It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
-Dizzy Gillespie- |
If it sounds good, it IS good.
--Duke Ellington |
It's not the mistakes that count, it's what you do after them that counts.
-Thelonious Monk- |
There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices.
--Thelonious Monk
I played the wrong, wrong notes.
--Thelonious Monk |
Just remember there is no such thing as a wrong note; what makes it wrong is when you don't know where to go after that one.
--Art Tatum |
I made the wrong mistakes
--Thelonious Monk |
If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying.
--Coleman Hawkins |
Way
back, musicians used to say he played weird, funny notes. They weren't
funny or weird then, and they're not now. He makes them the right
notes.
--Coleman Hawkins on Pee Wee Russell |
Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!
--Count Basie |
You might try taking the horn out of your mouth.
- Miles Davis, after John Coltrane said he found it difficult to play short solos |
I
am an improviser...I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all,
it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it
down for others, but it was originally improvised.
--Joe Zawinul |
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!
--Art Tatum |
Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.
--Paul Simon
After
I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone
to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them
myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
--Ornette Coleman |
Don't play what's there, play what's not there
--Miles Davis |
You're supposed to inspire the soloist.
--Dizzy Gillespie to drummer, Teddy Stewart
Have you ever thought that the soloist is supposed to inspire me?
--Stewart in reply |
I've
taken stuff from people, too. You know though, if you steal from one
person, you're just a thief. But if you steal from everyone, that's
research.
--Tony Bennett |
I haven't had any particular direction in my music. I just do it the way I feel it at the time.
--Johnny Cash |
Some
of the old songs I sing often, because they help me to reflect on where
I've been and that's important for me to do - so I don't lose track of
where I am going.
--Johnny Cash |
The
music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords.
I can't play them?I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the
conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic
rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite
possibilities as to what to do with them.
--Miles Davis |
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
--Duke Ellington |
My
biggest kick in music -- playing or writing -- is when I have a
problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in
anything?
--Duke Ellington |
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
--Duke Ellington |
You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.
--Duke Ellington |
Look, you come in here tomorrow, and anything you do with your right hand I?ll do with my left.
--Art Tatum to Bud Powell |
Most
of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker?s next record in
order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?
--Charles Mingus on Charlie Parker's death |
It's
the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you
think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you
get, that's you, so that's your story.
--Count Basie |
Some
days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty
good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn
wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins
--Dizzy Gillespie |
You pick up the horn, put it to your chops and the son of a bitch says: Screw You
--Roy Eldridge |
I
like any and all of my associations with music -- writing, playing, and
listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience
listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
--Duke Ellington |
A
piece of music is alive. It's a misnomer to limit yourself by saying
it has a beginning and an end... Benny Golson has re-written "I
Remember Clifford" many times. I've played it with him over the years
in all its different forms... Wayne Shorter says a piece of music never
ends.
--Buster Williams |
You
take each solo like it was the last one you were going to play in your
life. Sometimes I jump the right chord and use what seems wrong to the
next guy, but I kow it is right for me. I usually think about four
bars ahead what I am going to play. Sometimes things go wrong and I
have to scramble, but if I can make it to the bridge of the tune, I
know everything will be alright.
--Pee Wee Russell |
In
lots of cases, the solo depends on who you're following. The guy
played a great chorus ... how am I going to follow that? ... What the
hell? I'll try something new. All this goes through your mind in a
split second. You start and if it sounds good to you, you keep it up
and write a little tune of your own.
--Pee Wee Russell |
The better the singer's voice is, the harder it is to believe what they're saying. So I turn my weaknesses into strengths.
--David Byrne |
My
driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all
down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of
sincerity.
--Eric Clapton |
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.
--Paul Desmond |
I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.
--Paul Desmond |
I have won several prizes as the world's slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.
--Paul Desmond |
I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.
--Paul Desmond |
Practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, so why practice?
--David Dean |
Playing "Bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
--Duke Ellington |
'Swing'
is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing.
There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.
--Artie Shaw |
I
can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in
succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or
exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
--Billie Holiday |
Good
jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells.
Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is
when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands
and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of
the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and
dances around their instruments.
