Mike Portnoy Quotes

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging.

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.

The patterns of big-band music are smooth and classical. It's got to be fresh. The brass section should crackle, like the sound of eggs being dropped into hot grease.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

In jazz, there is a lot of European influence harmonically.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.

Jazz is more raw than punk in a lot of ways. It's so expressive. A lot of people say to me, especially older people, 'It took me ages to get into jazz.'

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing.

I'd take the syncopation and play swing, and then read the syncopation lines with my left hand.

Darlin... be-bop is the music of the future.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Jazz is the American’s preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...

Jazz music is the American's music of choice. This is that music that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy.

Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it.

Jazz is the music of the body.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can't define it beyond that.

There's a jazz influence in my music in general.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

Rock bands don't really swing... a lot of rock is stiff. They don't understand the feel, the movement, you know, the jungle of it all.