Ali Shaheed Muhammad Quotes

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick.

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

I must have been five or six when I realised all the stuff I was writing made sense with what I was playing on the piano.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

The most important thing is to follow your instinct and get involved with some friends who have similar tastes and aspirations and like music as much as you do.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

One of the most beautiful things we can give our child is music education.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

I don't always have to be on what is the newest in music is. I'm slowly educating myself in music. For me, I feel more free in not knowing everything in what I'm doing. You can start making up too many rules for yourself. It should just be love and fun and feeling good.

I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

I think it's like music for the sake of music, and a lot of the words stem from liking music a lot, wanting to be a good band and having a good sense of humour, and living in a situation where we're free to pretty much do what we want.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

I have a curiosity that compels me to find ways to make music that are fresh and new.

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.

Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

I started trying to write songs when I was 8 or 9 years old.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.