Steve Albini Quotes

Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how's and why's of piano.

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

When it's time to make music, that's about getting lost for me. To be a control freak is not half as good as being a freak who's casually in control. You're feeling around in the dark for something that feels good.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

I try to do things that keep me interested. And play music that moves me. I like to move around and play in a lot of different ways.

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

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

When I started 'Record Collection,' I had no idea that it would come out sounding the way that it did, and that's one of the best things about the creative process, taking turns with the things you didn't know.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

This band makes sure that we have whole sections of stuff that are free form so that they don't know what we are doing next, that is the fun part of playing. You are playing something that you haven't ever played before.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

Musically, I always wanted to experiment.

My formula is not thinking about what I'm doing; it's about still having fun and making music. I don't go into the studio with a thought pattern or certain goals in mind - sometimes I'll start with drums, other times I'll start with the piano - but it's all done spontaneously, so nothing is premeditated, and nothing takes a long time.

The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.

We kept moving forward and didn't try to recreate the past .. the approach to each album was radically different every time. Many bands would have some success and, because they were locked into having a single - something we didn't have to worry about - they had to make sure there was something similar on the next album ... that was never the idea with Led Zeppelin .. the goal was to keep that spark of spontaneity at all times.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

One thing people always ask me is 'How do you play outside?' ... I have no idea how to teach that, but when I was discussing this with our bass player Jesse Murphy, he said 'tell them to go cliff diving'... In other words, when you're jamming, you have to take risks if you want to find new sounds.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

You are not just, "This is the way I play it every night." You are constantly finding new ways in, new attacks, "I want to try it this way. Maybe this scene is affecting that scene. I want to attack this scene differently."