Acker Bilk Quotes

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

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.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

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.

Music is funny. I shouldn't even ever talk about music, because you can have all the ideas in your head, and it never goes exactly the way that you think it's gonna go.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

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

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for 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.

I've always had an instrument attached to my body.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.

I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

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.

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.

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.

And more than anything, I like the improvisation of jazz. That's the same thing with DJ-ing. There's so much improvisation you can do with cuttin' and scratchin' that's reminiscent of jazz music, because it's all about how you feel. You're capturing a vibe and just going with it.

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

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.