Billy Gibbons Quotes

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.

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

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.

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

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.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

I got my style. I got my own way of playing. I'm a musician. I'm self-taught.

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.

The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

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

Playing guitar is not a beauty contest.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

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 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.

You see, that is it with music, you never stop learning.

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

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound.

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.

Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.