Hilary Hahn Quotes

I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.

I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, 'That was good; play that again,' I'm not able to do it.

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

This band makes sure that we have whole sections of stuff that are free form so that they don't know what we are doing next, that is the fun part of playing. You are playing something that you haven't ever played before.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

I don't put boundaries on myself when I sit at the piano.

Always try and play with as many people as possible, even if it's not your style of music, because you will learn a lot.

My formula is not thinking about what I'm doing; it's about still having fun and making music. I don't go into the studio with a thought pattern or certain goals in mind - sometimes I'll start with drums, other times I'll start with the piano - but it's all done spontaneously, so nothing is premeditated, and nothing takes a long time.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

We've never gone into the studio with prepared material... we never have.

Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

I decided to do what I do when I was 2 years old. At 2 years old, you know, I heard the sound of a drum playing in the village, and I found my own drum and just picked it up and started playing, the worst song ever written by Wyclef Jean.But it actually started a vibe.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.