Dave Brubeck Quotes

After my second-to-last record, 'The Greatest', I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.

With '8 Diagrams,' I just skimmed the surface of musical exploration.

It's amazing to me to see how bands evolve and how they take all their influences and come up with their own sound.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.

I think it's always important to constantly keep the band on their toes and try new things that you hope will work. That's how 'Apologize' was born, and maybe down the line another little song will be born by that mentality. I've always really liked that song.

I listen to music all the time, and I just choose things I like, or things that I've not used before. Sometimes I work with music that's very difficult - that I don't even particularly like, per se, but that is really complex or interesting.

So many of the sounds that contemporary composers were trying to create were to be found in the traditional musics of the world. That was encouraging but also little daunting to think that you had to work so hard to be new and yet it was old.

As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that's an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.

There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.

Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.

Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.

The music that I've made in the past has had strong contemporary country roots, but I think moving on in music, I will branch out from that a bit.

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound.

Lyrically, I could be so much sharper. Melodically, I could be so much stickier. Musically, I could have so much more texture. So I'm constantly doing that, trying to find new ways to mix things up.

Music should be pushed forward.

In the '70s, my playing was completely untutored, but it sounded good to me, and I tried to find ways to make those very simple things work in more ambitious contexts.

In my honest opinion, in 'Volumes I' and 'II,' we were still trying to figure out our sound.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.