Steve Forbert Quotes

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

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.

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.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

I like to tinkle at my piano when I'm working out a new song - I just put my fingers down and see what comes out.

I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.

I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

You're just playing, playing, playing, and then an image or something will come into your mind, and basically you're just narrating it with music, letting it move along.

I genuinely find the most meaningful thing I do is to make music, but also to absorb some sort of creativity.

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

I started trying to write songs when I was 8 or 9 years old.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

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

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

I love going into the studio with just an idea of the direction. Like, I want this tempo... I love to start from scratch, and the tracks sort of take on a life of their own.

You kinda don't know what's going to make a good song. You've got to shoot around in the dark for a little while.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.