Jason Becker Quotes

Part of being in a band is getting better.

Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

Each time I've gone to the studio, the songs have got better and I've got more confident.

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

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

It doesn't really change, actually. I think The Rolling Stones have gotten a lot better. An awful lot better, I think. A lot of people don't, but I think they have, and to me that's gratifying. It's worth it.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

You never stop trying to make progress as a musician.

I feel like I'm always just trying to write better music and keep topping myself.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

After my second-to-last record, 'The Greatest', I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.

Touring helped me understand where I needed to be better in my music.

I was for a minor amount of time but I was probably a better pianist at 15 than I am now.

There's always the joy of the performance and fine-tuning new interpretations. Over the years, we've all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that wasn't there in the first place.

Classical music is always a really great way for me to get my chops to where I want them to be.

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?

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

'Just What I Am' took me all of 10 minutes to make. 'Immortal' maybe took 30 minutes. It's not hard for me. 'Indicud' is almost what my first album should have sounded like, had I really been able to channel all of the ideas I had into music.

I'm a big, big blues fan and the last several years I've really invested in the blues a lot, and I think my playing is getting better because of it - not necessarily better on a technical level, but certainly on a level of appropriateness.

I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.

In terms of growing as a songwriter, I'm just a guy who understands the craft better. I understand what I want to do with it. I think that's where I've grown. Have I fully achieved that? No, but I don't think you ever do. There's always room to grow.

Lyrically, I could be so much sharper. Melodically, I could be so much stickier. Musically, I could have so much more texture. So I'm constantly doing that, trying to find new ways to mix things up.