Ravi Shankar Quotes

There's an awful lot of resources that can be drawn upon in an improvised music concert.

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

I love doing concert music.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

I'm an interpreter of music.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

Presented with a song like Exit Music, It's impossible to know what to add without actually making it worse. How can you play along when It's already there?

I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

In the olden days, I believe Mozart also improvised on piano, but somehow in the last 200 years, the whole training of Western classical music - they don't read between the lines, they just read the lines.

I played piano, I learned a lot about music.

I never learned to read music.

Concert repertoire is some of the most beautiful music ever written, and I frequently seek out opportunities to perform it.

It has never been necessary for me to learn how to read music.

I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration.

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.

I want to learn to sight-read music. And to play the bass pedals on the organ. Those are my only ambitions.

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

I play like I play. You hear it on 'Celebration Day.' It's pretty good for a one-night shot.

I've watched so-called 'New Order' playing in Auckland, and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape... He's got his fingers on the low, and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he's miming.

My father taught me to play the sitar when I was seven years old. He and his elder disciples oversaw my teaching from the beginning, looking after my scale work, the poor things.