Kurt Elling Quotes

When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.

I loved the guitar, and I had all of this music in my head. My passion for the guitar and the ideas for what I could create musically were equal. So that's where I was.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.

Now as a musician, if you have it within you, you can create your own reality. Believe me, it's a novelty.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

I've dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.

I am a frustrated saxophone player. If I could, I would abandon all of my books, and I would trade it all if I could play the way people I admire play.

I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

I have no clue as to where my interest and love for music came from. In fact, I have never learnt any music either, though I wish that I could just close my eyes and play the piano - that is my most cherished desire.

Music was my first love, but it was difficult for me. It's something that I really love, but I didn't feel that I was so good at it. I can sing well, but I'm not a great singer. When I sing, I don't feel I'm expressing all the emotions.

I want to be the most melodic artist. 'His music ability, the way he write, his creativity is undeniable.' I want people to say that about me.

I finally realized that not only was I passionate about music, but I had a unique way of thinking of music.

I always tend to think that composing is not playing an instrument, composing is having something in your head that's steaming and it has to go out. It has to become sounds and be written. It's an emotion that you can't repress.

Composers are very individual creatures.

I wanted my own rock band and stuff like that, but things didn't work out. I didn't have the patience to write my own songs and learn it and everything.

Every time I'd sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, 'That's B-flat!'

I started playing the piano aged four in an effort to copy Grandpa, who was constantly showing off and entertaining us all, singing comic songs on his baby grand.

My aunt Maxie had a plastic guitar in her closet, and I started playing that, going nuts on it. I went to stay with my dad, and he saw how much I was into it, and I put my first guitar on layaway. It was a Kay Starter Series guitar and Gorilla amplifier.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

I wanted to play the drums, but I had no rhythm.

The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.

I didn't even learn to play guitar until the movie 'Walk Hard,' which is probably fortunate because maybe I would have pursued it, and that would have been a waste of my time.