Devendra Banhart Quotes

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.

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.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

I was for a minor amount of time but I was probably a better pianist at 15 than I am now.

I'm a big, big blues fan and the last several years I've really invested in the blues a lot, and I think my playing is getting better because of it - not necessarily better on a technical level, but certainly on a level of appropriateness.

If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I want to change that.

You have a natural groove inside of you, but the more you practise, the more comfortable you will be with your instrument.

Part of being in a band is getting better.

Obviously I'm not the best singer; obviously I'm not the best piano player or the best songwriter, but I'm doing my best on all of 'em. Once you have all those things in place, then I think everything falls the way it should.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

When you're fat and comfortable, your music is going to sound fat and comfortable.

The more you play music, the better you'll get.

Your experience of life is to a large part distilled into your performing. As you grow older, you concentrate on aspects of music that you perhaps only touched on earlier.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.

I feel like that I'm learning all the time. I'm learning from new artists, from established artists... every time I listen to '70s rock 'n' roll records, I'm learning. And I think that I'm just now starting to get a hold on what I do.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

Especially with music, people want confidence.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

I play guitar... I like to say that I'm pretty good, but it takes someone else to tell you that you're really good.

Playing guitar is not a beauty contest.

My harmony is passable but is usually made more eloquent at the hands of Steve Hamilton.

In a way, I created Utopia as a platform for me to become more of a guitar player and less of the kind of balladeer that people were taking me for.