Eddie Van Halen Quotes

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

There are no rules when I compose songs.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

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

You think it's all written, but it's not. There's always another way to twist those three chords around.

Composition is selective improvisation.

I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.

There are no wrong notes.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

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

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

You have certain expressions when you write music, a lot of different emotions, a lot of different feelings.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.