Branford Marsalis Quotes

I suppose because I have a good ear, I could pick out harmonies and learn by ear. I still think that you have to have an ear for music to really be able to feel and understand what you're playing. You can learn by watching and listening to other people.

I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.

At the end of the day, I think having some life experience is helpful to play any kind of music.

I actually don't like playing the piano or conducting the orchestra.

I'm not a trained musician.

When I was younger, I was always a musician that could play by ear better than I could analytically.

I think that the more that you play and the more instruments you play and the better you get at them, then you will be better off for it as a guitarist.

The thing with music education is that it is good at teaching technique, but not texture. You only learn about that from listening to music and experimenting on your own.

My reading of serious books about serious music is seriously compromised by the way that I can't understand any musical theory. Any mentions of D major or C minor are meaningless to me.

I've been in the songwriting circuit as well. I've been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or whatever, and they're writing songs for a young girl or a young guy that are coming up, and they're kind of nuts.

Reading music has opened up me up so much. I've been experimenting for so long and trying to make sense of things just from my ears. It takes forever. Now I can get where I want much quicker.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

When I first started, I worked with my father, Alex 'Little Bill' Wallace; he was a guitarist like B.B. King. I was around 13 when I started, and I learned a lot by looking and listening. I learned how to be a bandleader from watching that band work.

I went to school to learn guitar, solfeggio, and harmony. I wanted to know more about music, how it works. I wanted to take voice lessons, too, and that's when I discovered what I could do with my voice. At the beginning, I thought I would do classical and pop, but then I learned that I really liked the classical music.

Dime knew the importance of every aspect of playing the guitar.

I've been playing the bass guitar for almost twelve years and fretless for about nine, so I've got quite a bit of mileage in my hands already.

Musicians understand each other through means other that speaking.

As soon as I figured out I didn't know anything about music, I was OK. It's when I thought I could learn something that I was in trouble.

I started playing piano when I was eight, and I went on to study piano in school, so I have a background in classical piano and studied composition in school. Writing music came later.

From a small child to right now - I mean, when I was five years old, Red Norville, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Mary Ford, people like that were coming over to my house. So I was around professional adult mature musicians who had had big careers.

I always wrote for musicians, especially guitarists. I write songs that people who aren't great virtuosos can play.

I want to work very hard on music, put out a lot of nice product - good quality product - and then just help people out, like a Gucci Mane, like a Future... like a Prince, like a Michael Jackson.

I learnt everything to do with music in my own time.

My dad put me with all the greatest people. It definitely helped me now, because I know so much more about music and composition. It's cool. I love Pops. I'm super thankful for everything he's done to help my career.

The first music-learning thing that I took seriously was piano lessons when I was a kid. I guess that was probably the only time that I was forced to perform music, because I had piano recitals, and my school also had mandatory music classes that had some performing required.