David Sanborn Quotes

I found a favorite chord, which is B flat 7 - that's my favorite chord.

I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.

I really had to think and learn about musical intervals.

My favourite chord? Bb6th with added 9th.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

You can sightread better if you know your scales and arpeggios.

I understand that transposing a song a half step can effect the believability of a lyric.

I love to play in the different keys like B or F sharp, or keys that most people don't play in, because they have a better resonance or something. I'm really not fond of F and C. I just stay away from those if I can.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

There are only twelve tones and they need to be treated carefully.

Sometimes it's cool to play major third and minor third diads back-to-back, or a minor third followed by a root/fifth diad - whatever combo sounds good.

I don't know one note from another.

I use some pretty radical harmonics at the beginning of 'Heresy.'

I was classically trained. But more than just the fact that I play violin, there's a lot of classical elements in the way I write, in the way I hear chords. A lot of times, I think of my songs as a symphony made out of electronics rather than instruments. And I love to do orchestral arrangements of my songs after they're done.

As the chord changes go by, I don't so much think about a static chord voicing changing. I just see the notes on the neck change.

I have a thing for major 7ths. They've got a very mournful, nostalgic quality to them.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

My course is about really working on a sheet of music. You work out the chords, which note complements the other, and how they will make the feeling of tension, the feeling of resolution. It's all about harmonization. That's more of the theory of notation and everything rather than practical. I don't play any instrument.

There's only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It's all in what you do with them.

When we do reggae, it's normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there'll be chord changes, key changes.

I listen to everything and find parts about a song in the lyrics/melody/chords/production that I like and can be inspired by when I write my next song.