Kamasi Washington Quotes

I grew up doing sitcoms and theater and even playing with the Beach Boys, where you're programmed to perform, your body gets into a rhythm and you know it has to perform.

I don't know if they were all functioning, but I did play in a bunch of bands.

I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour.

An important part of being in a band is the rhythm section.

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.

I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.

I feel like there are a lot of bands or musicians that probably think improv is corny, because I think that's a sentiment out there.

Originally, we had a band known as Steely Dan. As we moved away from the band, we got whoever was appropriate for specific tunes. In a lot of cases, we gravitated toward jazz players who had more sophisticated harmonic concepts.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.

I've watched so-called 'New Order' playing in Auckland, and Tom Chapman is miming along to my bass on tape... He's got his fingers on the low, and you can hear my high bass in the background. So he's miming.

I've finally figured out how to make a Rodney Crowell record, and that's let it be, leave the mistakes.

If anything, when I was young, I wanted to be an orchestra.

I love collaborating because I come from the world of being in bands.

Isaac Smith sounded like Curtis Fuller, Corey Hogan sounded like Sonny Rollins, Terrace Martin sounded like Jackie McLean. Already, at 13, 14, 15 years old.

To be honest, I don't have a particular recipe, but I normally start with the chord progression and then I build it from there. I listen to a lot of jazz, so the chords are really important to me.

I love being part of a creative process, so having a band to work with is perfect for me.

Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment.

I'm not a guy who grew up in theater. I've always played in rock bands.

When I was younger, I'd go to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and watch this beautiful clip of Billie Holiday playing with a bassist, a pianist and Gerry Mulligan, who was a friend of mine, on baritone sax. At one point, she looks over at Gerry, and they just smile. When those moments happen, it's just lovely.

When I did my solo album, I put on a song that I'd planned for Toto that never made an album constructed from a great drum track with Jeff and a bass track with Mike and the guys loved it.

It's easier to collaborate with instrumentalists than singers; they know exactly the sound that I need.