Trevor Rabin Quotes

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.

Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically.

When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I'm not that knowledgeable with the guitar - I just find ways that are pretty creative, but it's all within the framework and the limitations of what I can do.

The best way for me to teach myself an instrument is to just jam on it, and sound awful sometimes, and sound great other times.

I couldn't find a way to write music with numbers and rules and schedules. So I tried to forget the academic idea of music and started to see if it was possible to do creative work, taking in all the influences I wanted to keep.

Especially with Fantomas, i'm just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can't get away with.

I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.

The drums were new to me; I was just playing what was in my head. I was a guitar player originally - so on the drums, I just played what was in my head rather than caring too much about what others were playing. And in that way, I came up with a simple but unique style.

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

I don't always have to be on what is the newest in music is. I'm slowly educating myself in music. For me, I feel more free in not knowing everything in what I'm doing. You can start making up too many rules for yourself. It should just be love and fun and feeling good.

When I listen to music, there's usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that's what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.

Sometimes I will click on a random sequence of notes- not to actually use it in a song, but to see if I can find maybe a simple pattern that I can build off of.

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

Almost everything I've done, I've done through my own creativity. I don't think I ever had to listen to anyone else to learn how to play drums. I wish I could say that for about ten thousand other drummers.