Alvin Lee Quotes

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of 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.

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.

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

Just, you know, you can't put bread in a cold oven. You know, you've got to take your time. You've got to heat it up. So that's what, that's what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo.

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.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do.

Just because you know umpteen billion scales, it doesn't mean you have to use them all in a solo.

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.

Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.

Every day, you have to make three hours of music, just randomly improvising, and that's a great way to weed stuff out.

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

Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.

Jazz is not the format where I want to stay, but it really is a starting point for me.

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 think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time.

I remember when I wrote songs when I was about 16, they all sounded the same because I didn't know anything. And all the subject matter was all the same because I hadn't actually done much.

The musicians recommend that I sing a sing the way it is written the first time and then start to look for other notes that aren't in the melody.

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound.

By the time I approached my forties, I had the self-assurance to approach all the genres I love so deeply: R & B, rock, jazz, and pop.