Michael Schenker Quotes

In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it.

I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically. I need to hear what I am doing in order to create the next note. If I don't hear it then I can't feed myself.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

People fall into patterns at fast speeds, when really, to have a clear musical thought - the kind of musical thought that makes a melody work - our brains just can't think that fast. At a certain point, you're going on automatic.

I've held onto little musical sketches that I thought could be useful, and the more time that I spend doing them for each film, then the more I have to draw on.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I was always playing the Hammond Organ back to front even during the days of the Nice, going back to 1968. Really what I was doing there, was choosing notes at random and trying to make some sense of them, improvising back to front.

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.

Like most musicians, I'm good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we've done in the past.

Everything I do is very visual and very aural, so I don't read music, and I draw as much as I write out lyrics.

I don't think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I'm playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.

It is easy to write unthinking music.

I think musically.

Whatever I hear in my head is what I play.

When I think back now to the recording sessions, there is more improvisation than one hears. It's an ideal combination of arrangements and improvisation. Only a few people are able to listen and say what is composed and what is improvised. It's a unit.

I don't read music. I've never had a lesson. I don't know anything about music other than what my inner knowledge is.

If there is no music, I will perish. While I have not learnt music, I can play the tune that comes into my head on the keyboard.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.