Wadada Leo Smith Quotes

I've played the guitar since I was 12, and just taught myself songs chord by chord.

I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.

When I heard BB King's 'Sweet Sixteen,' I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.

I taught myself how to play the guitar. I never studied music.

My mother is a retired music teacher. She taught me in high school, and she would take us and put us in these madrigal groups. We would go to a museum or whatever and just perform.

Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.

My dad put me with all the greatest people. It definitely helped me now, because I know so much more about music and composition. It's cool. I love Pops. I'm super thankful for everything he's done to help my career.

I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.

My parents were both very musically inclined, they were both songwriters and musicians, so we grew up in the house singing music together, and R&B had a huge strong arm in the foundation of my career.

I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.

I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music.

My dad always played a lot of music, so I heard him playing all the time, and then I decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar, so I got an acoustic and started taking lessons. I wanted to be able to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen.

I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.

I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

I was able to work with the best musicians in Kansas City starting when I was really young.

I've actually been playing music ever since I was a young a kid. I got my first guitar when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so I've always been doing music.

Well, I actually first got into music as a small child, and as I became a teen, I sought out making money from music, weather that was singing lounge gigs, backup in studios, or weddings.

I never got formal training in music. I would just sit with my ear to the speaker and my hand on the needle. I'd listen to Wanda Jackson and think, 'How did she do that?,' and lift the needle and try it myself.

I learned some chords and I started watching anybody I could, once I really got into it.

I love to play guitar and hack around. I was in a band when I was in high school. I never learned to play very well, but I enjoyed it.

We always had a guitar at home, but it wasn't until I was 14 when I picked it up myself when my father handed me these sheets of music of the Beatles and some other classics. That's where I learned all the chords and learned how to play and sing at the same time.

Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time.

I play guitar, piano, and I'm learning to play the drums.