Caroline Shaw Quotes

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

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

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.

There is no 'perfect' in music. If I ever came off the stage and felt it could not be better, it would then be time to quit.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

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.

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

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

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

Tunings are wonderfully inspiring, and it helps you to write music. If I'm stuck, you know, I change the tuning.

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

I always recommend to any player to always compose their own music. It's one of the best things you can do to find a road to your own style.

Every record, you've got more experiences to draw on as a writer and a musician.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

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.

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree.

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.

Actually, with 'Truth of Touch' I wasn't even intending on making an album. I was just having fun. I had about a six-month period of down time, and I'm not very good at sitting around. So I kind of started going into the studio and having fun with new core mendin sounds.

Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition.

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

I was listening to a lot of math rock-y type bands do lots of complex stuff and I couldn't figure out how they were doing it. Then I realized that sometimes they were finger tapping, so I started messing around doing it.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids!

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

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