Julian Bream Quotes

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

I like how pure the expression is in music. You can go straight to the heart of an audience rather than through their brain.

I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because I realize it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free.

When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.

A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.

That's the thing about the blues: It's one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

The guitar speaks for me and it says things - hopefully - for everybody that I play for.

Any musical output is emotional.

I've always expressed myself on guitar, and so I look at it as another voice that is available to say what you need to say.

I tried for a long time to make DJ-able dance tracks that were more specific to the stuff that I was playing. Ultimately, I found I wasn't really capable of doing that. The only type of music I was able to make that really made me feel something would just come straight from my heart or straight from whatever emotions I was feeling at that time.

I just make music from my soul and let it be.

Jazz is something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.

Music comes out of me most naturally and would be the hardest to give up forever.

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.

My bass is my weapon.

I sound like a crazy person... but I feel when a piano is happy, and I feel when they find that moment to be alive. I want them to remember me.

People like Nick Cave - that ridiculous, over-the-top doom, taking it to extremes - I find it uplifting because it's like someone else is feeling what you're feeling and putting it into their music. Someone expressing extreme joy is just as valuable; it's just the fact that they're expressing their soul through music.

Kenny Loggins pours his heart and soul into the music he makes. He'll take you with him through everything he's going through, which is not easy.

I want to relate. I don't want to just rap and go to the next album.

I don't think there is anyone who cannot relate to music.

It's very hard to make grand, romantic gestures on a mandolin, and there are times, particularly when playing Bach, that you long for just a little more sustain. But for better or worse it's my voice, and the trade-off comes with increased intimacy. It's like you're beckoning the audience closer: 'C'mere, I've got something to tell ya.'

Rock 'n' roll entertained my head but there was something about country music that touched my heart.

Music reaches people in a way that simple spoken words just can't.

I think my music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people's emotions. I try to make music that doesn't need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people.