Jim Root Quotes

I don't think you can have a calculated approach towards learning music.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

I start from one point and go as far as possible. But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I 'localize,' which is to say that I think always in a given space. I rarely think of the whole of a solo, and only very briefly. I always return to the small part of the solo that I was in the process of playing.

What I've done from the very beginning is play everything with extreme accuracy. I never said to myself, 'Okay, if I put my fingers this way, it's gonna result in this.' I've never taken a lesson. My way of playing the guitar was a fresh approach to the instrument.

I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be.

I don't know what aids creativity. All I know is that it feels natural to hold a guitar in my hands and sing.

I'm about a 20-handicapper with a guitar. I can only play three songs on my own album. I did the lyrics, not the music.

I don't learn as well, I think, in like a structured way. I kind of have to be thrown into it.

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different. We don't have any starting point; we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it.

That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.

I can't describe how I make a film. It's organic.

I didn't start until I was 21, and most people I know were 13 when they had their first guitar - I missed that time where you sit in your bedroom all day for years and accidentally you're doing classical training, although you're not thinking of it that way. It's not as easy, as you get older, to do all that kind of practice.

Once you have an established song, you can really come out of your shell and experiment with the sound you want to make.

I've tried to do every album in a different style, which is why I tend to leave a fair bit of time between each one.

The truth of the matter is, things that feel spontaneous have a much longer life than things that have got a lot of burnt brain tissue to make them perfect.

Lately, I love creating ideas on my acoustic guitar. I sit in my living room for hours trying different chords.

I would sit in my dorm room and write songs. I loved it. I was learning to sing and play guitar. I was becoming a musician. I was the beginner who somehow could write a song.

I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.

There are people who compose from very young. That is not my case. I went discovering myself.

I compose melodies in my head and then interpret them musically with my guitar and keep them recorded. The guitar helps me to build unique chord structures on simple melodies.

I bought a guitar when I was twenty. But I didn't write a song until I was 25 or 26. I never learned to play others songs. I learned to play my own songs while I was learning how to make them better.

I didn't go to no school for acting. I learned it all by trial and error.

Vocally, I had never taken a lesson when I put out my videos. It was just a lot of fun. I had watched my dad play guitar, so I just sort of did the same thing.