Wynton Marsalis Quotes

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

I usually think in terms of music.

If you can say something special on the guitar, then you're going to perk my ears up. But if you're just gonna run through all the scales, then I can always find something else to listen to.

I didn't have to apply my mind to the aspects of scales and playing, and instead, I focused on creativity. I wrote music, but I didn't 'practice' it. So yeah, you can always get better and improve your technique, but hopefully, that comes through being a musician and composing and being a creative individual.

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.

I like a lot of different kinds of music. I like strong projects, big music.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

I'm an interpreter of music.

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

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am.

Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

But I love how people who are musical, they know how to dress.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

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.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

I think musically.