Gary Rossington Quotes

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

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.

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.

Sometimes it's cool to play major third and minor third diads back-to-back, or a minor third followed by a root/fifth diad - whatever combo sounds good.

As a kid, I used to sit there and figure out how to play everybody's song, and through learning all those songs I learned how to put chords together, and it evolved till I could say, 'Hey, I just wrote that.'

All I'm trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.

Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.

I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing.

In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.

Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that it's much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

I really believe in melody.

I came up with a 'forecasting cell,' which is basically a mixed intention cell or chord that is a complete hybrid of a consonance and a dissonance, and what that does when you are improvising is lead you to where you are supposed to go.

It's cool to have instruments lying around because they give you different ideas.

If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.

I mean, there are only so many notes. What makes something original is how you put it together.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.