Kurt Elling Quotes

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.

Whenever I'm making songs, I am pretty much, quote unquote, freestyling them into existence.

I don't freestyle, but when I'm writing and thinking, sometimes things pop up - that's basically a freestyle.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.

Music is a lot more like solving an intricate puzzle with moments of pure, random creative bliss... whereas painting is much more purely random creative bliss with moments of problem solving.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

I play patterns. I'll make up a pattern and just play it.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

Sometimes I play something, and I haven't recorded it, and I don't know where it came from, why my hands did what they did, what key it was in, anything.

When we make a record, we don't discuss how we are planning on doing it. It's a very natural and organic growth.

'Curb' is 100 percent improvised, which is wild. I'd never done anything like that.

The way that I write is I just write a ton of music in the background of my life, and then I just bring it into rehearsal. It's, like, 'Okay, guys. It goes like this. Let's smooth it out.'

That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

I love creating. I love being with creative people who can think quickly on their feet.