Musical Fluency Quotes

R. Kelly is different - music is always going through his brain. I remember we'd be having a conversation, and he'd choose a word I said and write a whole song to it.

I never had a problem with technique.

I play different styles, and am very good at changing how I play.

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.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

I've always been that way. I'm not very good at reading music but I'm pretty quick at picking things up.

You have a natural groove inside of you, but the more you practise, the more comfortable you will be with your instrument.

I studied piano from the age of three. My grandmother taught piano. I stayed at her house during the day while my parents worked. I obviously wanted to learn to play. And so she asked if she could teach me, and my mother said don't you think she's too young. My grandmother apparently said no. So I could read music before I could read, and I really don't remember learning to read music. So for me it's like a native language. When I look at a sheet of music, it just makes sense.

Since I have been singing for so many years, I don't always need to approach a song quite so laboriously and meticulously.

Some people will basically just shred all over everything, even a ballad. I'm glad I wasn't born with that genetic chip - the need to just wheedle-whee all over the place.

I don't know that many chords. I'd be loaded if I knew that many. But that's not my aim. My aim is to move from one vein to the other without any trouble. The biggest thing to me is keeping a feeling, regardless what you play. So many cats lose their feeling at various times, not through the whole tune, but at various times, and it causes them to have to build up and drop down, and you can feel it.

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.

In reality everybody has got musical thoughts. If you are able to overcome the part of it which is muscle training, which is what most musical playing actually is, performance actually is, is muscle training, and you are able to convert your ideas directly into music, you're a musician, too.

If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.

Sometimes just allowing yourself to noodle without any structure will enable you to stumble upon great new ideas, culminating in creating your own distinct voice on the instrument.

When you do a song new live on stage, it's kind of a bit weird until it gets worn in, you know, like oiled up a bit. It's still a little bit stiff until you really thrashed at it for a few weeks.

I try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.

One can only improvise what one knows.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.

I don't like reading music. It's like learning a language. You can't read music proficiently overnight. It takes time, it's boring work.

If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

There's a certain fear of simplicity. I think that's the thing, when you're younger as an artist, you get this idea in your head that complexity equals quality. The more notes you're playing, the better.

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me.

I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.