Evelyn Glennie Quotes

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

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.

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.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

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.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

I like to start with an idea, but then again, I might be sitting at the keyboard, and just playing a bunch of chords that sound cool together, and something just inspires an idea from that.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

I like to tinkle at my piano when I'm working out a new song - I just put my fingers down and see what comes out.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

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.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree.

I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically. I need to hear what I am doing in order to create the next note. If I don't hear it then I can't feed myself.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.

Actually, with 'Truth of Touch' I wasn't even intending on making an album. I was just having fun. I had about a six-month period of down time, and I'm not very good at sitting around. So I kind of started going into the studio and having fun with new core mendin sounds.