--Charles Mingus |
I kept thinking theres bound to be something else... I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it.
--Charlie Parker |
The disgusting stink of a too loud electric guitar; now that's my idea of a good time.
--Frank Zappa |
Jazz is like writing. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.
--Paul Desmond |
At
this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They
speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing
yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure
and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There?s no
beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what
is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is
bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find
what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a
story that anyone can understand.
--Thelonious Monk
Now, can you tell me a story?
--Lester Young (after listening to a pyrotechnic display by a young hotdog saxophonist) |
You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
--Thelonious Monk |
It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling
--Bill Evans |
Are big bands coming back? Sure, every football season.
-Woody Herman |
By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.
--Duke Ellington |
If you have to ask, you'll never know."
--Louis Armstrong when asked to define the rhythmic concept of "swing" |
Jazz
is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that?s
it. No America, no jazz. I?ve seen people try to connect it to other
countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn?t have a damn thing to
do with Africa.
--Art Blakey |
Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin
--Miles Davis |
It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It?s not. It's feeling.
--Bill Evans |
|
|
There's two kinds of music: good and bad. I like both.
--Duke Ellington |
Music is the space between the notes.
-- Claude Debussy |
Music is motion in time.
--Felix Salzer |
"Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi."
(Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which doesn't know that it is counting.)
--Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz |
Music is organized sound.
--Edgard Varese |
Music washes away the dust of every day life.
--Art Blakey |
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
--Duke Ellington |
What
is music to you? What would you be without music? Music is everything.
Nature is music (cicadas in the tropical night). The sea is music, the
wind is music. The rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in
the sky are music. Music is the oldest entity. The scope of music is
immense and infinite. It is the 'esperanto' of the world.
--Duke Ellington |
The
other night I heard a cat on the radio, and he was talking about
'modern' jazz. So he played a record to illustrate the point, and
there were devices in that music that I heard cats using in the 1920s.
These large words like 'modern' don't mean anything. Everybody who's
had anything to say in his music -- all the way back -- has been an
individualist ... I listen for those individualists. Like Sidney
Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins and like Charlie Parker was.
--Duke Ellington |
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
--Igor Stravinsky |
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
- Igor Stravinsky |
Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.
--Maurice Ravel |
Wagner's music is better than it sounds
--Mark Twain |
I hate music, especially when it's played
--Jimmy Durante |
My life is made better knowing that I will never have to listen to that again.
--Pianist Jessica Williams after hearing Robert Glasper's "Rise and Shine" |
For
me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built
into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is
the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a
recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it -- even of my own
music -- with the same nuances forever.
--Aaron Copland |
I
can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under
intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions,
unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home
under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as
they want to hear it. I can't imagine what would happen to literature
today if one were obliged to congregate in an unpleasant hall and read
novels projected on a screen.
--Milton Babbitt |
All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song
--Louis Armstrong |
I
was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs,
my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already
within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me, like
food or water.
--Ray Charles |
Music
has been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after
Ray Charles is dead. I just want to leave my mark, leave something
musically good behind.
--Ray Charles |
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
--Duke Ellington |
Music
should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a
person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It's
easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown
part of yourself you never knew existed. That's the real mission of
art. The artist has to find something within himself that's universal
and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people.
The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his
realizing it... enrichment, that's the function of music.
--Bill Evans |
My
theory is that music is good, it's the only religion that delivers the
goods. And anybody who wants to hear any kind of music is entitled to
hear that music because it's good for you ? it makes you feel good. If
you like it, go for it. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean
anything -- it's a matter of personal taste.
--Fank Zappa |
A
composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air
molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
--Frank Zappa |
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.
--Frank Zappa |
I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
--Frank Zappa |
Music is the most physically inspiring of all the Arts.
--Frank Zappa |
Dance
music -- as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper... a
windshield wiper that's fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need
is an out-of-tune playing 'Melancholy Baby' and you've got dance music.
--Artie Shaw |
Don't be a musician under any circumstances unless you can bring yourself to be nothing else
--Paul Desmond
If
I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think
in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music
--Albert Einstein |
People
say, Well, he wore that body out. Well, maybe I did. But it was to a
good purpose. They should be thankful that I wore it out to the purpose
I wore it out and that was writing and recording and touring and doing
concerts. Everywhere I could possibly do them that I thought I might
enjoy them. I thought people might enjoy me.
