Eddie Van Halen Quotes

For me, playing music is like meditating - I just play and don't really think about what I'm doing, I just let it happen.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

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

I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time.

Music is funny. I shouldn't even ever talk about music, because you can have all the ideas in your head, and it never goes exactly the way that you think it's gonna go.

I'm always trying to find myself little holes where I can do some songwriting.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

I just play, just you know, If i just sit down with the guitar and just do whatever for, you know, an half an hour or an hour whatever. That's pretty much, that should do it for me.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

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.

I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.

I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

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

Well, I would say that music just happens with me, I'm not in the driver's seat when I am at the piano, the piano is.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

After I left the Pumpkins, I went home and just sat around. I have a studio in my basement, and I found myself writing all these songs, just taking advantage of the relaxed situation. I wrote about 30 songs in about 30 days.