James McBride Quotes

I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.

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

Scales played in the correct musical way are very exciting and rewarding.

Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.

There is a basic language of music that I think is important for communicating with other musicians - just the kind of terminology that might make it easier to describe your ideas to the other guys in your band.

When I listen to my favorite songwriters, they have such simple melodies and chords. I occasionally manage to stop at the right time, but all too often I keep on going until I have way too many notes and words. But that's just what I do.

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.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.

Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion.

I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

I really believe in melody.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure.

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.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

There are no rules to writing a song.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.

I think maybe chance works better in a situation like music because music exists over a period of time, and you don't maintain constantly the you can't refer back from one area to another area.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

Music is all about training in harmony, training to understand and use musical energy for our greater pleasure by attuning to the natural laws of the universe.

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.