Terry Riley Quotes

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

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.

I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.

Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

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 look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

I've found that as I've learned to improvise melodically, it seems like I can come up with a bigger variety of stuff. I kind of selfishly enjoy it more, because I'm in the moment so much.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

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 like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

I would never say I will stay in electronic music for the rest of my life. I will always do whatever I feel like at that moment.

I started realizing that music is the one area where I've always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I've already played or anticipate the notes ahead.

When I play a solo I'm just expressing that moment. It can go horribly wrong easily enough.

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 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.