Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues..
If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune..
If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art..
Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking….
Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music..
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts..
A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out..
The bass is the link between harmony and rhythm. It is the foundation of a band. It is what all the other instruments stand upon, but it is rarely ….
From now on all of my guitar solos will be in morse code..
Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear..
I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you..
You'd go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a d….
Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice..
If we compel the composer to write in terms of what the listener is able to hear, we flirt with the danger of freezing the evolution of musical langu….
Everybody wants to know about my style and how it came about. It's no big secret. It's the way I feel..
In difficult times, people just like to hear music. They like to be moved by what they hear. And music speaks different languages..
I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a ….
Music comes from the musician, not the instrument..
The silence between two notes is as beautiful and meaningful as the notes themselves..
I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow..
There is no such thing as a wrong note..