--Johnny Cash |
There are two kinds of people, there's those who like Johnny Cash, and those that will.
--Marty Stuart |
Every man knows that he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash.
--Bono |
For me, music and life are all about style.
--MIles Davis |
I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?
--Miles
Davis while attending a reception in honor of Ray Charles at Ronald
Reagan's White House in 1987. This was his reply to a Washington
society lady seated next to him who had asked him what he had done to
be invited. |
A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
--Miles Davis on being called a legend |
My ego only needs a good rhythm section.
--Miles Davis on being asked what he looked for in musicians |
I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.
--Paul Desmond on why he chose a caree in music instead of writing |
I
can't understand these guys who just have to have your autograph. I
asked one of them, 'What do you do when you get home, take it out and
look at it?'
--Artie Shaw |
No
matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the
American public will find it and buy it in large quantity,
--Artie Shaw |
Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?
--Charles Mingus |
They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
--Charles Mingus |
I
never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I
played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another
to my right.
--Duke Ellington |
Most
customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some
extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.
--Charles Mingus |
They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.
--Dizzy Gillespie |
Well, I'm too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I'm just gon' keep playin'
--Clark Terry |
There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
--Duke Ellington |
A
young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him
nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous!
Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!
--Nate "Cannonball" Adderly |
You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played.
--Miles Davis on Lous Armstrong |
He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way.
--Duke Ellington on Lous Armstrong |
He plays like somebody is standing on his foot.
--Miles Davis on Eric Dolphy |
It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.
--Paul Desmond on Ornette Coleman |
He
was the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of modern
jazz piano; every jazz pianist since Bud either came through him or is
deliberately attempting to get away from playing like him.
--Herbie Hancock on Bud Powell |
When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.
--Bille Holiday on Lester Young |
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
--Duke Ellington |
I,
myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who
invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And
those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins,
Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest
genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
--Charles Mingus |
Well, if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn't play like Wynton.
--Chet Baker on Wynton Marsalis |
How
do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And
besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the
guts.
--Dizzy Gillespie |
Miles got a mystique about him... plus he's at the top of his profession... And he's got way, way, way more money.
--Dizzy Gillespie |
Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.
--Clark Terry |
At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.
--Miles Davis |
He
wants life and music to be always in a state of becoming. He doesn't
even like definitive song endings to a piece. He'd often ask us to
come up with the ideas for closings, but when he'd settled on one of
them, he'd keep fooling with it. He always likes to make the end of a
song sound as if it's still going somewhere.
--Clark Terry |
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.
--Duke, himself, at age 66, on being passed over for a Pulitzer Prize in music) in 1965 |
|
|
Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.
--Kurt Cobain |
In
fact rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved
within the capitalist structure, is an example of how capitalism can,
almost without conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses...
--Michael Lydon |
Pop music is about saying "fuck me". Rock and roll is about saying "fuck you."
--Chrissie Hynde |
Rock stars, is there anything they don't know?
--Homer Simpson |
It's not music you would use to get a girl into bed. If anything, you're going to frighten her off.
--David Byrne on the music of the Talking Heads |
I
never did understand the resentment about Country artists "going pop".
Either you've got what it takes to appeal to a whole lot of people, or
you don't.
--Johnny Cash |
What is soul? It's like electricity ? we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.
--Ray Charles |
What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes... Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper.
--George Clinton |
He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.
--Miles Davis on Prince |
It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.'
--Miles Davis' response when questioned on what he heard in the music of Jimi Hendrix |
Basically
I'm in the idea business -- whether it's a musical idea or a spoken
idea ... If you wind up with a political system that wants to put idea
men out of business, then you have worry on your hands.
--Frank Zappa |
The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.
--Frank Zappa |
I'll
tell you what classical music is -- for those of you who don't know.
Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead
people a long time ago. And it's formula music, the same as top forty
music is formula music. In order to have a piece be classical, it has
to conform to academic standards that were the current norms of that
day and age ... I think that people are entitled to be amused, and
entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's
probably good for their mental health.
