Jason Moran Quotes

I love music - really a lot. That's why I do it. But mine just never makes it, to me. There's always something wrong with it, something I want to change. But I like that, because at least it keeps me looking, trying to find ways I can improve, which obviously are a lot.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

It's amazing to me to see how bands evolve and how they take all their influences and come up with their own sound.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.

Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.

The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

'Just What I Am' took me all of 10 minutes to make. 'Immortal' maybe took 30 minutes. It's not hard for me. 'Indicud' is almost what my first album should have sounded like, had I really been able to channel all of the ideas I had into music.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.

There's no musician who just wakes up one day and decides, 'This is what I want to do.' It takes some development.

I wouldn't be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn't for Avenged. They're an inspiring group of guys, and I'm constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.

If you go out and just play the old stuff and never write new stuff, you're not really a complete musician, you're a performer.

When I started to make music I wasn't as serious at first.

I really enjoy doing remixes, but I don't want to be known as just a 'remix artist' for the rest of my career.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

It's all a progression towards hopefully one day making a record that can be the definitive you can offer. Some bands come in with that at first, and the great bands never really stray from that. I want to earn my stripes.

I was a late bloomer, but I realised that people really liked it when I played blues scales and, with the piano, I had that insatiable need to prove myself.

Music is a continuous process. You evolve with every song.

I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

Like for me, it's funny that I have ended up in so many side projects because I have always looked at any song that I write as a Dawes song.

I think it took me until - my twenties were really a time of exploration and experimentation with different groups and different types of music. Then I kind of developed the sound, which first appeared, I guess, on my first solo album 'Englaborn,' which came out in 2001.