Jason Becker Quotes

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

Like most musicians, I'm good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we've done in the past.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

We all have different musical instincts, and I think they're precious and should be respected.

When you start reading a piece together, you get a sense of someone's basic philosophy of music without saying a word. You realize the other person's approach, how they express themselves, the kind of restraint they show, all those things.

My head works in music, so there's always music there.

I care about being able to play. If you're playing with integrity in the music, then that's what matters. But it wasn't that great for me because it was kinda like going back into the old times without the guy.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.

Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

I think that listening to music or creating music is a spiritual undertaking, so the process of creating music, you know, involves listening. It involves sensitivity, it involves humility, you know, and then also it's something which is higher than words.

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.

One has to draw upon one's own musical thoughts and one's own musical acumen, and not to be afraid to let that come into one's work. Perhaps that comes with more experience, but perhaps it also comes with daring, and believing that you should.

A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

It is easy to write unthinking music.

Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.

When you do a lyric for 'April in Paris,' those who have heard it before can hear it in a different way now. It can add perspective to a great piece of music that does not have a lyric and may be inaccessible to lot of ears because people don't deal with complex music very well.

I don't really know that I'm aware of a lot of the inspiration and influence that I'm under, because I didn't have an extensive musically educational upbringing.

I was a very observant child. Almost anything could become a song to me.

It's a matter of people closing their eyes and opening their ears. If people are able to do that, then music is ageless.

Music, from the time I was probably about five years old, was my obsession. I was going to say 'passion,' but I really was obsessed; I really didn't want to do anything else.

The thing with music education is that it is good at teaching technique, but not texture. You only learn about that from listening to music and experimenting on your own.

As human beings we're visual creatures, and it's so easy to play the guitar by looking at it. It's a real challenge to go from that visual way of perceiving the guitar to getting back to that pure sound connecting to the instrument.

I finally realized that not only was I passionate about music, but I had a unique way of thinking of music.