I used to be opposed to collaboration, and that's probably why the music in the past wasn't as good. Writing with other people, especially the great writers that I've had the privilege to write with, it activates something in your mind that you wouldn't use alone.
Whenever I've improved, gone up a level in sound-making, it's been because I've done an album.
Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.
Just growing up and maturing has made my music so much better.
I'm able to come and do a new sound and grow even more and make greater songs because my song-making abilities have grown.
I think we always have to put forth music that's better than the last.
I'm enjoying doing research, to get better at the guitar, to get better at rhyming. That's an essential skill.
It's not like I'm not writing great music anymore, it's just that I want to take it another level.
At the Isle of Wight, the sound went out and kind of kept on going. And I wasn't... when I came off stage I was kind of unhappy about how we had played. But now, I listen back to those recordings and it's not bad.
Songs always get better after you start playing them live.
After 35 years of bone-crushing rock guitar playing, I'm finally starting to get my head out of the harmonic sand and learning how to play over chord changes.
You try to play the song better than you had before.
My progress on the piano and my motivation to practice increased dramatically when I caught a vision of my potential.
The thing I love about music is, if you do it long enough, you get better and better at translating what's in your head to a medium. That's why I keep doing it.
As my guitar playing dwindled, something else in my music got better.
Music is not like sports, where you can go and do a hundred reps in a gym and come out and be all buffed up.
Every time I hear a recording I've made, I hear all kinds of things I could improve or things I should have done. There's always so much more to be done in music. It's so vast.
I'm working really hard to get the clarinet out of that hole, that Benny Goodman thing.
I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.
I haven't learned anything new on guitar since high school. And I think it's time to learn something.
I think it's really important to be humble for the music because there is always someone better than you, there is always something new for you to learn for music and you can't be the best in the world. It makes you work very hard.
I used to record songs, like, play the beat from one phone and have another phone recording me and just rap. Moving from that to a studio was like, 'Damn, I never knew I could sound like this.' It was just magic.
Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.
My production got better, songs, lyrics, everything; the sound, the quality, everything.
I feel like I'm always just trying to write better music and keep topping myself.
