Bryce Dessner Quotes

My playground as a musician is growing.

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'm constantly evolving as a musician.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

I feel like that I'm learning all the time. I'm learning from new artists, from established artists... every time I listen to '70s rock 'n' roll records, I'm learning. And I think that I'm just now starting to get a hold on what I do.

It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.

What drives me is to still feel creative and like I'm pushing myself as an artist.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

I feel like I introduce another level of my creative ability on every album.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

I'm forever learning and that's why I'm always able to create new styles and new dimensions of hip-hop.

I would join a band, learn from that band and be committed and passionate and bring my thing to the band. Then, when I felt like we were going to repeat ourselves, and I needed to learn more, I would go somewhere else.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?

Jazz is not the format where I want to stay, but it really is a starting point for me.

One doesn't want to feel too contented; you have to feel challenged by the music.

I always feel like out of every session that I do, whether it's a record session or even a concert, I like to think that there was something in there that I didn't do before. That's my goal.

I remember when I wrote songs when I was about 16, they all sounded the same because I didn't know anything. And all the subject matter was all the same because I hadn't actually done much.

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound.

What I do is I basically make records to please myself first and foremost, and so one of the most important things for me as a musician and a writer and a producer is to feel like there's always a sense of evolution and reinvention with each record.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.

Pushing yourself and digging into something new, that's what being a musician is all about.

I can't make hard street music for the rest of my life. Your references change.

You could say, 'Oh, we're gonna write the heaviest album of all time' or 'We're gonna write an album that sounds like 'Iowa.'' Even if we set out to try to do so, it would never compare. We're not those people anymore, we're not that band anymore.

You tend to find the best in yourself as an artist when you're challenged.