Brian Stokes Mitchell Quotes

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.

When I'd hear something that sounded like I could follow it - most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway - I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming.

I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.

I can't hear rhythm.

When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.

Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes ah, that is where the art resides.

Thelonious Sphere Monk: there's not a more perfect name to fit his compositions than that name.

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

I'd take the syncopation and play swing, and then read the syncopation lines with my left hand.

The 'Carousel' overture has always been one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

Some songs go super-quick; some take a really long time.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.

Being jazz-trained, things happen spontaneously. Even though it's funk rock, we still have the instincts of a jazz musician.

Fats - very funny man, but every note that he played was like a pearl.