Charlie Parker Quotes

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.

I'm a terrible trumpet player.

I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.

For years, my actual listening activity has been governed by what I perceived to be good for me as a musician, almost like the way an athlete trains for a given sporting task. I'd listen to something if I felt it would improve my sense of harmony or counterpoint, or whatever I was working on.

I've been singing quieter because I live in a thin-walled apartment.

My ambition is to learn to play the trombone. My wife pulls my leg about it. I'll find time, my neighbours might not appreciate it but I'm going to try.

I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn't last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn't have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.

The music is always blasting wherever I am that people always knock on my door and say, "It's too loud!"

I played cello in my high school orchestra.

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

I think my mom always wanted to play the guitar, and somehow she projected that to me. So I started learning to play guitar when I was five years old, but actually I'd never managed to get the academic side of it. So even up to today, I don't know how to read or write music.

I have been tied up with music for about as long as I can remember. By the time I was four I was picking out little tunes my mother played on the reed organ in the living-room.

I was messing around with the harmonica... but I was 13 before I got a real good note out of it.

I've studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it.

Maybe some people may have thought or imagined that Islam drains all creativity. In fact, when you look at history, you discover that the golden age of Spain is what actually produced what we call the guitar.

I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old 'cause my folks tried to get me away from the gramophone. And I just - I lived for music since I could think. And they got me piano lessons. So by the time I was 13, I was quite an accomplished piano player and musician.

My family was always playing music; I always enjoyed it. My cousin, who is a little older than me, he started playing music, so I wanted to, also. I asked my dad for a guitar, and he got me a banjo, so that was my introduction to playing. I played it like a guitar. I had a few lessons, learned out a few chords, and figured it out right away.

I played the coronet first, and then I upgraded to the trumpet. First song I learned on there was 'Hot Cross Buns.'

Eventually, my dad bought me a guitar for Christmas, and then I just went from there, man. I bought a drum kit a few years later and bought a bass, started producing, started singing.

I knew that it's typical for a black kid to say, 'I'm just going to rap.' I was like, 'I'm going to rap, but I'm going to study, I'm going to figure out what this is and how to put it together.'

I've got to give my neighbors a bottle of wine or something because I was just screaming into microphones and learning how to play instruments, and it was a lesson in patience for them, I believe.

I got my first drum kit when I was six years old.

I first began with the recorder in our community music school. After that, I played horn and participated in the school orchestra.

My dad played a little bit of piano and guitar, but not that professionally. I saw him play, and I said, 'I want to play. I want to try this instrument.'

I've always respected and taken care of my instrument.