--Frank Zappa |
All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
Frank Zappa |
Rock
journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't
talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read.
--Frank Zappa |
To
the complaint, "There are no people in these photographs," I respond,
"There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer."
--Ansel Adams |
I would gladly give all my symphonies, had I been able to invent the locomotive.
--Anton Dvorák |
Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.
--Duke Ellington |
There is no art when one does something without intention.
--Duke Ellington |
Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
--Charles Mingus |
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice
[I shall strike the stars with my forehead.]
--Horace (Odes, book 1, ode 1, lines 35-36) |
They
say you should be nice to everyone on your way up because you might
need them on your way down. I haven't seen anyone I know on the way down
--Jack Sheldon |
My problem is that I appeal to everyone that can do me absolutely no good
--Rodney Dangerfield |
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
--Herb Caen |
Our lives begin to end when we are silent about things that matter.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. |
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
--Duke Ellington |
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
--Duke Ellington |
Love
is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things
that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you
haven?t; there?s no proof of it.
--Duke Ellington |
Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
--Duke Ellington |
Opinions are like assholes . . . everyone?s got one.
--Art Blakey |
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
--Benjamin Franklin
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose
our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
--Abraham Lincoln |
I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country with a WORKING first amendment.
--Frank Zappa |
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
--Frank Zappa |
The most important thing to do in your life, is to not interfere with somebody else's life.
--Frank Zappa |
Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
--Frank Zappa |
The
more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the
child, receive adulation for being good parents -- because they have a
tame child-creature in their house.
--Frank Zappa |
May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.
--Frank Zappa to Tipper Gore about parental advisory labels on album covers |
I
think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such
an absurdity to take anything really serious ... I make an honest
attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out
about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you
get right down to it, what's the story here?
--Frank Zappa |
Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.
--Frank Zappa |
A
drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in
when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an
asshole.
--Frank Zappa |
Why Should I Smile When I'm Sitting Here With You?
--Frank Zappa on CNN's Crossfire |
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open.
--Frank Zappa |
Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.
--Frank Zappa |
If we can't be free, at least we can be cheap
--Frank Zappa |
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
--Frank Zappa |
Go ahead Senator, I already hold you in contempt.
--Frank
Zappa to Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) during the "Tipper Gore Musical
Obscenity" Hearings. Gorton had just warned Zappa he might be held in
contempt of Congress for his ttitude |
I'm
not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life.
Life is ? the way God has given it to me was just a platter ? a golden
platter of life laid out there for me. It's been beautiful.
--Johnny Cash |
Compassion
is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain
in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of
compassion.
--Johnny Cash |
Every possession is just another stick to beat yourself with.
--Johnny Cash |
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
--Frank Zappa |
How
well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and
hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no
place for any man.
--Johnny Cash |
I
do believe the sum extent of the messiness, disarrangement, disorder,
and dirtiness of your room is equal to that of your brain.
--Johnny Cash |
It's good to know who hates you, and it's good to be hated by the right people.
--Johnny Cash |
My
Mama always said she wanted her roses while she was living... not after
she was gone. That's why everyone should always honour their mother and
father. No matter how much you may disagree with their beliefs, those
that have lived longer than us always have something to teach us, that
we can take with us for the rest of our lives.
--Johnny Cash |
Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.
--Johnny Cash |
The best way to say anything is just to say it.
--Johnny Cash |
When God forgave me, I figured I'd better do it too.
--Johnny Cash |
A goal is a dream with a finish line.
--Duke Ellington |
Affluence
separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I
don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour;
well, I'll give you some of mine.
--Ray Charles |
You better live every day like your last because one day you're going to be right.
--Ray Charles |
I
like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when
you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really
terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.
--Frank Zappa |
I
wouldn't be surprised if he agreed to give up a lifetime of gastronomic
joys in order to live an extra week or month at the very end. I strike
my balance at a more human point. The sole purpose of life is not
longevity.
-- Jeffrey Steingarten on NY mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYC trans-fat ban |
Middle aged men are not cats. The sole purpose of life is not to sleep it away.
--me |
I like the girls to match the upholstery of the car.
--Charlie Barnet |
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Quotes