George Duke Quotes

I started playing piano when I was around four; that's my first passion.

I picked up the guitar very late, in a very pagan way - I didn't know how to play, but I knew I had to. I drew and I had a diary, but it wasn't enough; I needed to express more. As soon as I learned two notes, I started to tell a story, which is why, I guess, my music resembles blues or folk.

I liked the piano. I always liked playing. I just hated homework.

Nobody could understand why a guy would love his guitar, then all of a sudden turn around and try to destroy it. Jimi was just different.

Great guitar players are a dime a dozen. It is sometimes your very limitations as players that set you apart from the crowd.

I've played piano and guitar when I was younger.

I had a musician friend once tell me that it's not in the orchestra that you get the true test of the musicians but in the little trios and quintets where you really get to see if they've got the stuff. And the composer.

I play piano, and I was really, really obsessive about playing piano in high school. I don't know if that's nerdy, but I definitely locked myself in the room and was playing jazz. I was 14. I guess that's kind of cool, actually.

Music is my sport, and I'm the number-one athlete.

I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.

I wouldn't even go spend the night at a friend's unless they had a piano. But I didn't have the chops, the extraordinary talent, to be able to play the piano professionally.

I started playing and writing songs when I was eight.

If you're going to go the way of 'American Idol,' then you better be able to do what you want musically, because just going for the fame will only keep you happy for so long.

The way I play, I like to be free.

Every time I sit down in front of my piano, I like to improvise with the instrument. It depends on my mood of that day what kind of melodies and rhythms I am playing around. Sometimes, even before starting to play I already have a quite clear picture of a song I would like to compose, or at least the sound of it.

I find it natural to write on the bass, and a lot of people find that really odd.

I love Mozart, but I often make a terrible hash of it.

I've always written songs. I'd come home from school and play piano for hours on end, just banging around.

I wrote my first song when I was four, and I played it at my piano recital.

I began making music at the age of four. According to my mother, once I just sat down at the piano and played back a tune by ear. My parents were watching and said to each other, 'Maybe we should give him music lessons.'

I grew up playing the piano, but you know, as a rebellious child, I convinced myself that I hated it.

I've been a musician and a songwriter for years, since I was a teenager, and made my living doing that on and off for a long time, so when it came to writing comedy material, it was the thing that came easiest to me, the most natural way of writing.

I did a lot of engineering things, like taking apart my brother's model car when I was 10. I also played the piano for about 10 years. I auditioned for Juilliard but didn't get in.

Music's always been a big part of my life.

I've always had music in my blood.