Paul Gilbert Quotes

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

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

You've got to be able to play in the box and play deep.

My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.

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

I'm an interpreter of music.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

I played piano, I learned a lot about music.

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.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

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.

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

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

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.

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

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.

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

I love classical music and often listen to symphonies or opera in the morning.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.