Pete Fountain Quotes

I've never taken a lesson in my life, and I can play every instrument there is. I play by ear, but I can fool anybody into thinking I went to some conservatory of music.

I never really trained to be a musician, but I've been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I've played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don't read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.

I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition.

I play by ear - I'm self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.

I play no instruments.

I can't read a note of music. I just do it all from ear.

While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.

I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.

I actually write my own music whenever I have a chance. I play guitar and sing.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

I used to play the piano by listening to it - like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid - and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn't do it anymore.

I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.

I could never overstate the importance of a musician's need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good 'inner ear' - the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening - is the most important element in becoming a good musician.

I've never known how to read music in my life.

It has never been necessary for me to learn how to read music.

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos, and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up, and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once, and I could play it.

I've always been that way. I'm not very good at reading music but I'm pretty quick at picking things up.

I can't read sheet music, I have to just listen to it, and then just go for it.

I don't practice per se. I learned to play on my own, taught myself how to play. I've never really had a lesson, and I don't read music. So all the stuff that I do doesn't come from the normal set of disciplines that they teach you where you sit down and run through scales for a particular number of minutes a day.

In order to become a well-rounded musician, you have to master the three major aspects of guitar playing: the technical side, the musical side and the creative side.

Ever since I was a little kid, my ears and my hands would talk to each other very well, so I could pick up instruments quite easily.

I always hankered to be a composer - I was mad about music, though I never studied seriously, and can't read a note. But I learned to play the piano and became pretty skillful at improvisation, especially after a drop or two.

I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.