Bill Dixon Quotes

I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility.

Yes, I'm a musician. I also like to play with others, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe,' a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts.

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.

It's about knowing how to make a groove happen and keep it going so others can play off it.

I've always worked with other people. As a musician, it's your role to basically share with other people.

The limitations and parameters of a band is something I've always enjoyed: so many creative people coming together and raising the music to places we'd never get on our own.

You have a great result if the orchestra trusts the conductor, and the conductor trusts the orchestra.

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

This is a group playing together and that's the only way, I feel, this play can be successful and moving. I am so lucky to have the people that are in it. When I came here I didn't know who was going to be in the play.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

In a band that works out well, everybody has a certain role to fulfill.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

When you see the same familiar faces, it's nice when you get a chance to play with the same musicians. You start to develop this shorthand so everybody knows where you're at and where you're going, but then again, there are always surprises. But the more people are comfortable with the material, the more free you can be with the music.

When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.

I just think that with music, it's kind of like life, and so the people you work with, you generally develop a relationship. You don't have to try to explain things. You just know. It's like you're in the band together and striving for the same goal.

I don't control it at all. It's all up to the musicians in the group. They control it. They make all the cues, and they tell me what they want, and then I act like a mirroring device so that everyone can see what the cues are.

Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.

You know how the Beatles broke off - they all did their solo projects and they came back together and they were even stronger!

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.

Just because you put super great musicians together, it doesn't mean you're going to have that chemistry as a band.

It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.

For the sound we produce, everybody is equally important. Each of us has a very different personality and that is what keeps Bush alive.