Floor Jansen Quotes

My ethos is musical freedom: to create whatever I want.

Musically, I try not to box things in. I try to just play around this spectrum of influences: soul, jazz, and hip-hop.

I think that was the whole idea behind doing the solo record was to be able to do musically whatever I wanted to do.

I love that I can play around with all types of music.

I don't want to be stuck to any specific genre.

I just don't let music genres define me.

I love to play guitar. I've never really been the type of guitar player that goes, 'I'll only play this style of music or that thing.'

Like everybody else, I love a good pop song. You know, there's nothing like it. I also just really like music that goes off on extended forays of extrapolation into different areas. So it's kind of nice to be able to move between those two poles.

I didn't want to box myself into writing just rock music because you can try to force it into moments that don't want it.

When I perform, I like to immerse myself in the music, and I just try to get off on the diversity of music.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.

I would never say I will stay in electronic music for the rest of my life. I will always do whatever I feel like at that moment.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

I'm quite an eclectic musician.

I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.

In the past, I tried to be more of a typical session guitarist. I wasn't so concerned with impressing anybody.

I love music. I love every kind of extreme sort of music, and many different genres, and if I were to have to dedicate myself to just one kind of genre, I would feel kind of gypped. I'd be like, man, I wish I could do this or that. And really all it takes is trying it out.

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.

Creating any type of art is all about mood. I've been making extreme music in one fashion or another for decades. And truthfully, Down has a big enough fan base to where I could remain content to do only that, but music is a vast territory and I am an explorer. And I'm a lover of all things considered extreme in music.

I go back and forth between indie and studio because I feel like it, not because I feel obligated to do one or the other.

One of the biggest misconceptions was, after I left Dream Theater, I went off and did, like, five different bands and side projects. Everyone was like, 'We thought you wanted a break.' And it was like, well, I didn't want a break from making music; I just needed a break from the Dream Theater camp.

I actually have a kind of fantasy about doing a covers album in general. My music taste is so eclectic, that I think it would be cool to put it through the funnel of my arrangements.

I couldn't find a way to write music with numbers and rules and schedules. So I tried to forget the academic idea of music and started to see if it was possible to do creative work, taking in all the influences I wanted to keep.