Jimmy Barnes Quotes

My whole musical life has been an educational process, and I'm just furthering my education and filling in the blanks. There's stuff that I want to know that I don't know.

I wrote music as soon as I knew notation.

I was 16 when I started playing. I borrowed a friend's acoustic guitar, and I had a Beatles chord book. I just taught myself that way.

I think the first time you try anything in a public way, you feel really exposed.

Oh yeah, we all write. That's what's great about when you have basics in piano.

I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

I think it's a bit of a myth that if you can read music you can write music. It doesn't work like that.

I always wrote music for my friends, but my focus was on playing piano. I didn't think I'd be quite good enough to be a soloist, but I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could work as a player, a teacher.

The main thing is that I've been studying composition for the last four years. I'd say it's the life experience combined with the lessons that enabled me to go much further.

I studied classical music in high school.

I started out with piano when I was little. That, for songwriting, is my favorite instrument.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

You've got to be an editor in order to be a good composer.

I'm always interested in writing. I keep music in journals on an everyday basis. I'm always looking for ideas that can be music.

I hate to debunk the myth - kids don't wanna hear it - but as songwriters, you have to polish your craft a little bit and hone it as much as possible.

Falling in front of an audience - that's, like, my biggest fear.

I am a genderless sea creature who has been writing and studying music since I was 12.

I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.

I've never been much for theory and scales.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

I was feeling really restless in my hard-rock band. I wanted to learn more about storytelling in music, and that's what country music is.

I think my worst nightmare is standing up in front of a group of people.

My mother was a very talented pianist, and she was a music teacher who hated to teach music, actually, but she loved to play, so I was brought up with Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

I write on all instruments.