Wayne Shorter Quotes

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.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

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.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

It is easy to write unthinking music.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

My muse has always been the piano.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.

Composing is just another exciting thing. It's as exciting as being in a band. It's kind of like joining a new band for three months.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.

I try to get a degree of realism in my music.

People don't have fun making music all the time.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.