Intuitive Playing Quotes

When I play guitar, it's automatic. I don't try to do something; I just do it. And it's already so ingrained in what I do, I don't think about it. I don't try to do something - I just do it. And the more I do it that way, the more I surprise myself. And if I surprise myself, that's the best thing.

I don't think about the characters I choose to play, analytically or consciously.

I'm kind of a feel player. I'll stretch out before a show a bit and do some playing, but that's about it. I'm not one of these 10-hour-a-day playing guys.

I don't think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I'm playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!

Sound is what drives my solos, not verbal concepts, I never think 'I'm going to use a Lydian Dominant scale and then go up a half-step', even though that might be exactly what I end up doing.

I'm trying to learn to really use space. My philosophy is that every time you interrupt space in a very confident, secure manner, then music happens.

I actually prefer it if I don't know what I'm supposed to do. If you've got an equal temperament piano keyboard, then you know what you're going to get if you play certain chords. But I actually like it if you don't know where the notes are, because then you do it intuitively. You're working out a new language, basically. New rules.

As long as I know what key the solo is in, I try to kind of empty my mind and not think about anything. I just play without thinking.

Don't use your brain to play it, let your feelings guide your fingers.

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

I play as I feel.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

I wish I were more musically gifted, more intuitive in playing instruments.

I don't seek out knowledge when it comes to guitar playing; I like to let it happen naturally.

Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how's and why's of piano.

It's hard to find five musicians who know what the other is going to do before they do it. And that's what we had in GN'R.

The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano. I just go within.

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.

When you're in the moment and not over thinking the song is when things tend to really work. You're not so focused on the minutiae. You're focused on the overall feel, and that's the stuff that I get from the demos.

I always start with emotion. That's where I start all of my improvisations, on the piano. I always start with the mood or the feel of where I am in that moment.

So, to come In with a set routine it's something I've never believed in. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.