Musical Standards Quotes

Usually when you interview somebody for a number of hours, they'll say something that is self-aggrandizing or is a manipulation of the facts.

When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.

I think that every songwriter would give their right arm to come up with a standard that is going to be played long after they're dead.

We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books.

To me, there's two types of songs, good and bad. And I just like to stick with the good ones.

I don't do filler songs. I don't get them. They don't make any sense to me. Why would I literally waste my time on a song that doesn't hold up to the same standards as the other songs on the album? I won't play it live.

Having a band was part of my heart's desire, musically. Within myself, I was saying that, 'Not until you have a band for yourself can you maintain the standard of your songs,' and the sound become a foundation. You don't have to feel around for two or three weeks for the sound because the foundation is already built.

If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so.

I look back at Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and especially Betty Carter, whom I admire the most, and I say, OK, they set a standard of excellence. I listen to them not for what they are doing, but to study where they are coming from because, for me, jazz is life experience.

I try to deliver because I don't believe that people are deliverin' the same quality of albums.

I care more about the fans in general, just making sure they enjoy what I do. And then also I kind of had this kind of ideal of the kind of music I want to make and what I'm aiming for kind of creatively and just the quality of the music that I'm trying to make. And I have that in my head.

By itself, the question of the liturgy's essence and the standards of the reform has brought us back to the question of music and its position in the liturgy. And as a matter of fact one cannot speak about worship at all without also speaking of the music of worship.

I don't sing songs on albums that I don't like.

I always have to have what I believe are the pillars of an album - songs which I can go back to and admire personally as a piece of writing.

To fill the shoes of rock 'n' roll, because of the family I have, is a really hard thing.

I wouldn't record any song that I didn't like.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

What people really should be able to be confident in is that the standards of music- making that classically trained musicians present is elite, it is the best and all of us as artists should be committed to that.

There will be no new music until it's good enough and until I'm ready.

You couldn't really like a bad guitar in 1960 'cause everybody was pretty good.

American musicians are very giving - they have the highest standard in the world - but they are also very demanding in their conditions.

I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed.

You're supposed to create new standards. The more you play songs by your peers, they become standards, you know? Miles Davis played 'Gingerbread Boy' 'cos he and Jimmy Heath were cool, you know? That's how the culture goes.