Dianne Reeves Quotes

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I feel like the first record was really finding my feet, figuring out what music I wanted to make... Now that I've done that, I feel like I've got a much clearer idea of what I want to sound like and what I want to discover. It's exciting.

Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.

I play guitar quite a bit, because I'm always in search of something. I don't play to jam, but because I'm fishing. I'm looking for something, that I hope you can never find. If I do find it, I'm afraid I won't have a need to do this any more.

We groove off of everything, any sort of live show. The inner dialogue you're having with yourself, between you and the music, is for me the search for God.

In my honest opinion, in 'Volumes I' and 'II,' we were still trying to figure out our sound.

Then I met people at school who were into Erykah Badu and Snoop Dogg. I like heaps of different music, but that was a real pivotal time in terms of finding my way.

There's an amazing power that music has, and it definitely had its power over me as a boy. I just saw fit to keep exploring it.

To me, music is more like a spiritual seeking that takes one to unknown levels.

Once I heard how deep music could touch people and what it can make you feel and all of these emotions it could bring out, I was really fascinated with it all.

Ultimately, you're looking for a soulful experience when you listen to any form music.

Growing up in the U.S., music became a way for me to find my roots and anchor points.

I think that soul, to me, is the theme of music that I connect with.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

I don't regret any of the musical decisions I have made.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically.

If we are able to get inside the music and inhabit it convincingly enough, it will cause everyone to find each other in this new psychological space. And that's most exciting.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.

A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn't feel like wallowing.

After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.