Charlie Hunter Quotes

You see, that is it with music, you never stop learning.

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.

If you go out and just play the old stuff and never write new stuff, you're not really a complete musician, you're a performer.

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

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.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

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

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

If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I want to change that.

The best way for me to teach myself an instrument is to just jam on it, and sound awful sometimes, and sound great other times.

I don't think I'm getting better, quote unquote, as a singer or guitar player. But I'm more comfortable in this particular space. I get better at being a bad singer, so to speak.

Brainfeeder makes me want to keep generating better music.

I must have been five or six when I realised all the stuff I was writing made sense with what I was playing on the piano.

My playground as a musician is growing.

Your experience of life is to a large part distilled into your performing. As you grow older, you concentrate on aspects of music that you perhaps only touched on earlier.

It's amazing to me to see how bands evolve and how they take all their influences and come up with their own sound.

I love stretching myself musically.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

My solos are more tastefully conceived now. But I still get going in places. It's just that I build up to it now. I don't race off on a solo. I take my time.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.

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.

I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.