Benny Green Quotes

Find someone you can jam with. That's a big deal. When you play with someone else, you gotta work together to get the thing started and in time, working and in the groove.

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.

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 say if you can find somebody you can make music with, that's a special thing, so you should try to keep it going.

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 never want to be anywhere else than in the rehearsal room. I mean, it's so lame to say, but it makes me supremely happy to work with people and to talk and invent and laugh.

A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.

Once you start to play together, vibing off each other in the scene, it's not just the notes - it's the music. The script might be the notes playing, but we're making it music.

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.

I have a great time with my band and on the stage we get along well.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

Music - opera particularly - is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

I just love to play and I get a chance to play with other musicians and I jump on it.

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

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

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

With acting, it's like you form chemistry with different people in different ways, so it's really added even more fun to work, you know?

I guess there's this mind shift that happens once you're on stage. I don't know, chemicals, something happens and you just... I just become completely in control of where I am. And it's all about trusting the people that you're on the stage with, listening... and it just falls into place really easily.

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.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

In many ways, a song-writing partnership is like a marriage. Apart from just liking each other, a lyricist and a composer should be able to spend long periods of time together - around the clock if need be - without getting on each other's nerves. Their goals, outlooks, and basic philosophies should be similar.

I've never had a plan - it was just to try and get with the people you like to play with, and try to do the best you can.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.