Sarah Vaughan Quotes

I don't really know that there's any real rules for songwriting.

Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

When it's time to make music, that's about getting lost for me. To be a control freak is not half as good as being a freak who's casually in control. You're feeling around in the dark for something that feels good.

I just want to make good music. That's it. That's what I care about.

I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Music is what I do naturally.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

Singing was my first passion. Whenever I sing, I'm always so happy.

The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.

Singing is a limitless form of expression, and I love to experiment with my work.

I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.

The voice over is a hat you put on right now as opposed to worrying about going through wardrobe, and having to look a certain way. You just got to let your voice do the talking for you.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

I think I sing a few songs, and I sing them well, and one of them is the mob genre, you know, as a writer.

I just write what I think is funny, or interesting, and hopefully everything else will take care of itself. There's no strategy to anything.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.

Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.

I decided to do what I do when I was 2 years old. At 2 years old, you know, I heard the sound of a drum playing in the village, and I found my own drum and just picked it up and started playing, the worst song ever written by Wyclef Jean.But it actually started a vibe.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

I like to improvise.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

I'm not just a singer-songwriter doing songs in the key of me.