Dick Dale Quotes

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.

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.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

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.

I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

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 like to improvise.

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.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

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.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I may play the same songs night to night, but I never play them the same way.

I don't write any of my material down. I like to improvise and be spontaneous.

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

I didn't know how to play lead guitar. There was a freedom in not knowing how to do it.