kind of hide behind.

Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.

I’ve taken salsa classes. I love dancing and I love to karaoke. So I bought a microphone with some tapes and my son and I karaoke. I know the entire ‘Dora the Explorer‘ soundtrack.

When I sit down to write a song, it’s a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do.

There’s a lot of guys in WWE – you would know who they are – you know you’re going to see the same thing every single match. You know you’re going to hear the same thing every time they pick up a microphone. You know John Cena is never going to get mad at you no matter what you do.

You won’t see me at a microphone singing and tapping my foot. I spend a lot of money on sets, costumes and sound. I believe people deserve a show. I’m a singer, musician, dancer. I work hard, and I’m soaking wet when I come off.

Pittsburgh‘s definitely the city where I learned how to be on a stage, hold a microphone, and interact with an audience. It’s where I got my chops as an entertainer and as a performer, so I’m grateful to the queer community there because they are active and vocal and they care about each other.

I missed being onstage behind the microphone. After a while, it was hard to hear another voice singing my lyrics.

Man, if I get a chance to speak on the microphone, I’ve got to say something somewhere in there. You know, I’m going to laugh and have fun, too, but something has to be said that has some substance, because this is a platform, and the power that we have with words and with this microphone is phenomenal.

It doesn’t matter if you record with a microphone on a laptop or at a friend’s house. Now it’s more of a danger of things sounding too high-fi than sounding too low-fi.

I’m not the type of guy who is going to be out in front of a microphone for attention.

In standup, you don’t have anything near you except a microphone. There’s something a lot more self-conscious feeling when there’s cameras coming in for close-ups. It makes you very aware.

It might be okay for somebody else on the roster to sit on the sideline but it’s not okay for me to be. I’m the franchise player, I’m the guy on both the microphone and in the ring.

There are a bunch of talented bands out there… So yeah, I often think, ‘Why aren’t these people onstage and why do I have a microphone?’

A microphone pack once fell down my knickers and nearly pulled my pants down.

As for radio and movies, I like the movies better, although the work is much harder. The cinema has microphone technique, staging, and glamour all wrapped up into one.

Human interaction is awkward and weird, even if it happens without a microphone or camera.

That’s called a microphone. It’s a big sausage that picks up everything you say – and you’re starting early.

I guess drag queens, by nature, have to do everything. When you start being a drag queen, you’re grabbing the microphone, hosting the shows. Then, you’re setting the microphone down and doing the number. You’re spending the day before doing your wigs and sewing your costumes. You’re doing everything.

Most rock movies are never authentic – you’ll have someone supposedly in 1958 playing a 1990 guitar, and a 1986 microphone.

Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, don’t sit in the dark hiding. It’s easy to hide and shout and waste people’s time.

We love to work together. Especially when he stands behind me at the microphone and we hug.

I’m honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, ‘Hey, I’m homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.’ That’s not who I am.