Jim Coleman Quotes

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.

My playground as a musician is growing.

We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.

I love stretching myself musically.

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.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

I definitely try to broaden the scope of music. I don't know if it's pop or classical or what, but I'm religiously challenging myself all the time, for better or for worse.

Joining Modest Mouse was just consistent with what I used to do as a teenager: I followed where I thought I would make some interesting music.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

In Atlanta, there's no limitation to where you can take your music. You can be as creative as you want to be.

I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

Music should always be an adventure.

I really want to explore every genre that I can.

You can put me in front of any kit, and it is a fun thing to have to adapt. It inspires me to try different things. I like that.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.

Especially with Fantomas, i'm just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can't get away with.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

The musicians in the band, and myself as a performer, love the risks of the unpredictable and the feeling of jumping off cliffs musically.

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

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.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited.