Paul Shaffer Quotes

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

If you're not Prince, you're never going to sound like Prince.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

I don't think I could ever be in a band if we just had to go out there and play the record note for note. I'd give up. I'd become a banker.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

And I like to interpret music. So I think it's all interpretive.

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

I'm an interpreter of music.

If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.

I think I had a knack for music, but I think what I was more sort of talented at more than anything, because I don't think I'm a great singer, I think that I grew up imitating different voices that I heard.

The main thing in making your own music is that it's an expression of someone's personality and being. That's what people want to hear, and you can't really teach that - that's just something that comes out. Teaching just hones that.

Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.

I am an interpreter of music rather than a composer of it.

I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.