John Tesh Quotes

I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

I respect artists so much, and I absolutely love music as the ultimate art.

Music is about textures as well as melody.

I use a lot of tunings because I listen to a lot of jazz.

All of the musicians when I was young used to always say you had to tell a story when you're a musician.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you'll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you'll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.

I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.

When I started playing the bass, I became kind of fascinated by it and started investigating various styles of bass playing, and I was really struck with funk music, mainly American funk music - Stanley Clarke, Funkadelic and that kind of stuff. That comes out in a couple of songs like 'Barbarism Begins at Home.'

One of the things that makes any good entertainment, whether it's a play, drama, comedy, television, film, whatever, is that you feel a certain amount of spontaneity.

I also like Western classical music and jazz.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

I have some good books of Bach keyboard music transcribed for guitar, and there's always a nylon-string guitar hanging on the wall in my house and a bunch of classical guitar books to grab. I kind of do that just for fun.

Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.

I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk.

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

The scientist addresses an infinitesimal audience of fellow composers.

I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.

Musically, I always wanted to experiment.

As a kid, I used to sit there and figure out how to play everybody's song, and through learning all those songs I learned how to put chords together, and it evolved till I could say, 'Hey, I just wrote that.'

I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.