Art Tatum Quotes

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

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

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

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

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

One thing I liked about 'Silver Bell' is that I barely knew how to play in the tuning I was writing in, and I just went for it anyway.

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.

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.

'Enlightened Rogues' we made like the earlier ones: whatever tune came up, whatever direction it went in, that's the way it went. That's what we'll always do. I think if we ever stop doin' that, we ought to quit.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

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.

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree.

It's cool to have instruments lying around because they give you different ideas.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

But I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me, and I've always been able to do more than you necessarily hear with every band I've ever played in.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

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

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

I think differently, I think it's about reaching everybody on every different plane and every different level, and if I could remix the song and do a dance remix, that's great. If I could do a classical version, that'll be great too. It's all just about expression.