Dave Brubeck Quotes

I loved the freedom of improvised music.

Jazz is about freedom within discipline.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

I think it's like music for the sake of music, and a lot of the words stem from liking music a lot, wanting to be a good band and having a good sense of humour, and living in a situation where we're free to pretty much do what we want.

It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

When you play with Miles, you are on your own, and then it's you who decides what to contribute.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.

I didn't know how to play lead guitar. There was a freedom in not knowing how to do it.

The musicians in the band, and myself as a performer, love the risks of the unpredictable and the feeling of jumping off cliffs musically.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

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.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

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.

Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.

I think jazz has given me freedom with my voice.

I don't always have to be on what is the newest in music is. I'm slowly educating myself in music. For me, I feel more free in not knowing everything in what I'm doing. You can start making up too many rules for yourself. It should just be love and fun and feeling good.

One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

I learned that music should be fun and should be a way to express yourself - that there aren't really any rules.

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