Dick Dale Quotes

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

I never sing a song the same way twice.

As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

I may play the same program from one recital to the next, but I will play it differently, and because it is always different, it is always new.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

I personally don't lock in a performance, because I do leave room for things to happen, so I just make sure I'm very intimate with what I'm saying and why I'm saying it so that no matter what happens, we can do whatever we want to do and leave space for play.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

If you ever go to a music session, you'll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they're reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.

I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.

I record cello Etudes that are fewer than four minutes long and post them on YouTube. How can one execute fully-formed ideas with utmost perfection, yet stay free enough to allow improvisatory nuance? This has immediate application in almost every area of life, but especially in performance.

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

I don't work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don't do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that's what's actually on the recording.