Music Transcription Quotes

Slowly, over time, I learned enough that I started considering myself a musician, where I actually knew how to play instruments. But still, when I talk to my real musician friends, they're calling chords out, and I have no idea what they're talking about.

I've always considered transcribing to be an invaluable tool in the development of one's musical ear and, over the years, I have spent countless glorious hours transcribing different kinds of music, either guitar-oriented or not.

When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.

You know that in order to copyright material somebody has to write it down for you. Any piece of recorded material has to be scored in order for it to be copyrighted. I've seen the scores of my things and they don't resemble the music in any way. If you give them to somebody who has never heard the music and say, "What does this sound like to you?" they'll play you something that has no relationship with the music it derives from. Notation simply isn't adequate.

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.

The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.

It wasn't until after private lessons and learning bass lines that I even noticed bass in the music I was listening to at that age. My ears were blown wide open.

When I was younger, I was always a musician that could play by ear better than I could analytically.

Yeah, I can read music and I know the names of chords.

I'm a self-taught musician aside from what I've been able to pick up from other players.

If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil!

Basically, everything I've learned on guitar, I've learned from listening to my favorite albums. I never had any formal training. My teachers were Dimebag Darrell and Slash and the guys in Rancid and Slayer.

I don't read music. Not even essentially. Not even nonessentially.

Reading music has opened up me up so much. I've been experimenting for so long and trying to make sense of things just from my ears. It takes forever. Now I can get where I want much quicker.

For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.

Truth of the matter is, I can't even read or write music.

I don't read music. I don't write or read music.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

My folks bought a baby grand piano and that's where I did the majority of figuring out the songs I heard on the stereo.

I score everything by hand on manuscript paper and then make copies.

I don't read music. I refuse to learn how to do that. I barely know half the chords I'm playing. I like being naive when it comes to that.

I learned by transcribing songs out of the Library of Congress collection in Washington where I was working. I got a job when I just turned twenty in 1939 and Alan [Lomax] needed some help. I listened to hundreds of records every week.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I have some good books of Bach keyboard music transcribed for guitar, and there's always a nylon-string guitar hanging on the wall in my house and a bunch of classical guitar books to grab. I kind of do that just for fun.

I basically taught myself how to sing and play by copying records, and that's just how it was for me. I know that's true for a lot of budding musicians out there - that's the thing that gets them inspired, is trying to learn their favorite songs. I think it's a great way to teach yourself.