Branford Marsalis Quotes

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.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine.

I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

You develop a voice and a process that's unique to yourself.

I would write down the lyrics to 'C.R.E.A.M.' in Korean - not translating it, but phonetically writing out each word. I didn't know what they were saying, so I would just write everything down as I heard it. I would recite it and imitate it like that. That's how I started to write my own raps.

Every time you learn a new language, your understanding of language overall grows, so every time I would learn new music, my understanding of music would grow because I was taken to an extreme in a different direction, and that was, in effect, carrying over into what I do.

I found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people's songs.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.

It's okay to be inspired by other people and it can be a useful learning tool to play other people's music, but let out what's inside of you.

I just worked my own personal thoughts into my music, and just kept at it until I found a way in.

A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.

I'm always very keen to learn a skill or a language for my films.

You can’t learn your craft by copying me or anyone else. I hope what I do can do is in some way inspire others but I would be appalled if I thought my work was being studied as ‘the right way to do the job’. My way is just one of an infinite number of ways to do the job.

I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.

You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.